It’s been a busy few weeks with practically no time for woodwork. However, there has been a little progress. Today, I finally got around to milling the two faces of the board that will eventually become the scrub plane. As with the mallet, the plane will be made of European beech. What a pain–gave myself a blister doing it, too. The only thing left to do on the board is hit it with a smoothing plane, but that’s easy.

I still need to draw the thing. I think I’m going to go with at least a 10-inch length so that I have enough room for a tote in the back, but I don’t know how tall it should be, nor do I know how far forward the blade will be, and I don’t even know what design I’ll use for the handle.

Other minor activity is that I’ve finally gotten around to finishing the Winchester saw handle that’s been sitting around for at least a half a year. There are lots of nicks in the handle. I used a smoothing plane to knock out the most superficial of those. A washcoat and a coat of stain (a pigment-colored varnish) is now on. I’ll do another coat of that tomorrow, and probably follow up with a some polyurethane. One of these days, someone tell me why it’s so impossible to pour anything out of a paint can. There has got to be a better way.

Another fix for the junkie arrived from Lee Valley today. This shipment included the high carbon blade for the scrub plane. I don’t know why the HCS blade costs $18 and the A2 blade $38. It’s surprisingly heavy.

Also in the package were a small tote and front knob add-on for my low-angle block plane (a sort of silly extragavance, but that plane is really nifty), and two 4″ 2x slim taper handsaw files.

My waterstones had started to dish a little, so I flattened them with my diamond stone. That was delightfully easy.