Making a Nankin Kanna / Japanese Spokeshave... My next project?

[Luke Dupont]

Hey guys.

Earlier this week, I just took the iron out of one of my baby planes, an 18mm "mame kanna", and tried making a dai for it out of soft wood, purely as a learning experiment.

Well, surprisingly, that little dai came out great, and I've been using that plane to put the finishing touches on the workbench that I'm building.

This has given me a bit of confidence to try making all kinds of dai for my Japanese plane irons. And, I'm in need of a spokeshave! So I think my next project will be a proper Nankin-Kanna.

I have some Ash (Japanese Tamo) laying around that should work. Close enough to Japanese White Oak, I think.

Being that I'm really busy, I don't know when I'll be able to get on this project and post pictures, and it may take a back seat to finishing my bench, but I'll be following these videos for anyone interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He5KYIIdkoY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffKraRHVXTw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13I3q-v0S9k

Preferably, I'd like to find an iron around 30-35mm for this build. Maybe I can find one on Yahoo Auctions Japan, which seems to have a lot of tools listed.
I have no idea where people in Japan go to buy their plane irons, to be honest.
Or maybe I'll just start with the 42mm plane iron that I already have. Or make a tiny 18mm one as a prototype using the aforementioned baby kanna, though that's quite a bit too small for much of what I want to do.

[Howard Pollack]

Thanks for these. I've been thinking about doing this myself... -Howard

[Christopher Charles]

Luke,

Thanks for posting those videos and glad you're making progress on a bench.

Best,
Chris