While making the mortise, it seems that every little mistake, every stray chisel strike, ends up in a wider mouth. The mouth is now about 3-4 mm wide, good enough for a jack plane, but because I tried very hard to keep it in check, it is a little dissapointing.
Here's a picture into the throat of the plane after cutting the abutments (saw and chisel work).
Next up was making and fitting the wedge. I got myself some nice quartersawn wood. It was a bit of a puzzle how I could cut the wedge on the table saw. In the end I think it would have been a lot easier and safer to do it with a handsaw! Here you can see how the fingers of the wedge fit nice and tight all the way down. I marked where the hump of the capiron is with a red permant marker, so I could mark the wedge fingers from there with a pencil. That is where they end up, making them longer would only create a shaving trap.
A very nice little job is making the handle. I have of course some experience in handle making after finishing a couple of saws. As a template I used a picture of some old English saw I found on the internet. Draw it on the wood and used forstner bits in the corners. Then cutting the rest with a bowsaw.
Next up is squaring the blanc with rasps. I never reach total 100% squareness, but close is good enough in this instance.
And then, marking the contours with pencil and start shaping with rasps and a scraper. I want to avoid sandpaper as much as possible in this plane build, so after scraping I grabbed a piece of wood from the bin and burnished the wood. It happens to be an old piece of pine with a heavy wax coat and I think I rubbed some of that wax on the wood too. It took a nice shine very quickly. I really like this finish. It certainly is not perfect, you can still see contours of the scraper work.
I hope to finish this plane this week.
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