My first shop-made plane. This was a fun project, and resulted in a tool that I will be able to enjoy using. The inspiration to get this done came from my friend Woodguy1975, who was holding a class on making these planes.



The plane is made of purpleheart. The dimensions are about 11″ long, 2¼” wide, 2-3/8″ tall. I started off with a block of 8/4 purpleheart, about 12″ long, jointed and planed down to 2-5/8″ wide by 2″ tall. I felt that the height would not be tall enough to be comfortable for me, so I laminated another piece of 3/8″ thick purpleheart onto that. Once I was happy with the basic dimensions, I cut and prepared the pieces as outlined in David Marks’ “European Hand-Plane” episode.



The iron is custom made from rarebear, who uses good quality thick tool steel. This is by far the thickest plane iron I have worked with. It does not have a chip breaker, but it works just fine without one. This actually simplified construction of the plane, since I did not have to cut out a relief for a chip breaker screw. I finished up the plane by placing the brass pin stock, making the wedge, and doing the final shaping as part of Woodguy’s plane-making class.