Wake up sissyboy! A planemakers got to be READY! All day, all hellfire night.
Planemaker quits peining at midnight, and wakes up with a file in his teeth at 2 AM!
Planemaker hardens blades barehanded, and quenches ’em with his steely gaze! Then he laps a batch of jointers on the gravel at the front lines of armageddon! In the dark! In the snow! Before Breakfast – which he doesn’t bother to eat because he’s too tough!
When the pirates come stealin rosewood, planemaker brings a Ninja!
.
… that’s why there ain’t a planemaker I know that don’t do speed
– the disembodied spectre of Stewart Spiers, as seen in my subconscious
Yes – that’s right. I am occasionally visited in my sleep by long-dead infill makers (a shocking number of whom look, oddly enough, like some bizarro-world Deneb Puchalski…) Anybody got something to say about that? You think there’s any witty remark you’ll make that my wife hasn’t already gotten off? Hey – give it a shot if you’re so inclined. I’ll wait.
Ready to press on?
‘um…’ you reply.
Good, says I.
Which brings us to other news of a more pertinent variety.
This week – finally – I managed to get the bulk of my ‘proper’ website into place over at daedtoolworks.com. I’m pretty pleased with the stable as it sits now, and when the panel plane on the drawing board now gets hammered out, I’ll be able to take a bit of a break from prototyping for a while.
The miter planes I worked out for WIA in the fall are up on the site:
as are the new DTW coffin smoothers — fresh off the bench, so to speak:
I’m quite pleased overall with both series of planes, but I’m particularly happy to have settled on a design for the smoothers. In designing planes, I work quite a bit to make sure they will reflect my own ‘voice’, if you will — to tread the line of sticking within traditional styles, but still carrying their own distinctive personality. The unhandled coffin is one of the hardest designs to work with, in this respect, as it’s a remarkably simple plane, stylistically. There is very little ornamentation to work with, and there are some fairly tight and well-established design parameters that were basically hashed out by Spiers a couple of centuries ago. In the end, though, I’m pleased with the result of all the drawing and prototyping work. At some point, I’ll add some toted smoothers that run a bit larger, but that’s going to be a bit into the future.
Now that the heavy lifting part of the web-presence is finally done, I’m also going to start updating this blog more regularly again. Up Next: your humble narrator photoshops riverdance outfits onto the entire popular woodworking staff!
Steve Kirincich says
welcome back!
Tico Vogt says
Congratulations, Raney, your planes look great, and I’m looking forward to using them at the NWA show in Saratoga.
Martin says
Congratulations with the new website. Looking forward to see more of those enthousiastic planemaking postings you write.
Steve C says
You’re a twisted man my friend, loving the intro, Raul Duke approves!
The new smoothers look sweet Raney, very nice.
Rob says
The Spiers coffin smoother is to planes what the Porsche 356 is to cars. Hardly a straight line on either. The most ergo plane I’ve held and the car is one I never tire of seeing. Both make me smile. Classic!
I love what you are doing with all of it, and taking the planar lines out of the blades is signature.
Be careful rolling over when sleeping with that file in your teeth!
Bests,
Rob
Blaine says
Love the website, Raney. Loved the planes first.
Gregory Ice says
You’ve redefined smooth for me, Raney.