January 20, 2021
This could have been entitled a rework of a Cowel and Chapman plane or perhaps a reinvention. Some might suggest a heretic bastardization. I bought this plane at auction where it was described as an "exquisite user made bridle plow, with solid brass body, arms and bridle mechanism... a work of art".
A little investigation suggests this is a Cowell and Chapman plane. Here is a Cowell and Chapman screw arm plow plane from a 2012 David Stanley auction. Note the frame style. The price estimate was 2500 - 4000 GPB. Here are a couple more pictures of Cowell and Chapman planes: picture, picture, picture. Cowell and Chapman were tool mongers operating from 11 Pilgrim Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in northern England. Their partnership was disolved on the 22nd of April, 1899.
Here are pictures of my plane. Note the similarities in the major frame and the walnut handle. The fence is crude. When pushed up next to the plane, the fence does not line up with the arms as evidenced by the rounded cut outs that are supposed to align with the fence rods. The fence has wooden blocks as extenders. The brass bar is actually 3 pieces riveted together. The thumb screw is crude, homemade looking. The lever cap is crudely made of steel with red paint. The brass rods are a contrast. They appear to be professionally made. They are tight fitting with nicely knurled screw caps.
Where do you think this thing came from? My guess would be a factory piece, either rejected or lifted unfinished, and someone modified it or perhaps a maker attempt at something different? Regardless, I am certain there is some relationship with Cowell and Chapman. Some how I don't see an amateur copying this very involved casting on their own.
I didn't pay a lot of money for this plane. In addition to the things I've described, the skate is badly pitted, there is no depth stop, the wood is damaged/deteriorated, etc. I'm planning to keep the frame and the arms and rebuild everything else. It will be a fairly time consuming project but not a big money investment. I hope to wind up with a nice fancy user plane and a good story to go with it. I had offered mine on Ebay a few years ago with no takers so there is little interest in it the way it is now. Hey, it's mine; I doubt I'll diminish its value.
February 2, 2021
At the outset, it looks like making a new handle may be particularly challenging. The first problem encountered was
the
single rear screw
broke when trying to extract it. All ended well enough, the screw was drilled out and the
frame was not damaged. Making the new handle was a challenge.
The sides of the brass frame are not the same thickness and the
pattern to fit the handle is different side-to-side. To transfer the pattern to the new handle I made a
piece of
plastic to fit the opening. I traced the two sides onto the plastic, sliced the patterns off and trimmed
them along the outline. I then used these patterns to mark the
test piece. Once the handle was cut to fit the frame, other operations to cut the ramp and shape the
handle were pretty straight forward. The nearly-finished handle
is made from ziricote'. It is an easily polished hard wood from central America and Mexico.
February 8, 2021
I finished a new depth stop. I didn't take a lot of pictures, so let's see if I can reconstruct the sequence. The general
appearance of the depth stop is apparent from some of the pictures of original Cowell and Chapman planes. The depth stop
has a leg and a foot. The leg fits into the plane body with 9-degree angles on the sides. I made the leg so that it doesn't
quite bottom out against the frame. When tightened the angles provide a wedging
action that keeps the depth stop tightly positioned without a lot of force on the tightening screw. The 'cathedral top'
on the leg took a couple iterations to get a pleasing shape. Here's my sketch for
the cathedral top and a couple of rejected attempts.
The frame is complicated and looks precision milled but it is not. Nothing is orthogonal, no right angles, nothing parallel. Anyway, after fitting the leg to the frame I drilled a couple holes in the bottom and screwed a piece of brass to it. Putting this assembly in place in the plane body, I traced the required foot pattern from the frame. I scratched the pattern from the frame onto the foot and shaped it with the milling machine, mostly. When the shape matched well enough, I set the screws with some loc-tight and milled them off. Here's the finished depth stop, and another pic. Here are some pic, pic, pictures of the depth stop installed in the frame. I'm not too happy with the nut I made and I'll make another. The next one will be a little larger and the screw will not protrude through.
March 5, 2021
I made a new nut for the depth stop. The off-the-shelf screws had their heads polished and a screw driver slot added.
Here is a picture of the old and new nuts as well as the reworked screws.
I was able to remove the pivot pin for the old lever cap. It was riveted in place. I was able to enlarge the hole and shift its position slightly to better position screws for a new lever cap. I made a new, longer lever cap and signed it. A new screw for it is solid brass.
I made new skate pieces and brass support pieces. I added an extension detail in the front and added a more fitting contour to the rear skate. New brass screws hold the skate pieces in place. I didn't like the shape of the new screws so I turned the head diameter a little smaller and flattened them some. Here is a comparison of the screws before and after.
I spent some time trying to come up with ideas for a new fence. I was trying to get something fancy like the bridle spacer used on center wheel designs. Nothing I sketched worked well so I settled on a simple oval cutout. I downloaded an oval off the google and photo shop scaled it to my liking. It took a while to come up with an acceptable pattern for the fence and then some practice to make some test pieces. Closer pic. Similarly, the hold-down part of the fence had to be carefully measured. The first step in making the hold-down was to precisely drill the holes for the guide rods. The holes are 5/8 inch diameter, to start, and then carefully enlarged to fit the guide rods. Next the oval pattern was traced on the blank. Holes were drilled for the 1/4-20 hold-down screws. The two-piece hold down was then sawed through and the oval rough cut and smoothed. The 1/4-inch holes in the main section were enlarged and 3/8 threaded spacers were installed. The new fence is polished ziricote', same as the new tote/handle.
The rest of the effort was simply assembly details. Here are a couple pic, pic, pic, pictures of the finished plane. I have a set of 8 irons for the plane. They are in nice shape, near new, not marked with a maker name. I'm assuming the plane will work properly, no reason it shouldn't. Perhaps I'll have a need to use it someday.March 19, 2021
I found I had a few thin pieces of the ziricote left over and decided to make a box for the plow plane knives.
I got out my old finger joint jig and started in. I made a little divider/blade holder for inside the box to
determine the required width. I used my finger joint jig to make very small 1/8th inch box joints. Here's the
start. I don't have any experience gluing up this type of exotic wood
so rather than take a chance with Titebond I decided to use epoxy. Not much fun to work with, it is
pretty messy.The messy joints
cleaned up well enough. I'm getting really good at signing my name.
The blades fit nicely as planned. Overall, the box works well with a
very tight fitting lid. This may be a problem later on. The humidity
in my shop has been around 40 - 45% for the last few months. I'm thinking increased humidity in the coming months
may bind the lid somewhat. A problem to be solved later, I guess.