Recently Completed Planes and The Masters

Lately most of my post have been about woodworking projects. The clock and the kitchen island I have in process are just spare time pursuits. Plane making is ongoing and dominates the regular working hours in the shop.

Today I decided  to post about two very recently completed planes. A shooting board plane and a 650-55 "J" style smoothing plane.

This is a version of the 10-238SBP, actually it's an 11-38SBPW. I decided to put a 2.25" wide iron in this plane and in order to keep good visual proportions I made the plane 11" long in lieu of the standard 10 1/4". I like this plane a lot. These features, plus the Macassar Ebony infill added even more mass to a plane that already possessed quite a bit.

Because this customer already has a Winter Smoother with Macassar ebony and a patina'd finish on the brass parts I applied the patina'd finish on the brass parts of this plane as well.

I was so taken with this plane's performance that I may adopt this configuration as the standard infill configuration Shooting Plane. We'll see.

I've not made a 650-55 "J" style plane in quite a while. The wood in this plane is from a Walnut crotch that someone gave me at a Lie-Nielsen event in Atlanta several years ago. It was dry and ready to use when time for making this plane came around.

 If more figured domestic woods like this were commonly available I would probably use less of the exotic species.

I enjoyed watching the Masters Golf tournament last weekend. The Masters is a southern tradition like no other. The winner, Bubba Watson is a UGA graduate. If you live in the south and know about the interstate school rivalry between UGA and Georgia Tech, you would understand that this is actually quite a funny circumstance.

In jokes and jabs that Georgia Tech students and alumni tell about UGA people the subject is almost always referred to as "Bubba". So to have a UGA graduate leading the Masters on Saturday night it just couldn't be a better circumstance to have his actual name be "Bubba".

Matt Kuchar is a Georgia Tech graduate and he was on the leader board as well after play on Saturday was finished. He's seems such a refreshing and nice young man I certainly would have enjoyed seeing him win the most prestigous tournament in golf. He plays well at Augusta National so maybe there's a Green Jacket in his future. Of course if I could have hypothetically picked one golfer to win the the Masters this year it would have been Fred Couples. I was pulling for the "Old Guy" in the field.

We have a close friend that is a graduate of Georgia Tech. She often speaks about the fact that women are in the minority at Ga. Tech. The joke among the girls that attend Ga. Tech is "the odds are good, however the goods are odd", referring to the studious nature of the male students at Ga. tech.

Of course this is all in good fun and this was hardly a college golf tournament. Julie and I had the pleasure of attending the Masters in 1986, the year Jack Nicklaus won his final Masters tournament. It was an experience I will never forget.

Ron