A local master cabinetmaker and friend introduced me to these planes just out of high school (15 or so years ago), and he's been using them since the 70's/80's, encouraging me to make some for myself. I also have a back issue of FWW from about a decade ago with an article on how the Krenov instructors do it, and it's been in my "to do" pile for that long! Well, I'm finally getting to it. And since I glean more from SMC than I ever give back (shame on me!), I thought I would take some pics of this and make a little post about it. Maybe someone will get something out of it. I'm sure this subject has been rehashed enough times. Anyways...

I was thinking I wanted a heavy-ish block plane size to start out with, maybe use for small-parts shooting even, and I had some bloodwood hanging around, pretty heavy stuff. I added a sole of ipe, not so much for wear resistance, since the bloodwood seems pretty tough, but more so to prevent the bloodwood from transferring to lighter woods, which I've seen it do. I'm using a 1-1/4" Finck A-2 Iron assembly. The plane will be around 7" long when finished.

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To make the round tenons for the cross pin I placed the 1/2" square blank in a little piece of pvc pipe and turned it in place against a stop with a small table saw sled. I took little bites at a time so nothing would kick back--fingers were close here after all. I probably took 12 passes to get to 5/16" dia. Next time I'll buy a 5/16" tenon cutter for the drill press. That would be a slick way to do it.

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Ready for gluing.