Cutting cast iron plane

[Dave London]

This tool was given to me by my favorite uncle about 40 years ago. found it in the bottom of my tool box. Going to send it to his grandson whom is a carpenter.
Cuting cast iron is what humm well cind of crumbly:cheers2[1

 

[Cloudy]

Yes, but you did a lovely job of it!

 

[atexascowboy2011]

I'll second that! Looks great Dave!
Hope he's a businessman, with a desk to display it prominently.

 

[monk]

very good. cloudy inspired me to dive this a try. the stuff was horrible to cut-- just plane give up. maybe the casting was less than stellar in quality.

 

[leschowe]

Nice Job Dave!

Les

 

[Dave London]

Thanks guys and Cloudy,

 

[g.rohrbaugh]

Nice work Dave on that plate! I engraved a wood plane myself after looking at Catharine's wonderful work. That cast steel sure does engrave different, if your not careful your tool may skip on you. I want to engrave more of those and when I do I'll post a photograph. Thanks for showing Dave!
Gary

 

[Dulltool]

I also was inspired by cloudy and these other engraved planes.... I engraved a hand plane that belonged to my dad... I'll post a photo when I get the time.

 

[Peter_M]

That is looking cool Dave.

Cast iron is right up there with cast bronze, sure doesn't cut as nice as silver or steel.

Peter

 

[rod]

Hello, Dave!

Yes, I agree, a nice job, very good scroll backbones too!

Those of us who have metal lathes, and that now includes you, Dave, will know that the best tool geometry for cast iron and brass is "zero rake angle". As Barry Lee has written more than once, engraving is the same as metal turning, your ball vise is the headstock rotating the work, and your hand held graver is the cutting tool, the only difference is that, in engraving, the cutting is usually intermittent. What we metal lathe turners call the tool 'rake face' is the tool face that the chip flows over, and 'rake angle' is the angle the top surface of the tool makes with respect to the work, that is, 'zero rake' means the top tool face is perfectly horizontal. Steel likes about a 15 degree positive rake, 'positive' means the tool angle gets to be a sharper wedge, negative rake means the tool has a blunter angle wedge. So translating rake to an engraver's geometry, we call our rake angle the 'front face angle', and a 45 degree front face angle (rake) is a common choice for steel. I use 40 degrees for silver.

With that re-amble, might it be worth trying a blunter front face angle for cast iron? If we translated a good tool angle for the lathe to an engraver it would be 80 degrees front face, assuming a 10 degree lift. It could be interesting to start blunting the angle to 50, 60, 70 etc. degrees, and try to see if there is an optimum. Best to try this on some scrap cast iron, of course.

Okay, now I have talked myself into trying this experiment ....

Rod

 

[Dave London]

Thanks Peter and Rod
Rod I will have to make up a blunter graver to give it a go. I used a standard Lindsay 116 universal in carbalt for the scroll work and a 96 detaling for the boarder and shading. The 96 was easier to use

 

[rod]

Dave,

All you need do is choose a blunt-er front face angle, say 55 degrees and lap the tiniest area of the front point, much the way Mike Dubber suggests for dubbing the point, but a bit more than dubbing, but only enough to cover that part of the point that actually does the cutting?

That way, if it turns out to not be helpful, you can grind the face back to 45 in a few moments?

Best

Rod

 

[Peter_M]

Dave,
That is what I used on cast iron, a standard 116 Lindsay universal point, I dubbed the point. Experiment with speed and stroke, seams like slowing down makes for nicer cuts in brittle metal.

Peter