Juan Hovey
09-27-2014, 12:16 AM
Hey, everyone – Haven’t posted anything lately as I’ve been busy once again refining my designs and production methods, with results you see here.
The plane on the left is a No. 3 pitched at 50 degrees, the one on the right a No. 4 pitched at 45. The infill on both is cocobolo from a large chunk I bought on e-Bay years ago and kept around till I felt ready to do it justice. I’d been working on these planes for six weeks or so and took them to the Woodworking in America show in North Carolina earlier this month.
The irons are A-2 tool steel. For some time I’ve wanted to play around with size and length for my irons, so I made a few myself and had them professionally heat treated. The better idea, I now know, is not to fool with stuff you don't understand; I intend to ask Ron Hock to get a sneck onto my irons.
The board from which I got the shavings, incidentally, is the oldest, driest, toughest oak I've ever seen.
But, you ask, what's with the name, “shorebird planes”?
Well, I set out one fine morning some months back determined to spend the day playing with the shape of my totes. To free the mind, I spent 15 minutes or so studying a photo of one of Ron Brese’s infills with a crown – if that’s what you call it – that seemed to taper off into thin air behind the plane.
It was a lovely thing, to be sure, and I thought: Why not taper the crown upwards it so that it ends up not behind the plane but above it?
A friend smiled when he saw what I had done with this idea and said: You and your wife spend Sunday afternoons on the shore, right?
Right. Sundays on the shore at Dinosaur Park in Shell Beach, California, about 20 minutes north of Santa Maria. Lots of birds there – pelicans, cormorants, gulls of course, goslings, great egrets, you name it. Some days, if you don’t stay upwind of the big rocks where they nest, the stench will curl your nose hair.
Holding my new plane up for me to look at, my friend ran his finger upwards over the back of the tote and then forward across the top of the crown.
Do you recognize the shape? he asked. It’s the head and bill of a shorebird. You probably didn’t know it, but you had the shape in the back of your mind when you made this.
Indeed. A shorebird plane. If something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and flies like a duck, it's a duck - or maybe a gosling with a short beak, or something. Who knows? Whodathunkit, anyway?
297408
The plane on the left is a No. 3 pitched at 50 degrees, the one on the right a No. 4 pitched at 45. The infill on both is cocobolo from a large chunk I bought on e-Bay years ago and kept around till I felt ready to do it justice. I’d been working on these planes for six weeks or so and took them to the Woodworking in America show in North Carolina earlier this month.
The irons are A-2 tool steel. For some time I’ve wanted to play around with size and length for my irons, so I made a few myself and had them professionally heat treated. The better idea, I now know, is not to fool with stuff you don't understand; I intend to ask Ron Hock to get a sneck onto my irons.
The board from which I got the shavings, incidentally, is the oldest, driest, toughest oak I've ever seen.
But, you ask, what's with the name, “shorebird planes”?
Well, I set out one fine morning some months back determined to spend the day playing with the shape of my totes. To free the mind, I spent 15 minutes or so studying a photo of one of Ron Brese’s infills with a crown – if that’s what you call it – that seemed to taper off into thin air behind the plane.
It was a lovely thing, to be sure, and I thought: Why not taper the crown upwards it so that it ends up not behind the plane but above it?
A friend smiled when he saw what I had done with this idea and said: You and your wife spend Sunday afternoons on the shore, right?
Right. Sundays on the shore at Dinosaur Park in Shell Beach, California, about 20 minutes north of Santa Maria. Lots of birds there – pelicans, cormorants, gulls of course, goslings, great egrets, you name it. Some days, if you don’t stay upwind of the big rocks where they nest, the stench will curl your nose hair.
Holding my new plane up for me to look at, my friend ran his finger upwards over the back of the tote and then forward across the top of the crown.
Do you recognize the shape? he asked. It’s the head and bill of a shorebird. You probably didn’t know it, but you had the shape in the back of your mind when you made this.
Indeed. A shorebird plane. If something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and flies like a duck, it's a duck - or maybe a gosling with a short beak, or something. Who knows? Whodathunkit, anyway?
297408