Bici Italia

Back in Italy, back to real cheese, real food, and real switchbacks!

And a trip to the mecca of cyclists, the Madonna del Ghisallo...

Sometimes you eat the bar...and sometimes the bar eats you...

Recently I finished up a bar for a local bakery that got me back to work with my 5 1/2 and my Spiers smoother. Good tools make a big difference and the juxtaposition between the drywall and construction work I was also doing for the bakery made this project quite a relief. The whole bar including legs was done in 3 days, so it was quite a rush job. Not my absolute best work, but not my worst either. It's been over a year since I've been able to do a big project like this and it was awfully nice to get back to doing some real woodworking.

The wood is a 2" slab of cherry with a couple of butterfly joints to hold the cracks together. Cherry is a nice wood to work with, sort of like walnut. In an ideal world I would have liked about two weeks to put everything together, but for the timeframe I think it came out pretty well.

Two New Planes

Two new planes are now in my arsenal! One purchased and one homemade:

The Lee Valley small rebate plane is my first Veritas tool and I'm pretty happy with it so far. Nice adjustments and comfortable in the hand with an O1 blade for easy sharpening!

The second is a small chamfer plane made from quartered beech. The guide fence is built into the bottom of the plane and without a second adjustable guide fence requires a careful approach, something that isn't always a bad thing. I saw this style in a Japanese plane and liked the simplicity. Japanese tools have a wonderful simplicity that demands respect and understanding, care and attention to get the best results out of them. They serve as a stark contrast to the western planes like the Veritas where features abound and adjustments are just a thumbscrew away. I guess it's something like the difference between an artist and a technician. It's funny because in the cycling world Shimano is the technician's choice, while Campagnolo is for the artists...