Yesterday it showed up. A 45 degree coffin smoother made of padouk with an
ipe sole.

It is slightly wider than I thought it would be - having mostly used metal
planes of this size in the past - but is not so large that it is hard to
grip and unlike a steel plane, there are many different ways to hold it that
are comfortable.

I took it out of the box and put it to work on the wood that I had lying
around. It left a glass smooth finish on some hard maple I had. Created
tissue thin translucent shavings from some stringy douglas fir, doing well
both with and against the grain. Yes, you can read through them. Handled the
endgrain on some redwood fairly well and in a brief experiment on some ipe
managed to produce something nearly resembling shavings but also a fair
amount of brown dust. I was not in a hurry to dull the blade playing with
scrap ipe so I gave it only a couple of strokes. My initial impressions of
how the plane felt were reinforced here and it felt comfortable holding it
both pushing and pulling. Using it one-handed to chamfer or ease the edge is
not a problem as you can grip it easily right above where the blade contacts
the wood and it remains well balanced.

In construction the plane is quite solid with all the parts fitting together
perfectly. I was impressed with how solidly the iron was fixed in place and
how precisely the mouth block fit. The sole is flat and smooth. I just
judged it by eye, but it is clearly flat enough to produce fine work.
Adjustment was simple and predictable. Better than any of the old wooden
planes I have - though they may be suffering from old age and perhaps a bit
of rust on the blades. Steve also supplies a sheet of instructions for
caring for and tuning the plane as needed. With those instructions anyone
should be able to keep their plane working well for quite a long time.

It seems that most of the finishing efforts are directed at where they
matter most - at the working surfaces. There is room for finer finishing on
some of the other parts of the plane, but I doubt that I'd be willing to pay
extra for that. It is just a plane afterall.

I did go over the grinding on the back end of the iron to take off a
slightly sharp edge and even polished it up a little. I figure that sooner
or later my knuckles are going to bang against it so it is worth rounding it
over a bit. The polishing is admittedly cosmetic (though aren't shiny
surfaces less likely to rust and get dusty?) but I think it helps set off
the red color of the padouk wood.

Thanks Steve for making such things. I can't wait to use it on my next
project.

-Jack