High Angle Smoother and a Little Bit of Music

I've been holding onto a Hock blade that I bought a couple weeks ago and I finally got it into a plane. This is a high angle smoother, bedded at about 58º, and is used for cleaning up those really nasty grains you find around knots and places with a lot of figure.

The sole of the plane is jatoba, with a quartered maple centre, and ziricote sides. I had never worked with ziricote before and to say it's a strange wood would be an understatement. It's got the most amazing grain that seems to weave in and out and it just turns into a cloud of dust when you cut it with a saw.

This plane didn't come out quite right the first few times...but after sticking to it I'm quite happy with the final results.

I also just finished up a music stand. It features some great birsdeye and curly maple that you have to see to believe.

The angle adjustment gave me a little problem, but in the end I figured out that I needed to add some felt in there to make it work right. Building things you've never built before is a neat challenge...a good way to stretch your brain and make some mistakes.

The height adjustment was also a bit of a head scratcher, but in the end it came out great, both visually and functionally.

Show Pictures

Sam...

George...

...and James...

So the show went real well last night. My friend Peter did the three great drawings of Sam Maloof, George Nakashima, and James Krenov that you can see above and I had some new pieces as well. The table below came from my friend Mohrgan's tree and is a fabulous bookmatched set from a crotch of his Maple tree.

I'm getting my head around the butterfly joint and I'm getting confident in making them nice and tight. I used some Jatoba for the butterflies and I really like the colour match with the maple. Speaking of colour, the Padauk desk seen below came out really well.

Padauk is a wood most people don't know about and it's funny how many people asked me how I stained the top to get it that colour. Stain is not really something I use very often (or ever really) and it's funny to see the perplexed look on peoples' faces when I tell them that that's what the real colour is. So all in all a good night, and a special thanks to all of you who made it out!

Show On Friday

Come on down Friday for a great show featuring my friend Peter and me.

Maple

I'm always amazed by maple. For one tree to grow with such variation just sort of blows my mind. Here is some curly and birdseye maple that I'm using in a music stand, it should turn out great (as long as I sharpen my planes)...

...and a better picture of a walnut bench I've been working on. This piece was the centre slab from the tree and was basically cracked all the way down the slab. I put the crack back together and got to include some butterfly joints to boot.

Show Details

So here's the official poster for the show I'm putting together with my friend Peter...

If you're free and can make it out it should be a good time. Like I say, at the very least there will be cake! That's a good thing!

Now for a completely different topic...On a recommendation I recently picked up a router plane and I'd have to say I'm liking it a lot so far. Sort of a weird tool that keeps those noisy power tools on the shelf. I used it for the first time to clean out the bottom of the mortises for some butterfly joints and it worked beautifully.

I'm also working on a bench to go with the walnut table I just finished. I'm half done the dovetails, just one more end to go, but I like the way things are turning out.