My current project will be a new TV Stand for our Living Room. I’m building the stand out of European Beech. I’ve started milling some of the lumber and have started on the legs and stretches of the base.
This project is going to have a lot of Mortise & Tenons and Frame & Panels in it. The project is all solid wood, no plywood for the panels or top. Although I was tempted.
Today I cut some grooves using my Veritas Plow Plane. When I first got this plane, I had mixed results with it. First, I discovered I using it wrong. Chris Schwarz has blogged a couple times on how to properly use these kinds for jointery planes. The key is (if you are right handed) to allow your right hand do the pushing forward, and use your left hand to apply lateral pressure to the fence. Don’t be tempted to use your left hand to push forward, it will only cause you to be unbalanced.
The other key, was to add a larger auxiliary fence to the plane. The small metal one just isn’t larger enough, to give you a good reference surface. I think I can go even larger on mine, but this was a big improvement.
As you might remember, I’m not using power routers anymore. Cutting these grooves would have been a task for the router. I’m quite sure I cut these grooves just as fast with the hand plane, then I would have with the router! One router task checked off the list.
Excellent! I know I have that video that Chris did on the plow plane. Here’s the article on set up -> http://www.wkfinetools.com/contrib/cSchwarz/z_art/vSmallPlow/sPlow-2.asp
I know I have the video/article of him using it by just pushing it with his palm. I’ll look for it.
Thanks Marilyn. I did find the video on Stop Grooves that Chris did. I wasn’t finding it, because I wasn’t spelling Groove correctly
! Here’s the link on Stop Grooves with a Plow Plane, if people are interested.
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/video/stopped_grooves_video
Mike