Followers know I have a shop full of tools and yet something I like to do is make more tools. When I make a tool it connects me to the roots of the craft and because am retired I can spend time navel gazing without worrying about a production deadline. Actually I just turned 65 years old and had the joy of my prescription drugs plummeting in price, so retired and lucky too.
Anyway I digress. I have seem a variety of kerfing plane/saw plans on the net for years. In the past I was able to cut rebates and dadoes on my router table or table saw just fine actually, very accurately and efficiently. Now I like to fool around with hand tool projects and so decided I wanted an accurate way to cut consistent rebates by hand. The solution is the purpose made plane/saw.
My tool uses a saw blade rather than a plane blade.
This saw blade is one of a set I bought from a old fashioned hardware store ages ago that has been sitting on a shelf because I knew that one day I would need long random saw blades. This set of blades came with a terrible short lived handle that was supposed to give you a selection of saws that took up little space in your tool box. The loose blades were really only suitable for baking into a cake and sneaking into a frontier gaol. A few years ago I put a short blade onto a knife style handle for my wife to use as a bone saw (in the kitchen).
I cut this blade in half with my angle grinder and a cutting disk. Then I got semi-artistic and shaped the blade to fit better on the wooden handle.
The blade is screwed to a piece of 7/8 inch elm with the drilled out area for my thumb. I had the blade cut 1/2 lower than the bottom of the elm back board.
Stage two was to attach a fence to the other side to create a stop/runner that you allow the blade to cut 1/2 inch in to the work piece. That way I can cut out a dado/rebate that is 1/2 inch square by sawing until the blade bottoms out.
The fence is white oak, straight, stable and hard wearing. I sealed the wood with orange shellac and in use I have found that I need to round the end of the handle since there is more pressure horizontally necessary than I anticipated. Getting the cut started is similar to getting any rip cut started, a bit tricky.
I have the other half of this blade left and two more shorter blades with finer teeth. I will certainly keep them, wrapped in oily paper and no doubt they will get used, someday.
cheers ianw
