Winter is here in Wisconsin, albeit a month early. Fortunately planing boards and chopping firewood has been keeping me toasty. I’ve been working on a order for some Roubo-style workbenches for a local school–the same place I built the arcade for. If I wanted to feel like a factory worker on the production floor I could make the parts for all the benches at the same time. But I don’t like to work that way. I make each piece individually. Today, I am flattening the bottom of a bench top–by hand.
Could I use a power planer to do this? Yup. But that would be loud, dusty, and far less enjoyable. I am reminded about a line I heard once about wearing shoes: If you always wear shoes, the world is paved in shoe leather (or sneaker rubber, or whatever). All wood feels the same if its just being run through a machine. I want to experience the wood. Rather than annoying dusty dust, here is want a hand plane produces:
Awesome stuff.
Jon Proniewski 