A pair of rabbet planes under construction

 

With Ann's family finally on their way home, and major work to the house finished it's finally time to getting back to puttering around in the shop.

 

One more quick coment on 1800's construction practice. The house was built at the point in time where traditional timber frame construction started to morph into more modern ballon framing. The problem was that at the time there were no lumber yards, and 2 x 4s as we know them didn't exist. So where ever a builder needed to frame in a window opening, he sent someone out to the wood lot behind the house and had another small spruce tree cut down and nailed in place as a stud. So as the window project went on, David our contractor would say things like, "that's the third spruce tree we've come across today." So much for 1800's best practice.

 

The planes on the bench are two rabbet planes built to a Caleb James pattern, and two matched pairs of side-rounding molding planes.

Thank you for stopping by.