[Note: this step should not be needed with a new Japanese plane, but you never know. And It is an important part of sharpening and maintenance as you use your plane.] Now that the plane blade is in better shape, we can turn to sharpening. The first thing to check with sharpening a Japanese plane blade is the hollow on the back. The back of the blade is where the hard steel layer is. When sharpening, if we were to work the entire back, that would be a real chore because of the hardness of the steel. The hollow is there to make this much easier, as only the flat part behind the cutting edge nee ..read more

cosmonautroger: Godzilla, Columbo ..read more

Back in 2010 I put together a series of posts on how to set up a Japanese plane. I’ve been told that these posts were good, but there are aspects of Japanese plane set up that I didn’t cover back then, and other aspects that have changed a bit over time. I figured if Taylor Swift can rerecord her catalog, I could revisit Japanese plane set up. This time, I’m starting with a used plane instead of a new one. The set up process will be the same with the exception of one step that may or may not be needed for a used plane. I’ll be sure to point that out when we get there. Here’s our plane. I found ..read more

One of the things that resulted from the COVID pandemic was that I wound up teaching the OCIA course for our church (long story). The students got their sacraments at the Easter Vigil Mass, and I decided to make crucifixes for them as a gift. This should be a pretty straightforward project — mill out pieces of wood for the upright and crosspiece portions of the cross, cut a lap joint, glue, finish, and attach the corpus and INRI plaque. But it is a truism in woodworking that the smaller projects are the hardest to do, because you see every detail. And for this crucifix, there was a detail that ..read more

Happy Easter from the King of the Monsters and Giant Cypress ..read more

I picked up this Japanese plane from eBay for a completely different reason. When it arrived, I was a bit surprised by the body of the plane, as it was made in a way that I had heard about, but never had seen in person. I didn’t anticipate this, because of low-res pictures on the eBay listing. The body of this plane was not a single piece of wood, as usual. Instead, it was laminated together from multiple pieces of wood. Here’s a closeup of the top. Here’s the bottom of the plane. And a view from the end of the plane. Taking a close look at the side, there’s evidence of machine-made finger ..read more

julietwiskey1: triangleofdog: giantcypress: I teach the OCIA class at St. Bartholomew, our church. For this year’s group, I made some pens as gifts. The pen blanks are all some sort of unidentified Brazilian hardwood. The first step in making these pens is to cut the pen blanks into two pieces, and I used my dozuki for that. I forgot that you can’t use Japanese saws on hardwoods, much less tropical species. Lovely, yes, hardwood is brutal on Japanese saws…. Is that because Japanese saws tend to have high teeth per inch counts or for some other reason? @julietwiskey1 — this a running jo ..read more

I teach the OCIA class at St. Bartholomew, our church. For this year’s group, I made some pens as gifts. The pen blanks are all some sort of unidentified Brazilian hardwood. The first step in making these pens is to cut the pen blanks into two pieces, and I used my dozuki for that. I forgot that you can’t use Japanese saws on hardwoods, much less tropical species ..read more

Three of Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji → On the occasion of a complete set of Katsushika Hokusai’s “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” being offered for auction by Christie’s, Joel Moskowitz offers some great information and insights on them, including this tidbit: The complete set actually consists of 46 prints because Hokusai added 10 prints to the series. If you’re thinking of adding the series to your own walls, bear in mind that Christie’s has set the estimate between 5 to 7 million dollars. So if I win the lottery, I know what I’ll be shopping for ..read more

Here’s an Asian who rocks. And maybe moonwalks, too. Happy Friday ..read more