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John Moseley & Sons

Moseley & Simpson?

One of the most-read posts on Hackney Tools is about the life of tool maker John Moseley.
A reader of the blog got in touch recently about a pair of mortice chisels he had been given and the name stamp in ‘Moseley & Simpson’. I wondered if anyone might know more about this partnership, as I don’t unfortunately.
moseley-simpson-2
moseley-simpson-1
If you have any info, please post it here in the comments section, it would be interesting to know when and where Mr.Simpson got involved.

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John Moseley & Sons Moulding planes Planes

That’s a big one!

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Hollows & Rounds John Moseley & Sons Moulding planes Practical techniques Snipe bill

Making your own moulding planes

Jeff Murray, a reader of the blog from Greenwood, Indiana got in touch about John Moseley moulding planes. Moseley planes are also a favourite of mine. They are very well-made 19thc planes with sharp boxing and a nice wedges. Jeff talked about using the Moseley design when he made his own half-set. The pic below shows Jeff’s plane (top) with one of his vintage Moseley’s below.
moulding plane comparison
I’ve read quite a bit about the techniques involved in making your own hollows and rounds, but Jeff makes it sound very easy. I’m sure it’s not quite easy as this, but here are some notes he sent to me. Jeff reckons on around $8 apiece for making a moulding plane and about 5 hours to make them himself, instead of $200+ to buy them new.

moulding planes
I started out to make maybe 3 sets of hollows and rounds, but ended up making a half set minus the #4 hollow of John Moseley and 2 snipes bill boxed with osage orange. I don’t recommend anyone use osage for boxing because it is really gnarly, but it did succumb to sandpaper. I am planning on making a few side beads and a set of side rounds. I have a number of irons that I got off of eBay, but I’m not reluctant to make my own irons, which I did during the construction of the half set of moulding planes.
It isn’t as difficult as one might imagine to make a moulding plane. I bought a DVD by Tod Herrli on making moulding planes, however he does a few things that require extra work. For instance, he marks all of his layout lines on the beech blank and cuts half of them off only to redraw them. There are a few other things that he does that are a bit unusual also. I got a few pointers from his DVDS, but ended up with using my own methods when they made more sense.

The moulding planes were really neat to make especially since I made 11 of the irons from scratch using an angle grinder. Believe me, my angle grinding skills greatly improvided by doing this. I cut out the blanks and tapered them with the angle grinder and then used files to finish them. The total cost of materials was $144 to make 17 moulding planes and 2 snipes bills. The hardest thing to make on the moulding plane is the tapered mortise and that isn’t all that difficult. In fact that is probably 75% of the work. The “blacksmithing” isn’t that difficult either because you are working with relatively small parts. My blacksmithing consists of a propane torch, a metal container of motor oil to harden the irons and finally a toaster oven or regular oven to temper.

(The pics below show the progress of a pair of side snipes.)
rebate plane for boxing
inserting boxing
trimming boxing
shaping snipe bills
You might notice that the boxing is protruding out both ends of the plane. This feature allows me to do a final trimming to make the plane a “perfect length”. The boxing that I used was Osage Orange, native to North America, a very hard, bright orange wood and capable of receiving a fine polish and with a speciic gravity of 773,6 kg/m3. I used this because I just happened some and thought that it would make a good boxing material. However, I don’t recommend it because the grain twisted and turns and is hard to machine. It does however behave when sanded.  The final edge was 0.015 inches (0.38 mm) and using 1000 grit sandpaper, wrapped around a dowel, I was able to produce a mirror like surface.

In the video by Todd Herrli, he advocates using laminated stock for the body of the planes and if you do some research, you will find that this isn’t recommended. The theory is that the wood won’t properly breathe because the glue layer impedes the moisture and this can cause cracking or splitting.  So I stayed with the quarter sawn solid beech that has been the tried and true method for a couple of centuries or so.  As I said before, he also marks his layout lines on his stock and then planes half of them off just to then redo them, which seems like a waste of time in my opinion. Todd’s video does have some good information about making the irons, from shaping to the hardening and tempering process.

grinding blade
I thought that might like to see the picture is my high precision jig for tapering the iron. You can see that this scrap piece of lumber was previously used as a backer board for drilling through holes and probably a couple of other things. This is one of the irons that I cut out of a piece of tool steel with a cut off wheel on my angle grinder and then changed to a grinding wheel to taper the tang. I used water to occasionally cool the steel when it started to discolor.  “Bluing” of the iron is of no consequence at this point in the process, that can all be taken out when it is hand filed to the final shape.

(Note from Admin.Caleb james is also giving away some very nice wooden plane plans for free. Click here.)

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John Moseley & Sons

‘Moseley & Son’ Steel Bullnose Plane For Sale

IMG_6816_forblog
Nice little Moseley steel bullnose for sale over on the For Sale page. Get in touch if you would like to buy. Now Sold!

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John Moseley & Sons Moulding planes

John Moseley ‘bead cluster’ plane

Moseley Cluster Bead _4
Moseley Cluster Bead _1
Moseley Cluster Bead _2
Moseley Cluster Bead _3
Very pleased to have sourced this rare plane. Now I finally have it in my hand, it’s very interesting indeed. It’s a ‘bead cluster’, or ‘cluster bead’, depending on who you’re talking to. The iron cuts a series of stepped rounds, piled on top of one another, probably best shown by this picture I found on the web.
I’m already a fan of John Moseley, largely due to the London connection, but also because his planes are so precise and well-made. I would like to know more about how and where the moulding this plane produces is used. I figure in fine casework certainly. Perhaps over a shutting joint, where one might have used a rebated astragal or similar, this would give an elegant alternative?
Any info gratefully received. At the price I paid for this, I won’t be posting any pictures of the plane in use, which goes totally against my philosophy of tools having to be used. Ho-hum, you make rules, you break them.

I buy old, good quality woodworking tools. If you have any tools you would like to sell, please get in touch using the contact form on the home page.