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Showing posts from October, 2020

My Favorite Hand Plane

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  As far as we know now, the story begins in Roman times. The Romans themselves said the plane was invented by the Greeks, but so far no Greek planes have been found. W.L. Goodman, “The Story of the Plane”. My favorite plane is a Lie-Nielsen (L-N) No.62 low angle jack plane that I purchased from L-N earlier this year.  I bought it because I was tired of fighting tough wood - e.g., wenge, ebony, ziricote - with a vintage Stanley No.5 jack plane set up with a toothing iron and that got swapped out for smoothing iron to finish the work.  I ordered the No.62 with two extra irons - a toothing iron and a regular iron. The toothing iron makes short work of reducing wood down to desired thicknesses, the other iron got a 35 degree angle on it, which, if  sharpened it well enough, will produce a glassy smooth finish. It took a while to make the decision to purchase this plane, the price of the plane and extra irons was a bit of an issue, but after I saw that most used L-N tools sell for the same

What's On My Workbench - 8 String "Brahms" Classical Guitar, Spruce/Ziricote

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The Brahms guitar is a relatively new design developed by guitarist Paul Galbraith and the late luthier David Rubio.  It is a unique instrument in that it is played in the cello position, while increasing the range with an additional treble and bass string.  The guitar features fanned frets and a cello style endpin. Erez Perelman, luthier I am making my second "Brahms" classical guitar, this is a custom order for a young guitarist/composer who asked that I make the guitar from Engelmann spruce and ziricote. I made and used an external mold to make this guitar, I am not completely sold on the idea of an external mold, other than holding the guitar firmly in place when I sanded the sides to accept the back, I don't see any advantage over an open work board. And it is heavy! Perhaps if I had started out making guitars with an external mold I might have a different opinion. The top is bracing with a five strut pattern over a bridge patch and I added a Yuris Zeltin style float