I’ve been reading about wooden hand planes lately (as opposed to hand planes made of metal that plane wood) and decided to just do a quick experiment to see what I thought.

I started with a square piece of rosewood about 2” thick, ripped a piece 2.5” wide, then ripped 1/4” slab from each side. That leaves the center piece which gets cut into half to create the two bevels you see in the center below. Then you glue it all back together. It’s a quick way to remove all the wood from the center.

The four pins you can see are 1/16” brass rod. It’s just what I had on the shelf. I cut them long and then used my 6” grinder to flush them to the wood. The center pin is a 1/4” oak dowel. The plane blade is from a $5 cheapie plane from Harbor Freight and the wooden wedge on top of it is cut from the scrap from the center.

I didn’t fuss over it, you can see the blade marks and I just eyeballed the pin placement. For a very fast first try I like it, tomorrow I’ve got to widen the mouth where the blade sticks out, too tight right now to take a good shaving. Then we’ll see.