Thursday, October 31, 2013

Free Wooden Jack Plane Plans - 18th Century Style

So in my continuing effort to confound people as to how I make my living giving everything I know away in my spare time here is more plans to print and hopefully make something with. (Download link is at bottom of page)

Wooden Jack Plane Plans Image
I think this plane is just about my favorite. It is fun to just hog away at rough stock with this guy. Give it a heavy cambered blade and just see the shavings fly. If I could get someone to hold the camera for me I would demo this one in action but I am sure you can imagine.

The great thing about a wooden jack plane is that the sole doesn't have to be ultra flat to work really well. And this is probably the best wooden plane to start with because it is much easier to do a lot of physical rough work with this lighter plane than with a metal one. Once you use it you will understand what I mean.

Also cutting the mouth for a jack is easier since you would typically want it quite open. Cutting the mouth on a smoothing plane on the other hand requires a very tight opening and thus much more precision both for creating the mouth and floating the blade bed to keep the mouth narrow.

I hope to follow up with a cut away view of the inner workings of the mouth. Either a good drawing or an actual one made in wood with several pictures. Don't hold me to the fire on this one as for timing. I will get there eventually. :)

Take care all!

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE DOWNLOAD PAGE. (Click on the download button in the upper right corner of the new page to begin download.) These are offered as a free download intended for non commercial / personal use only. These are copyright protected

NOTE: The plans are in PDF format. If you don't have a PDF reader Adobe Acrobat is a free software that will make it viewable and printable. 

You do not have to print these to scale but if you do the first page is sized for 11" x 17" paper. The second one is 8-1/2" x 11". Keep this in mind if you go to the print store. Check the print by measuring the 1" square scale. Do this at the print shop because they often mess up.

If I made any errors anywhere in the plans please let me know so I can update them.

6 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting these plans. I am interested in doing some wood working projects with my 2 boys (give them something to do rather than computer games) Our problem is our tool selection is limited. I realized the first thing I needed was a good plane to make the rough wood I have flat. Since I only have a block plane and a selection of chisels to start, I thought it would be fine to make the plane from baltic birch plywood. It is much denser than typical american Plywood. That is one good thing about living in Latvia, all plywood here is baltic birch ply, but we just call it plywood. Also on the first one I will try the dowel method instead of the traditional abutments. Once I have this plane finished I can flatten my stock to make a more proper plane, as well as a workbench. I might also try a 1/4" maple sole to make it run smoother.

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  2. Great work as always, Out of interest what software do you use to create your plans?

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  3. Hello Caleb liked of Project, you used measures in inches and centimeters Brazil use, tried to open the file by CorelDRAW X7 to convert to centimeters put the file asks for password, you can send or post the same project using centimeters. Thank you
    Carlos Falcón

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  4. Been Trying to draw these up in Fusion360 and there's one dimension needed for the breast or is it (like I drew it) coincident with the point where the bed angle meets the sole?
    also for a jointer would I just increase the toe and the heel the same amount to the desired length?
    and is the blade bevel up or down?
    thanks for any help

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  5. This time I'll use WoodPrix instructions to make it by my hand :)
    http://www.WoodPrix.com

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