Classic Infill Smoother
Handled or unhandled, 45° - 50° bedding, brass or steel sides, and a dense hardwood infill. These planes range from 6" - 8" long.
Planes
Longer Workhorse
A longer sole for truing panels and jointing edges. The core pattern is a 14" plane, but longer can be made.
Rabbets and Relatives
Rabbet planes and their cousins. These range from coachmaker-style rabbets to oddball joinery planes that fall outside the regular patterns.
Available now
No planes are currently available.
Work in progress
S-04 Smoothing Plane
Current step: Bedding Design Shell fabrication Infill fitting Bedding Final assembly Fit & finish
- Metal (shell)
- Mild Steel
- Stuffing wood
- Black Chacate
- Metal (lever cap)
- 303 Stainless
R-02 Small Rabbet – stainless / persimmon
Current step: Shell fabrication Design Shell fabrication Infill fitting Bedding Final assembly Fit & finish
- Metal (shell)
- 304 Stainless
- Stuffing wood
- Persimmon
- Blade retention
- Wedge-retained blade.
S-02 Smoothing Plane Prototype
Current step: Design Design Shell fabrication Infill fitting Bedding Final assembly Fit & finish
- Metal (shell)
- Brass
- Stuffing wood
- TBD.
- Metal (lever cap)
- Brass
Process
My planes are built along traditional British infill lines: metal shells mechanically joined at the edges with traditional dovetails, solid wood infills, and thick irons. Although my designs begin as close copies of antiques, the aim is never to recreate a museum piece. I take full advantage of advances in technique, tooling, and metalurgy over the last 150 years, and have updated the designs to make the most of them where it makes sense.
CAD drawings allow me to iterate designs rapidly and lock in the profile, mouth position, and mechanical clearances before any metal is cut. From these drawings, depending on the project, I can create shop drawings for reference at the bench, or send parts out for rough cutting on a laser or CNC.
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Design
Proportions, mouth location, and clearances are finalized digitally. -
Shell fabrication
Cut, fit, dovetail, and peen a rigid shell; establish the mouth. -
Infill fitting
Infill blocks are trued, scribed, and fitted tight to the metal. -
Bedding
Tune the bed and iron contact for stable support and fine shavings. -
Final assembly
Permanent peening, pin dressing, and interior finishing. -
Fit & finish
Lapping, polishing, sharpening, and final test cuts.
Why an infill?
You do not need an infill handplane. A well-tuned modern bench plane from Lie-Nielsen or Veritas will leave an excellent surface for a fraction of the cost. An infill isn’t competing in that market. These planes occupy the space between sculpture and instrument: built slowly, by hand, with the kind of material choices and joinery that only make sense when the object itself is the point. The metalwork, the wood selection, the dovetailing, the bedding, none of it is optimized for efficiency or volume.
That an infill also happens to be an excellent working plane is a bonus. Many put them to daily use; others treat them as functional art, ready for work whenever the mood strikes. Either approach is valid. Like a work of sculpture, an infill handplane has little to do with need and more to do with the joy that having and using it brings the owner.
About
This is a one-person workshop focused on one-off or very small-batch infill handplanes. I do not take commissions. Planes are all built on spec and posted when they are done. I expect to finish a handful of planes a year; they’ll be listed under ‘Available now’ when ready.
