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.

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.