Boatbuilder’s Notes
CRAFTSMANSHIP
Dreaming of a bronze Christmas
FETTLING A PLANE
Common trade-offs in producing a hand plane cheaply are a rough finish and wide tolerances
for machined parts. At over £50 new this Stanley block plane should have been of better quality.
The blade, made in Sheffield, was good, but for the rest of the tool, made in South America, quality
control was poor. The lever cap was black-painted, which made for poor contact with the blade that
it was supposed to clamp firmly against the bed. The blade would flex when it met difficult grain,
resulting in ugly tear-out. You can improve this situation considerably by fettling. Scraping the paint
from the lever cap revealed a rough cast steel surface. Filing was needed before adequate flatness
was achieved. That done, it was much improved – taking full-width shavings without a flutter.A square test
One of the more devastating
discoveries you can make too late is
that the try square you have depended
on for marking out work is not a true
right angle. This problem is not
confined to vintage tools, which
perhaps have been dropped. Quality
control is so inconsistent with some
makers it occurs in new try squares too.
A simple test is to place the stock
against a square-cut board and mark a
line, then turn it over and with the
stock against the same edge mark a
second line close to the first. If the two
lines are not parallel the try square is
at fault. Although the blade of this old
Marples try square is pitted by
corrosion it remains riveted and true in
the brass-plated rosewood stock, only
requiring a glide across the whetstone
to smooth its time-worn edge.Buck & Hickman’s 1964 catalogue
of tools and suppliesClockwise from top left: Filing the underside of the lever cap; the blade and the flattened lever cap;
looking for tell-tale light between cap and blade; taking a full-width shavingTEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHS ROBIN GATESFor devotees of old British tools, Sheffield is the holy city and the bible is a
Buck & Hickman catalogue of around 50 years ago. The 1,200-plus pages of
this old boatyard copy list everything from brass screws to band saws, all
made in the UK, underlining the massive migration in manufacturing which
has occurred within just two generations.
The experience of buying tools has also changed. Online we can
admire the air-brushed pixels of every tool for sale, scroll through
reviews, then have our purchase couriered to the door. But it remains a
pleasure, of a winter’s evening, to pore over the pages of a good tool
catalogue, comparing spec and prices, making a list of the perfect kit.
Of course, so many of today’s knock-off tools emerge from their
packaging poorly finished and with an edge that won’t cut cheese. This is
why many a professional greets the arrival of the purportedly ‘new and
better’ tool with a curling lip. A shipwright in the village where I grew up
never squandered a penny on unnecessary tools. What broke, he mended,
and for what he didn’t have he used his wits to circumvent the need. He
retired with the same tool chest he had on completing his apprenticeship,
his planes fixed with brass plates, his chisel handles riveted, his saw
hammered straight so many times it lay on the bench like beaten silver.