Good day all:
I am awaiting one of Lasse Hilbrandt's 46mm irons in the mail, as well as a piece of African Blackwood and a Red River Gum burl with which to make a wooden smoother. I wanted a coffin smoother, and the more I thought about the design, I thought why not put a bun like a Norris. That led to making the wood body look like a Norris smoother, but made from wood. The African Blackwood is well dense enough to play around with the shape. The whole thing ends up being wood anyway, so there's really no difference other than the cutaway on the sides.
Attached, hopefully, is an image showing what I have in mind. This design was made using a very high-tech program called "Schweizer Sketchup," which uses a central brain connected to moving devices which grasp a pencil and use various alignment tools to create the image. In other words- I drew it by hand. :-)
Please give your feedback. The bun will be morticed in so that the front of the plane it extends down to about 1/4" from the bottom of the plane. What I like about this design is I can cut the angles on the bun and "tote" (do you still call that a tote?), glue them in, and use that angle to reference my chisel against for chopping the rest of the opening. Hopefully that makes sense.
WoodNorris1.JPGWoodNorris2.JPG