Wooden molding/rabbet/dado plane value

[Pam Niedermayer]

...Patrick Leach and the guy that runs hyperkitten are good as well; they just don't have quite the depth of experience in this one particular area...

At least Stanley Moss checks out the quality of the blades he sells with the bodies, or appears to, I never bought a tool from Stanley that didn't work.

Pam

[Chris Vandiver]

At least Stanley Moss checks out the quality of the blades he sells with the bodies, or appears to, I never bought a tool from Stanley that didn't work.

Pam

Small correction Pam, it's Sanford(Sandy) Moss who has the Sydnas Sloot website for vintage tools(among other things). Great to do business with, I might add!

[Pam Niedermayer]

Small correction Pam, it's Sanford(Sandy) Moss who has the Sydnas Sloot website for vintage tools(among other things). Great to do business with, I might add!

Thanks, Chris, at least I got the first initial right. Anyhow, for the very few old western tools in which I'm interested these days (think it's been 10 years since I bought from Sandy), the UK vendors seem to have better selection and prices (Murland and Stephens, e.g.), even with the horrendous shipping costs. But I'm usually looking for boxwood handled tools, partial collecting, partial using.

Pam

[Mark Wyatt]

Okay, three side questions on this topic.

(1) Suppose my sawyer has a good candidate beech log and is willing to cut some of it to my specifications. For making molding planes, how would I want the wood cut: quarter, rift, flat?
(2) If I want to box the molding profile and boxwood is not available, what would be recommended for the boxing?
(3) If I found a candidate apple log, how would I instruct my sawyer to cut this for saw handles, plane handles, etc?

[David Weaver]

(1) Quarter, absolutely as dead close to quarter as possible
(2) this came up a couple of months ago, persimmon is what modern planemakers are using
(3) quarter again, though a little bit of rift can look nice, not too far off of quarter for really classy handles, especially as poorly as apple behaves while drying. It *needs* to be all heart, which is very difficult to find in an apple log.

If you have a large log that is on the order of 20" in diameter and clear and with good consistent color, you will have no trouble selling anything you don't want. I don't know if it needs to be that large to get clear heart around 5-6" in width (between the pith and the sapwood), but I would be surprised if it was much less. If you could only get 3 1/2 or 4", it could be used for moulding plane blanks, though the apple I've worked is harder than beech despite janka ratings that are around on the internet. It feels much nicer air dried than the kiln dried stuff I've seen.