Many years ago, when the world was young and rocks were soft, I started making a dovetail plane. For those of you who don’t know what that is… It’s a molding plane with a simple angle for the sole, used to facilitate the making of sliding dovetails. Thus the sole is made at the angle of the dovetails that you would make.
It’s sat there amongst my molding planes for over 20 years without an iron. 20 years ago buying one small piece of steel to make the iron was difficult.
Of course in recent decades many of the wholesalers have realized that they were missing out on a large segment of potential sales to hobbyists and small businesses that occasionally need one or two small orders.
So the other week I bought a piece of oil hardening tool steel from Grangers. Cut it to length with a hack saw. Cut down the sides of the (tang?, stem?) narrow part and the outline of the blade. Filed and ground, to neatly approach the lines scribed in the layout fluid.
Now I need to harden the blade area and temper it back a bit so that the edge doesn’t snap off in use.
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