I was in a very nice local old tool shop today, and was shown a design of rounder that I had not seen before. I'm talking about the simple "rotary plane" with which you can transform a roughish stick into a nice smooth chair leg, rake handle, etc. The common pattern looks like this:
One disadvantage, if you want to make your own, is that you need a suitable iron that can be clamped down nicely. This one has a specially slotted iron, but home made ones commonly use the iron from a metal spoke shave, which is about the right size to fit in the block.
The shop had just acquired a selection of rounders in various sizes where the wood block was much longer and the iron was a full size plane iron:
Here's a side view
On this one, you can see that the maker cut the bed for the iron wrong and needed to adjust it so that the edge is tangential to the work - he simply added a wedge.
Now, what had occurred to the guy in the shop may well have occurred to anyone reading this who is wondering where to find (a) a nice chunky old plane iron and (b) a thick piece of well-seasoned beech wood. His guess is - and I think he's right - is that these have been cleverly made out of old jack planes!
A new purpose is found, which is much less offensive than turning them into coat hooks or desk lamps or whatever the eBay "upcyclers" are messing about at this week. So, please, don't go destroying good old tools, but for the sad basket cases that have been abused too much to be used as planes, I think this is rather a clever idea!
One disadvantage, if you want to make your own, is that you need a suitable iron that can be clamped down nicely. This one has a specially slotted iron, but home made ones commonly use the iron from a metal spoke shave, which is about the right size to fit in the block.
The shop had just acquired a selection of rounders in various sizes where the wood block was much longer and the iron was a full size plane iron:
Here's a side view
On this one, you can see that the maker cut the bed for the iron wrong and needed to adjust it so that the edge is tangential to the work - he simply added a wedge.
Now, what had occurred to the guy in the shop may well have occurred to anyone reading this who is wondering where to find (a) a nice chunky old plane iron and (b) a thick piece of well-seasoned beech wood. His guess is - and I think he's right - is that these have been cleverly made out of old jack planes!
A new purpose is found, which is much less offensive than turning them into coat hooks or desk lamps or whatever the eBay "upcyclers" are messing about at this week. So, please, don't go destroying good old tools, but for the sad basket cases that have been abused too much to be used as planes, I think this is rather a clever idea!
