Plane Till

I’m in the midst of moving my workshop from a small basement space to a slightly larger basement space. I posted my saw till previously, and this week I built a plane till for my “users”.

The design is straightforward, although I purposely echoed the saw till as the two tills bookend my wall of tools. The body of the till is poplar, the resting board is mahogany (plywood), and the separators are lacewood. The little rest on the side for my burnisher is mahogany. The till is finished with a couple of coats of BLO and hangs on a French cleat built into the top stringer. Everything is dovetailed and with the exception of the grooves for the resting boards was done by hand. The planes are captured with 3 or 4 rare earth magnets and seem to be secure. (If not I’ll add a heel board.) The front stringer was left unglued, and I might come back at some point and decorate it with a carving.

The planes are a Stanley #5, a Veritas smoother, a Stanley #4, and a Grosz #4 that I’ve converted to a scrub plane. The shelf below currently holds a router plane and a shoulder plane.

(I’ve learned, btw, that I can make a French cleat using a drawknife very quickly!)