The next tool I want to show off is this little chip carved smoothing plane. I saw this in an auction and had to have it. Normally, I strongly avoid purchases like this. Buying too much for myself sucks the money out of the business and collecting tools that I don’t plan on using is the kind of behavior I normally mock (and is what ultimately makes this business worthwhile).
However, no matter who bought this plane, it was never going to see wood again. To me, personalized functional tools are the height of hand tools. The ultimate pushback against the industrialized production mentality that robbed both woodworking tools and furniture of their souls.
I am not sure what this is made of, mahogany is my guess. It’s about 10″ long, has a 1-3/4″ single iron. You can’t quite tell in my photos, so I’ve added one from the auctioneer’s catalog, but it has a radiused sole. The style is Continental European, which is not my area (Anglo-American), so I find it hard to date this one, my guess is the late 1800s.
