Brese 875 Smoother--Inlaying the Diamonds

Ron sent me some gold mother pearl diamonds from DePaule Supply for inlaying the front bun and top of the tote. It's a bit daring I suppose to inlay these after pinning the infills, since ruining the infills at this point would be a big loss. I wasn't worried though. These little diamonds are pretty easy to inlay.

I glued each diamond to the ebony with a tiny dot of CA glue.



Before I tacked the one for the tote, I lap sanded the underside of it to match the curve of the horn.



Then I scribed around the diamonds with my new favorite straight scribing tool, my Kerf Kadet marking knife.







I routed out the majority of the mortise with a 3/32" upcut spiral bit.



Then I routed as close as I dare to the scribe line with a 1/32" upcut end mill.



I used the scribe line to register my chisel, a prototype model from Czeck Edge, and pared the remaining waste away.





The OptiVisor makes close work a breeze.



I like to burnish the edges of the mortise to guarantee a tight fit.



Epoxy mixed with fine ebony dust for the glue.







One thing I don't read much about in plane making or plane fettling is flattening the bevel side of the iron. In a bevel up plane, this is the part of the iron that rests against the bed, and should be dead flat. Ron's irons are precision ground, so the lapping process is fairly easy. I spent less than ten minutes getting the iron flat. I haven't confirmed with Ron how far back to flatten, but preliminary tests with this iron and the plane (yes, it's done as I write this!) are yielding incredible results.

I won't write about fitting the lever cap in this plane, since the process is that same as the small smoother I did last year. Info on that can be found here.

Here's a little sneak peek of how this plane is performing. Better pics to follow...