Left hand shooting plane.

[Stewie Simpson]

I have some boxes up shortly for some newly acquired honing stones. A good time to clean up and resharpen this left hand shooting plane I made about 7 years ago. It didn't quite turn out the way I had initially intended with the wedge abutments, but it was my 1st attempt at a skew mouth. The skew angle from memory is 12*. The blade is bedded at 38*, a primary hollow grind of 25*, and a secondary bevel of 28*. The brass sole and skates were all brass pinned. I still need to make up a new shooting board. The old unit was past its best, and got turfed out during the last workshop clean up.

Stewie;

[george wilson]

Cool use of brass for runners. And the base,too. But more unique for runners.

Though I'm left handed,I have had to learn to do some things right handed,like play right handed guitar. I am SO GLAD I had the good sense to do that! Otherwise my choices of instruments would have been VERY limited,especially in the 50's,when I don't think they made any left handed guitars.

For some reason,I would feel compelled to use a RIGHT HAND shooting board and plane. Otherwise,I am a true left hander. Left eyed,etc.. I know people whose eye is oriented the wrong way for their handedness. They have a hard time shooting a rifle.

[Mike Cherry]

Cool use of brass for runners. And the base,too. But more unique for runners.

Though I'm left handed,I have had to learn to do some things right handed,like play right handed guitar. I am SO GLAD I had the good sense to do that! Otherwise my choices of instruments would have been VERY limited,especially in the 50's,when I don't think they made any left handed guitars.

For some reason,I would feel compelled to use a RIGHT HAND shooting board and plane. Otherwise,I am a true left hander. Left eyed,etc.. I know people whose eye is oriented the wrong way for their handedness. They have a hard time shooting a rifle.

George, one of the first things I learned when starting to do some carving was that becoming capable with your offhand is a huge benefit so that you need not reposition your work. Learning to do that has carried over to regular bench chisel work, planing, and to some degree sawing. I could only hope to be the craftsman that you and others on this board are but it is helpful stuff.

Stewie , that's a cool shooting plane and I hope ya get her running again!

[Jim Koepke]

Nice Plane Stewie.

I am somewhat ambidextrous, equally bad with both hands.

Actually recently when my right shoulder was bothering me I found out I saw straighter left handed. Go figure.

jtk

[Patrick Chase]

Wow, that is an amazing plane. As George says, the runners are both practical and an uncommonly neat design element. The geometry also sounds really nice - I wish L-N had gone low-angle like that on their 51 instead of copying Stanley.

[Jim Belair]

Beautiful. I especially like the detail on the knobs and wedge.

[Luke Dupont]

Absolutely beautiful plane. I also like the detail on the knobs and wedge.

[Luke Dupont]

Cool use of brass for runners. And the base,too. But more unique for runners.

Though I'm left handed,I have had to learn to do some things right handed,like play right handed guitar. I am SO GLAD I had the good sense to do that! Otherwise my choices of instruments would have been VERY limited,especially in the 50's,when I don't think they made any left handed guitars.

For some reason,I would feel compelled to use a RIGHT HAND shooting board and plane. Otherwise,I am a true left hander. Left eyed,etc.. I know people whose eye is oriented the wrong way for their handedness. They have a hard time shooting a rifle.

I think we are all whatever hand-dominance we choose (consciously, or unconsciously) to be.

The thing is, muscle memory doesn't transfer. Even as a righty, you can learn something with your left hand and be unable to perform the same task with your right hand until / unless you relearn it all. I think the idea that we are right or left brained, or right or left eye dominant is just a perception; we get good at using one hand, and neglect our other because we go to our perceived "good hand."

My point is; you did the smart thing. My advice to people is just to develop skill in whichever hand you want to be able to use, and don't let the initial frustration of being incompetent with a given hand discourage you; you were that way as a beginner in your "good" hand too, you just didn't have a frame of reference to compare to.

I've heard shooting instructors who advocate learning to shoot with both hands and both eyes in regards to defensive hand-gun use, or at least to learn to shoot with the same eye and hand, and to disregard conceptions of "eye-dominance." I trained this way myself, and while it was difficult at first, it became quite natural as anything does with practice.

[steven c newman]

Used to be in a Tuesday night Bowling League. One year, the right shoulder had locked up.....so, I had a Bowling average for the Left arm as well as the right. Left was about 30 pins lower than the right, but I threw one whale of a hook from the left. Sometimes, even laying it down right by the lefthand gutter, it just barely hit the pocket. Lots of "New York" strikes. footwork took a bit of practizing, as well. 5 step from either side, different start foot.

[Stewie Simpson]

The following is the right hand shooting board plane I made. Its fitted with an 1 1/4" wide single blade for use on thinner end grain stock. The folded 90* brass sole was done without the use of a bending machine, then brass pinned to the main body of the plane. The blade bed is 38*, 25* primary, and a 28* secondary bevel.

Stewie;

[Derek Cohen]

That's a very nice plane, Stewie. Well done!

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Brian Holcombe]

Beautiful work!

[Stewie Simpson]

Thanks Brian; the mortising out was done using traditional single block construction. The wood is Merbau (kwila), a naturally heavy and oily timber, high in natural tannin's. An iron oxide stain was then used to interact with those tannin's to ebonize the appearance of the timber. The patterning was done using a mix of gun stock checkering tools and impression stamps common for leatherwork.

Stewie;

[Luke Dupont]

Thanks Brian; the mortising out was done using traditional single block construction. The wood is Merbau (kwila), a naturally heavy and oily timber, high in natural tannin's. An iron oxide stain was then used to interact with those tannin's to ebonize the appearance of the timber. The patterning was done using a mix of gun stock checkering tools and impression stamps common for leatherwork.

Stewie;

This is some of the most thorough and refined work that I've seen. Very inspiring.

I notice that the iron is tapered, getting fatter near the cutting edge. Does this offer any benefit in particular, or was it just a method of making efficient use of materials on vintage irons?

[Patrick Chase]

The thing is, muscle memory doesn't transfer. Even as a righty, you can learn something with your left hand and be unable to perform the same task with your right hand until / unless you relearn it all. I think the idea that we are right or left brained, or right or left eye dominant is just a perception; we get good at using one hand, and neglect our other because we go to our perceived "good hand."

Wow, that's some seriously old-school thinking.

Back in the day we (society) decided that lefties were willfully rebelling, and forced them to "repent and retrain" on more or less that basis, sometimes using fairly draconian methods. With the advent of FMRI it's become pretty well established that left-handedness is correlated to real differences in brain lateralization, so the theory that you can make yourself anything you want is questionable.