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Restoring an Early Spiers Smoothing Plane

Restoring an Early Spiers Smoothing Plane

The first time someone showed me a photo of an infill handplane, it was bewilderment at first sight. “That’s a handplane?” I asked. All I could see were a bunch of odd lumps of wood and some steel. This was years before both the Internet and modern toolmakers made this form of tool a common sight in workshops again. After years of looking at other people’s infill planes, I became […]

The post Restoring an Early Spiers Smoothing Plane appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

 

Tuning Bench Planes at Vesper World Headquarters

Tuning Bench Planes at Vesper World Headquarters

Honestly, I’ve tuned so many dang metal planes in my lifetime that I’ll never worry about having enough iron in my diet. They might mine my carcass for the mineral when I’m dead. For me, it has always been an analog process: Do it by hand with inexpensive supplies. Today I spent the day tuning … Read more »

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Exploit the Weakness of the Tree

Exploit the Weakness of the Tree

In hand-tool woodworking, brains almost always trump brawn. For example, when I need to remove a lot of material from a localized area, I need to think like a tree assassin and exploit its weaknesses. Think about it for a minute: Trees are much stronger in the vertical axis than they are in the horizontal. Continue reading»
 

Cut Rabbets by Hand

Cut Rabbets by Hand

Even if I have an entire shop filled with power equipment, I like to cut my rabbets by hand. Why? It’s fast and fun. Once you master a rabbet plane or a moving fillister plane, your router table and table saw will get a lot less use. To push you along this path, I wrote Continue reading»