Sometime ago I built to a bed for our 18-year-old son, he requested "something tropical kind of Asian”. To save on lumber costs I built the bed frame out of Poplar which I stained dark and added some accents out of what the lumberyard called zebrawood.
My wife asked for a matching nightstand and I was apprehensive because the zebrawood had dramatically rowed grain and the tearout while planing the bed was horrendous.
I use metal hand planes (mostly restored Stanley’s with a couple LV and LN’s). Motivated by Lee’s "Woodie build off thread", I built the Woodies you see below using the least expensive tropical hardwoods I could find in the off cut barrel and following Derek Cohen’s tutorial and extensive coaching from David Weaver about blades/chip breakers.
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The 14” planes are jacks, one set up between a scrub plane and a jack for preliminary surfacing of rough stock, the two smaller planes are set up as smoothers with 50° bed angles.
Never having built any planes I really wasn't expecting much, but I was very pleasantly surprised with how well they worked -- especially the smoothers. In particular, the lighter colored Goncalo Alves smoother has a blue steel Japanese Tsunesaburo blade from Stu’s "Tools from Japan" with a LN chipbreaker. I mostly have A2 Hock blades in my Stanley’s and have always liked them, but I couldn't be more impressed with the Japanese blade I got from Stu -- it takes an extremely keen edge and I will definitely use them again.
I built the nightstand using only my shop built Woodies (and an old molding plane for the profile on the top) and I was able to plane the zebrawood with zero tear out and got a great surface. Even planing cross grain the zebrawood breadboard ends and the Poplar top came off without a hitch.
There are some pictures of the nightstand below; the poplar is dyed and the finish is shellac with a wiping varnish over the top, with ebony pull. The contrast in the woods is a little much for my taste, but my wife and son like it so that's good with me.
Primary reason for the post is to thank the Creekers for the encouragement to try building woodies. I'm really surprised they have become my favorites, not because I built them, but they really do work well!
All the best, Mike
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