Saturday, December 29, 2012

Lindsay Lord Two-Handed Plane

As I am writing, the snow is coming down and we are enjoying a slow Saturday at home. I looked at the weather forecasts last night and started to recalibrate any plans for going flyfishing at Kent Narrows, bike riding or other temperature/weather dependent activities. Before settling in, I brought in the back half of the paulownia alaia from the garage. If you recall, I took the front half and made it into a blunt-nosed paipo earlier in the summer - now it's time to work the back half. The first 14-16" is going to be a contemporary hand plane - lots of surface area for guaranteed stoke in crappy East Coast surf. Right now I'm thinking 8" wide, but that will work itself out with the plan shape. The remaining 30" is going to be a 0.4 length to width ratio belly board (smaller than a paipo) equipped with handles. There has been a lot of buzz lately about Lindsay Lord's naval architecture book and the EPS foam boards that have come of it and this chunk of paulownia is going to pretty close to the final shape - blunt nose, fairly straight parallel rails and with a 12" width, plenty of surface area to get on a plane fairly quickly. I'm going with three handles (at least right now), one up front that would work for the right or left hand, and one on each side of the back half of the board for the trailing hand (determined by the direction of travel - turn right and the left hand is the trailer - we'll see when it's time to op test it).

No comments: