Logan Cabinet Shoppe

It's not often that I can honestly say I find a gloatable tool. In my mind, in order to be gloatable, the tool needs to meet 2 criteria. It needs to be a special find at a special price. It can be a new tool or old tool but if it doesn't meet both of these criteria, I don't consider it gloatable (i.e. buying a new LN plane at full retail price is not a gloatable purchase in my mind; now if you get one for $50, that's another story).

For awhile now, the only smooth plane in my tool kit has been this one that I made by laminating together two pieces of purpleheart. The two piece design came from John Wheelan's book "Making Traditional Wooden Planes", which I highly recommend if you are into wooden planes. The wedge abutments can be sawn in this arrangement and the design is easier for a first time plane builder to make than a traditional one piece design. Plus, you don't need to find 12/4 stock for the two piece design. You can make do with 6/4. The wedge in this plane is made from a piece of African mahogany. The iron is a double iron made for wooden planes that I purchased from Garrett Wade many years ago (they no longer offer them) and is about 1/8" thick. It's not a bad iron but when I build a new, more traditional plane to replace this one, it will be a single iron version with a laid steel iron from Galoot Tools.

Don't get me wrong, the plane performs fantastically and with it's iron bedded at 50 degrees (York pitch) there are few domestic hardwoods this plane can't handle. It's just not as traditional as I would really like. Prior to building this plane, I used a Stanley type 11 #3 and a Stanley type 9 #4 as my smoothers. However, when I made the switch to all wooden planes and sold off all of my metal planes, my home made smoother became my only smoother. This really didn't bother me because the smoother really isn't used that often in my shop. My fore and try planes are used much more often than the smoother so I was willing to wait for just the right smoother before pulling the trigger on one. I considered the Clark & Williams smoother but my budget just won't allow it. So not needing a new plane, I waited until the perfect deal arrived..

Well, the day finally arrived. While perusing Ebay as I do every now and again, I came upon a smoother that caught my eye. The picture (there was only one) was not terribly good, but there were a few things that jumped out at me that led me to believe that this plane had seen very little use in it's lifetime. The first thing was the crispness of the chamfers. There was very little dubbing of the crisp lines, the wedge looked unmarred and the plane overall looked very clean. The second thing that caught my eye was the height  of the plane. Most old wooden planes are pretty worn and have been reflattened a few times so the plane becomes shorter. This one looked unusually tall in the picture, which to me again meant very little use and possibly a good mouth. Unfortunately from the one picture, I couldn't see the mouth but I decided to take a chance.

Well, I'm glad I did because I was right on all accounts. So, for the princely sum of $11 plus shipping, I got my hands on a basically unused, common pitch smoother. When I got the plane I was very happy at what I found. The bed was basically untouched and still had some soot marks left on it (at least that's what they appear to be to me) where the iron was fitted to the bed (and fit very well I might add). The wedge was pristine with nary a mark. The iron had just a slight hint of mushrooming which was easily removed with a little filing and the iron and cap iron had zero pitting and only extremely minor surface rust. Once cleaned up the iron and cap iron looked brand new. You can actually still see the black left on the iron from the hardening and tempering process.

The plane was shipped with the iron and wedge removed from the plane (which I greatly appreciated) so the last thing I needed to do was put the iron and wedge in and check the mouth. As tight as it was the day it was manufactured. No mouth patch necessary on this baby. I cleaned up the mild dirt and dust (there really wasn't much) with some turpentine and gave her a coat of linseed oil as some parts looked a little dry. It's pretty obvious that this plane has sat indoors on a shelf for a long time. This does bother me some because this sometimes means that the iron was heat treated improperly and won't hold an edge. We'll see about that in a little bit after the oil dries. I'll sharpen it up using my normal hollow grind to about 25 degrees and hone on oil stones method and see what she can do. Even if the iron is heat treated improperly, I think I would send it out to be redone because this plane is so nice that I think it will easily become my go to smoother for normal use. Not a bad find at all.

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