Here are a couple of tenon cutters. The one in the back is a poplar base with a frog from a standard Bailey style plane. The one in the front is made of rosewood (fancy eh?) and has a frog from a Bedrock plane. I made the one in the back years ago, and today, Seth Weizenecker made the one in front. The cutter Seth made is simpler to make and works amazingly well.
I like using the frog from a plane in my tenoning fixture because of the control that it gives over the adjustments, but as you can see, I had to mount it on a small angled block to get the low cutting angle that I wanted. What I didn't know, was that Bedrocks frogs are far simpler and screw easily to a flat surface, with a beautifully low angle built right in!
Here it is in use. And the shaving...amazing.
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| Notice the low angle of the frog and the bevel of the blade |
Don't be confused by the shiny chip breaker, which looks like a blade, it's a Hock chipbreaker.
He began the process by drilling and reaming a hole as you'd expect, then he planed down the top until an even gap opened at the top of the mortise. Then he screwed the frog on. How simple is that!
These days, I am acutely aware of the value of having talented people around, well done Seth.
Now I am going down to his shop to steal all the Bedrock frogs, shhhh
It occurs to me that you could use the non-bedrock frogs by sectioning out the base of the metal plane under the frog and screwing that on the on the block of wood. Then you could attach the non-bedrock frog on that. Basically chopping out the part of the plane you want to use.
ReplyDeleteObviously that assumes that you have a plane that is broken enough to hack apart, but together enough to use!
Hi Peter,
ReplyDeleteThanks for that great info.
Can I ask what width blade it is and what angle.
Im in Australia and I can't afford the bedrock plane so would be making your version.
Thanks again,
Maree.
Maree,
ReplyDeleteI believe that the frog was from a number 8, which makes it 2 5/8" or 3/4" wide, either way, it's a big blade. If you look at the fixture in the rear you can see that I angled the standard frog about 5 degrees back to get a lower angle. Both work great.
Could you achieve something similar by going frog-free and mounting the blade bevel-up directly onto the board? You'd end up with a 30 degree or so low angle if the blade was completely flat. You could probably rig up some sort of Bailey-style adjuster to micro-adjust it closer or further from the channel.
ReplyDeleteIs there any advantage gained by using the frog?
You could rig up all sorts of ways to get the job done, the Bedrock just makes it a simple job, plus the adjusters are top notch.
ReplyDelete