Wooden Smoothing Plane

My latest project is a wood smoothing plane (#4). (

See article here.

). The article describes the project as moderately difficult so Ithought it would be a good project over Christmas. I plan to use Purple Heart as the main wood with Maple accents.

I decided to pick this project when I received a Plane Hammer from Lee Valley for Christmas. Since you really cannot use it for anything else I figured I better go a head and make one. I had ordered the Plane Blade some time ago when I first read this article. I thought that this would be a great way to get into some planes without having to put out $200 each. (I love Lee Valley, but they are some hard on the wallet). I have since discovered that you can buy well made wood planes for about the same cost of the blade. So, this may be a project I do not repeat. Never the less I am looking forward to it.

Looks pretty straight forward... Famous last words