Hand Plane Blog

Steel gauge plate and brass, rosewood, shop-carved bronze lever cap, recycled half inch fine-pitch screw inlaid with sterling silver and abalone (paua in New Zealand). HNT Gordon iron, with a secondary screw to prevent the unbacked bevel-down iron from dropping through and chopping off toes when the cap is loosened! This is probably the last (maybe second last) plane to be made this southern hemisphere summer (at 4th May), as the days shorten and the shop gets cold! It set out to be an unhandled smoother, but at 3.6lbs was too heavy for unhandled use, so I chopped off some rosewood, ploughed-in a groove, and set in a brass and rosewood spine/tang to act as a rear tote. Looks sort of aggressive, 'sporty' is a term used on Knots, and is real fun to use. The lever cap screw and sculpted cap act as a default front grip, in a surpisingly comfortable way, and it produces transparent full-width shavings with minimal push. These un-adjustered tools are very quick to set up - I do it by eye, not using a hammer (hate the idea of whacking, even politely, into tools made with high standards of finish).