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Wood spokeshave sizes

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Wood spokeshave sizes

#1

Wood spokeshave sizes

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>Part of the inheritance from my revered uncle, who gathered quite a few tools, is a small woodie spokeshave, 8" long. Most of the woodie shaves I've seen or seen pictures of are about 10", the size of most metal shaves, and 2" makes quite a difference in size. This one looks like a toy, but it's stamped "[something I can't read]/Sheffield/Made in England" on one handle and [something I can't read but it looks like an address and has what appears to the the number 53] on the other.

Could this have been from a child's toolkit, or did the woodie shaves come in sizes, like metal bench planes, and this is the shave equivalent of a Bailey No. 2?

Re: Wood spokeshave sizes

#2

Re: Wood spokeshave sizes

joel

>THe Marples 1909 catalog lists wooden joiner's spokeshaves in blade widths from 1" - 5"

they do not give the overall length of the sizes 1 1/2- 5" but the very small sizes 1" - 1 1/2 have an overall length of 4-7"

(note the catalog lists 14 blade widths in 11 handle permutations. )

Re: Wood spokeshave sizes

#3

FWIW...

Scott in Douglassville, PA

>Dave's Shaves lists a few sizes and numbers, but I've no idea (and kinda doubt) that his numbering is congruent with any convention from years ago. I was looking into this, too, and will be interested in what others say...

Re: Wood spokeshave sizes

#4

Re: Wood spokeshave sizes

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>It's really rather impressive to find out how diverse the offerings were, back when cholesterol powered most of the work done once the lumber had left the mill. There's a hint of it when you look at the Kent pattern, American pattern, etc., axes, but I imagine the attachments to particular spokeshave patterns and so on were as passionate and nearly as irrational as the (showing my age here) Ford/Chevy, Homelite/McCulloch, LN/LV debates of today.

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