Making My Bed – Planes for Planing Larger Tenons
I spent yet another day working against time but relaxed in my work. The pieces are slowly but surely coming together and I feel the contentment as each joints seats against its shouldered tenons. I find myself singing different songs and then stopping to stare at the shavings in ebony, oak and Sapele. I love the way my tools seem at rest in nests and the shavings deepen. Sometimes I clean off my bench but most times not until a particular aspect of work is done. Students seem always to put tools in neat rows after each task and that seems to me an impractical habit. My knives remain unfolded because I need them second by second. I like searching the shavings for a tool. Imagine such a thing; as chisels disappear I discover them deploy them to task. These are the things I like. I like the shavings around my ankles too – deep shavings that at one time took me all day to keep on top of. That’s when I was the only apprentice to eight men who planed wood all day.
My frieze is made up of some figured sapele and ebony. I like the concept of fielded panels skirted this way and created this type of frieze and book-matched panel when I designed the White House pieces in 2008/9.
I love to plane ebony and see its beauty emerge in glistening glory.
This the Woden version of the #78. I wasn’t too sure about the knob on the front when I first acquired it but on the large tenons it works really well. You can buy these stocky well-de planes quite cheaply via eBay.co.uk usually and it does have the twin bars that makes it rock-solid parallel too.
Hello Paul, I’m looking to getting a block plane for Xmas and I was wondering what do you think of the Stanley sweetheart planes, not the old ones the new ones? Cheers
It’s more and more difficult to know exactly the why’s and wherefores of tools come from these days. My experience of Stanley today is how disconnected the leaders and movers and shakers of Stanley are from their products, their manufacturers and so on. These people are living off of the Stanley reputation and not for what they produce today. This is especially true of tools and especially the specialised tools such as hand tools. I have found them lacking in quality and I trust very little of tools they have manufactured in their name in Mexico. I would be glad to test them out more thoroughly but do not feel I should buy them for that purpose. I would rather go for an older Stanley or Record. on eBay. They are cheaper and good quality and will last a lifetime even as a secondhand tool.
oh okay cheers