Single iron wooden plane - fragile wedge tips?

[Scott H]

I'm working on a smoothing plane using traditional construction. It is mostly a test piece since I haven't done this style before. I am about to the point where I need to do the final shaping on the wedge and I'm running into something I'm not totally sure about.

I have the mouth all done and the body all shaped. There is a facet on the bottom part of the abutment that widens out to the widest point of the mouth, I've labeled that facet (A). If I wanted the wedge to follow this same pattern and create a similar break (B) flush with (A), it would basically be tapering to a very fragile point, because it is narrowing both towards the sides and towards the mouth opening. I can't imagine a really fine point like that surviving very long for hard use in the real world. I am also not sure that area of the throat is precisely cut enough to even get it gapless down there.

My current plan is to leave the throat of the plane as is and blunt the wedge like shown in the 2nd picture. There won't be a total continuity with the shape of the abutments but it will hopefully still direct shavings into the center of the mouth area. Is there anything wrong with this or should I consider other options first?

It's a lot less work to make a wedge blunter than pointier so I thought I would ask before I committed to the idea too much.

EDIT: Attached picture of plane for those interested. It is just out of a small cherry turning blank I had sitting around.

 

[mdbuntyn]

Leaving the arms too short will leave the bottom portion of the iron unsupported, & may give you problems with chatter

 

[Scott H]

Leaving the arms too short will leave the bottom portion of the iron unsupported, & may give you problems with chatter

That is true, although I'm not super worried about chatter right now because the wedge is only this far in (it tapers to about 1/8" at the blunt end currently) and I don't seem to be getting chatter... But I guess the wedge will theoretically have less contact w/ the top of the blade and less mass once I'm done with all of the shaping on it. The blade is an 1/8" thick block plane blade which probably helps.

Just a note, I am planning on thinning out the wedge so the fingers do reach deeper than the wedge currently does.

 

[Roy G]

My FIL gave me an old English coffin-sided smoother a long time ago. The wedge in it has the arms tapering down to a very fine point almost.

Roy G

 

[Scott H]

I ended up cutting the wedge as thin as I could get it on the tips. I tried to shape the fingers so they match the abutment profile closely. The tips are maybe in the neighborhood of 1/64" thick at the thinnest point.

Unfortunately in the process I upset my wedge fit so I am now getting distinct chatter on one side, but think I can see where the problem is and hopefully I can get that tuned properly soon.

 

[Scott H]

Thanks everyone. The plane works well now. I think I still need to learn more about smooth feeding at the corners of the mouth for thicker shavings, but since this is a smoothing plane it seems okay.

The wedge is shorter and more oddly shaped than I would like, but I am not to the point of making my own irons so I'm just going with a Lee Valley replacement No. 9-1/2 blade I had on hand for. I think ideally the blade would be another inch or two longer and not have such steeply angled chamfers.

EDIT: Added picture of the mouth, which is not perfectly tight but good enough for me for a first try.