I was given a very odd wooden plane a couple of years ago.
it's small and high angle, and the blade is fairly thin steel, but
takes a good edge. the body is nicely carved with some tasty ornament.
the mouth is large at the sole but narrows down in the throat, so it
packs up quickly with shavings. the toe has a couple of grips carved
into it but no obvious place to apply the mallet for setting and
adjusting the cutter. the heel, OTOH does.
the body of the plane is something hard, dense and light colored-
beech or hornbeam or something like that- with a few layers of dark
stain and or age. the wedge obviously went missing some time back and
someone had made an attempt at a replacement. the attampt at a wedge
was in mahogany- a decent piece of mahogany, but still too soft. I
spent some time (probably too much, really) trying to make it work. no
matter how well I fit it I can't seem to keep it from chattering and
dropping the wedge. I'll have to keep my eye out for the right bit of
something harder.
it's not a plane that I need too badly- I have several metal body
block planes that work just fine and are about the same size. none of
them are as high angle as this mystery woodie though and frankly it's
a cool enough thing that I do want to get it up and running.


That high angle is for very hard and figured woods, Amazon stuff.
Slow and very hard work, especially when readjusting the blade by
hand for the next deeper cut.
Alex