Tool of the Month March 2016

Welcome to the March addition of Tool of the Month, this month it's the spokeshave!

The spokeshave has been in use in one form or another for centuries, it's design is descended from the traditional drawknife. Originally these were used by bodgers, coopers and wheelwrights to shape curved parts of chairs, barrels and cart wheels.

The spokeshave is still widely used today for chair making, furniture and joinery. There are a variety of different designs in production including spokeshaves for special purposes (some of these will feature in a future blog post). The most common spokeshaves are the two in the photographs above and below, with flat and round soles.

In the above photo you can see the soles of the spokeshaves, the round sole on the left and flat on the right.

Round soled spokeshaves are used to shape inside curves (concave) whereas flat soles are used on convex curves and straight pieces of timber such as Windsor chair spindles and arrow shafts.

They require a sharp blade and careful set up to avoid chatter whilst cutting into the wood. For someone new to the tool a flat soled spokeshave is a good starting point!

In the above photo I have been using a round soled spokeshave made by Canadian company Veritas, to clean up curved details on two laminated oak arms for a Morris chair.

The completed chair can be seen below.
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Thats all for March, look out for next month's Tool of the Month in April!