I'm rubbish

Yet again it's been 3 months since my last post,I really do suck at keeping a journal!

It's been a busy 3 months,along with the usual earrings,cufflinks & pendants I've made a replacement electrical component for my father in laws old Rolls Royce using a piece of copper tubing (free),a sandwich board (all materials scavenged from skips & the roadside,well,apart from the glue & panel pins)for my artist friend Deborah Cameron,she paints the most amazing seascapes,http://deborahcameron.com/,started work on a pair of Viking shoes & made a few more custom tools.

This little smoothing plane has to be my favourite tool so far.She's 130mm longs by 51mm wide with a blade width of 34mm.She is constructed primarily from African Blackwood,a stable timber as hard as bone that glues to itself with little or no seam & is capable of taking a mirror finish,my favourite wood by some margin.The wedge is curly Sycamore with a ring of Blackwood,Sycamore,Black Walnut,Turquoise resin & finally beef bone holding in a 13mm Lapis Lazuli cabochon.

Her mouth is quite wide at the moment,1.5mm with the bevel down,4mm with the bevel up (I modeled her on Karl Holteys 11-SA & although she is a little shorter the blade & bed geometry are the same).This will close up once I get round to replacing the 2mm thick stanley block plane blade with a 3.5-4mm 0-1 carbon steel blade of my own creation.I'm not too bothered at the minute as I've only had to plane some very sedate Oak & Mahogany & these particular timbers seem to cooperate without a fuss producing some very woolly shavings.I'm sure once I have to plane some African Padauk or pippy Yew I'll be looking for that smaller mouth.

I've made a couple of planes before but none of them turned out as well as this one,it seems to me that Blackwood is the wood of choice when planemaking.

You may have noticed I am refering to this plane as she?I tend to name my favourite tools/machines & I've named this little beauty Charlize...