Deneb Puchalski sent me an invitation some months back to attend the Lee-Nielsen open house up in Maine next month as a guest demonstrator, and I decided to take the invite as an opportunity to make a couple of infills with something like a traditional knob in front, in place of the "gasping fish mouth" bun that has graced or, as some would have it, defaced my planes in the past.
I had just made a fish mouth No. 3 in Gabon ebony, and I had on hand the No. 3 in Honduran rosewood that won an honorable mention ribbon in the "Design in Wood" competition at Del Mar a year ago. So I thought: Why not make two more No. 3 planes with knobs, one in ebony and one in rosewood, and see how folks react at the L-N open house?
Here are the two in ebony:
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And the two in rosewood:
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As I worked on these planes, I had something in mind that Raney Nelson told me some years back, not long after I had begun making infills. "At some point," he said, "you'll find that it's all in the details." All along, my goal has been to make every new plane better than the last - not just better at the margin but substantially better. With these planes, that meant cutting no corners with the details.
Nick Obermeier, who makes replacement totes and buns for Stanley planes, helped me think my way through half a dozen different designs for the knobs and turned what you see in the photos. I spent days and days working the mouths and bedding the totes until I couldn't get a .0015 feeler gauge behind the irons. I bought a Grade A Starrett surface plate on which I flattened the bases of the planes and the backs of the irons, which I sharpened to near "scary sharp" condition. I took my time finishing the wood - many, many coats of wet-sanded Tried and True Danish Oil, followed by four coats of Tru Oil brought to a high polish with rottenstone and baby oil, all of it topped off which four applications of Mylands wax.
Does all this amount to overkill? I don't think so. The planes aren't perfect; I can see in the details what to do with the next plane I make.
But they're pretty good planes, and if proof is in the pudding, take a look at the surface one of the planes produced on some tough black locust, seen in glancing light:
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Here's the same plane working the board against the grain:
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The Lee-Nielsen open house takes place July 8-9 in Warren, Maine. If you're in that neck of the woods, find me and introduce yourself.
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