A wee little block plane in a set of Footprint chisels.

Hello all,

I just had a real surprise. Years ago I bought Jenn a set of 4 Footprint chisels when we were renovating our last house. The set came with a two sided ‘sharpening stone’ and a wee little plane about 3 1/2 inches long by a bout 1 inch broad and about the same high. Cute I thought they’ve included a little toy plane and thought no more about it…I thought it would be as useful as the sharpening stones that were included about a 3 grit and something even coarser :-) Any way today I was puttering around the shop sharpening chisels and playing with my two #4s trying to get them up to snuff and usable (I am now pretty convinced that one blade is rusted and pitted beyond usability, but that is another post) when I spotted this little plane. I thought why not…so I quickly lapped the bottom on the sheets of emery cloth I was using to flatten the backs of the plane blades and surprisingly the bottom was fairly flat. So a few quick strokes mainly to polish off the bottom and I thought may as well pop the blade out and give it a few licks as well. Well surprisingly enough the metal gleamed like it was a real blade… so now I am thinking I’m going to put an edge on this little guy (its just a bit bigger than two postage stamps). Sure enough it polishes up nice on the emery cloth and now I am thinking this can’t really be as good as it starting to look. So I reassemble this wee little plane and look for something to try it out on. Grab a bit of spruce that is close to hand and try chamfering the edge…nice even curls come out…okay now to try on the flat…nice even curls…wow I was impressed. The little toy plane actually works. I tried it on the end grain of spruce and sure enough it did an admirable job… A happy surprise!

-- ....next big purchase is wood for the next project, Mark