The first customer set of KS shoulder planes

When I injured my shoulder last Decemeber, I was 96% of the way through a set of KS shoulder planes. I was on a roll, I was totally in the zone and it all came to a grinding halt. All that remained were the chamfers on the smallest size - the KS.5.

I walked past that plane for months, wondering and waiting for the day that I could get back to working on it. I knew I wasn’t ready most of the time, but there was a moment where frustration (and my shoulder) started to feel like the time was getting close.

There were 2 issues I was wrestling with. The first is that chamfers do not leave much margin for error - mistakes at the chamfer stage are catastrophic. The other issue is working steel is much harder than working with bronze.

I started working on a customers plane - a bronze sided XSNo.4 (the one in the previous post). This gave me the confidence to know that I was well enough to do the chamfering, so I slowly started into it. It went very well, and in a few days, was applying the first coat of french polish - an exciting stage of any plane build.

I was also really worried that the chamfers on the last plane would not match the first 4. I knew my pace and method of work had changed significantly and wasn’t sure if that would factor in or not. I am thankful that pace and strength didn’t seem to change anything. It was a real thrill to be able to unite the full set of completed planes.

This set is infilled with quarter sawn Desert Ironwood - a stunning material that has become very popular. I will post some photos of these along side my own African Blackwood prototype set for comparison. There is a link under pricing (to the right) that gives the specs as well as some photos of the Blackwood set.

 

The top view shows the effects of scaling the set.