After all the metalwork on the shell of a plane, it’s always a real treat to get to the point of shaping the wood for the infill. After all, love of woodworking is how I found myself doing this to begin with…
Here’s a sampling of the tools I use to shape the stuffing for infills. From left to right, there is an Auriou cabinet rasp, a pair of Gramercy tools rasps, a Heller vixen pattern file, a Bill Carter style chisel which has been hardened and blunted, the Benchcrafted Skraper (the coolest tool I never knew I needed til I got it), and a Lie Nielsen bed float.
The Vixen pattern file (they’re also called Mill tooth files sometimes) is a fantastic tool for hard exotics. It’s essentially a float-like tool, which is to say it’s row upon row of scrapers. While a good hand-stitched rasp is unparalleled in sculpting wood free-form, and can hog off stock very quickly – they leave a lot of witness marks on the wood. A vixen, or float, however, is capable of leaving nearly a nearly finish-ready surface.