How to make a jack plane
Practical Action
Hold the two parts of the stock together and mark the position of the mouth on the sole of the
plane, 130mm from the front.
Mark out the front of the throat and the frog as shown in the drawings.
Set a marking gauge to 26mm and gauge the
width of the throat on each piece, top and
bottom.
Note that the two pieces are mirror images of
each other. Mark the waste.
Cutting the throat
Use a tenon-saw to cut down the waste
side of the lines at the front and the back
of the throat.
Make three or four cuts in the throat to
make it easier to chisel out the waste.
Take care not to cut below the gauge line.
Use a 25mm chisel to remove the bulk of the
waste. Square a line across the front of the
throat, 6mm from the back of the mouth.
Use a tenon-saw to open up the mouth.
Chisel out the remainder of the throat with a
6mm chisel and check that the cheek is
straight. Repeat this process on the other half
of the stock. The two parts of the stock should
look like this.
Gluing the stock together
Clamp the two pieces of the stock together and make sure the joint still fits well. Do not apply
glue yet. Use at least one clamp at the front and two clamps at the back. Unclamp the stock
and spread a thin layer of glue over both pieces. If the timber is very dense it is a good idea to
first sandpaper the surfaces to be glued, lightly, across
the gain. This tears the fibres and will help the wood
to absorb the glue.
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