Monday, March 18, 2013

Oar Making Planes

Hi Folks
Earlier in the year we completed a commission for Glasgow's "Museum of Transport". It was to duplicate a set of nine planes that were used to make oars. Each plane varied in size and they all had convex soles, curved in both directions, to allow them to carry out their specialised tasks. We copied them extremely accurately from the originals, using the same kind of irons  - some had block plane irons, others cut down bench plane irons and other had offcuts of saw blades fashioned into blades. One thing we did not copy was the many years of patina and wear on the originals but hopefully with a little use our replicas will soon acquire  a patina of their own.


In the meantime things have been extremely busy here at the workshop - it's very exciting to see demand growing for wooden planes! We have two new models to add to the website in the coming month and I have just completed converting a large delivery of quartersawn English Beech into many, many plane sized billets and put them on the conditioning shelves.
Now it's back to the 'bench!

Cheers
Philly