TomD
Yeah, you could do it that way. I like my K planes to be longer, I like to get both hands on them fully. To some extent I don't see a lot of benefit to overly short planes. But he did make some of them short. One thing though is that I don't particularly hunger after planes made of tropical woods. When I first got head over heels with hand planes it was from reading his books back when they were published. I therefore felt a good plane should be solid rosewood, or something of the sort. I made Andaman Padauk planes. Even later when I got into Japanese planes in the early 80s, at that time, quite a few people were pushing Macassar Ebony versions as the best. So it was a year or two before I got into more normal woods, and I really didn't want to let go. But since then my favorite woods have been white oak, or maple, or when I could get them the Japanese oaks. So I wouldn't let a few small pieces of wood drive my plane design unless I really wanted that size of plane.