Thursday, October 29, 2009

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 58ยบ, 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.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow very impressed with you plane. I collect them myself and I would love to have one like yours in my collection. Very humbling. Please check out my blog when you have the chance.

jpnworkshop.blogspot.com