Lee Valley/Veritas is at it again

Howdy, and happy gnu year to all you dorkers and dorkettes,

I just checked out the Lee Valley website, and they have a new
spokeshave on their site:
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.asp?page=49142&category=51&abspage=1&ccurrency=2&SID=

It looks like the old Stanley #151 with some improvements (like a
1/8" thick iron and wooden handles). I was lucky enough to get a
chance to test a pre-production model of this thing, and it is a fine
tool. I tried it on some cherry bowl stock so it got a chance to cut
endgrain, face grain, half-and-half, etc. My initial reaction when
seeing the tool was that the mouth seemed a bit to open for my taste
(I'm used to the Veritas low-angle and my Guntershaves where you can
really finetune the openings). But when I put it to use, I found that
it performed extremely well, with basically no tearout and leaving a
fabulous surface. (They say that the production model comes with
shims for closing up the mouth, so it should be easy to set it for
really fine work or heavier stock removal. It also comes with either
a flat or curved bottom.)

It has a very nice heft to it, which I found was useful for certain
cuts (like endgrain), as it tends to hug the workpiece nicely. I used
it both pushing and pulling (as I do with all my shaves), and again
found the heft to be an advantage, especially for pulling as it made
it easier to maintain contact with the work. The blade also held an
edge very nicely.

Finally, having wooden handles is a nice touch. My only gripe
about their low-angle shave is that I don't like the feel of the metal
handles when compared to my own home-made shaves. Wooden handles just
feel better and won't tend to get slippery when I sweat.

I don't plan to give up any of my other shaves, but this one will
definitely be very useful. I picture it as a sort of transitional
tool between a drawknife and my low-angle shave. The thick iron helps
prevent tearout, so I can set it up for a bit heavier cut than the
low-angle shave. The extra mass makes it better suited for slightly
rougher work as well. And it performed extremely well on endgrain,
even though you would expect the low-angle to be better suited for
that (maybe again the mass helped here).

Kudos to LV/Veritas again for their work. If you are a regular
shave-user, I'd definitely recommend you take a serious look at this
tool. Between this shave and their low-angle version, you could meet
most of your needs (very tight inside curves might still need
something like a MF#1 or radiused wooden shave).


Chuck Vance (no affiliation, etc.)