Sounds Like Weird
01 April 2006
One of the first things you learn in a woodworking handtool class is how to sharpen. Unfortunately, this turns a lot of people off.
Instead, our teacher asks for experienced volunteers, who come in before the class and sharpen some of the school’s planes, then the newbies get to start with a tuned plane. Great idea!
Anyhow, my planes still aren’t sharp, but at least I have the success of having learned to flatten (and having flattened) one side of a board with an already-working plane.
We did lose one student, who decided to go over to a power tools class. He could not understand why anyone would pay the money for a Lie-Nielsen plane (and god forbid he should learn about any of the modern infill planemaker’s prices), nor could he understand why anyone (::cough:: Anant ::cough::) would ship planes that were miserably unflat.
Thus, a lot of the drudgery of getting one’s tools in shape was distinctly unappealing to him. While I sympathize, it’s something you need to do only once, really.
I’m sure I’ll get the shipping grease off the Record planes pretty quickly, though.