Mongo - my foreplane

I don't always buy S4S wood.  Even when I do buy S4S wood, it isn't always in the thickness that I need.  Thought the more I woodwork, the more I try to buy in the thickness I need as getting boards to thickness is something I don't enjoy doing.  About after a year of woodworking I decided it might be handy to have a foreplane to hog off lots of wood.  My foreplane creation I have labeled as Mongo (anyone get the reference?).  It is ugly but it is lovely in how well it works.

I started with one of those wood plane kits you can get from Lee Valley.  At the time, money was tight so I worked with scraps I had around.  I laminated up some oak for the body and laminated up some pine to make the handles.  For the actual construction I followed the instructions.  They were more than adequate.  Since the wood I was using wasn't really oversized, I wanted to make the resawn sides glue back on easily.  As such, I drilled some alignment holes before I sawed off the sides.

For shaping the handle, I just traced the handle from one of my handplanes.  The knob shape I just winged it.  I didn't have a lot of tools at the time.  I had a 4 in 1 rasp my dad had given me 25 years ago.  No files.  I'm not even sure if I had a gouge at the time (I think I did).  Anyway with the 4 in 1 rasp, sandpaper, and maybe a gouge I made my handle and knob.  Though they look quite primitive, it feels good.  Both handle and knob have big deep tennons and I just mortised into the body to install them.

I put an 8" or so radius on the blade using my dad's grinder (another tool I don't have even to this day that would be handy).  I just free hand sharpen the blade.  Though this is a somewhat ugly tool, it works very well at the task of removing stock.  It has come in handy on a number of projects.

I enjoyed building this tool and have the parts to do a few other tool builds: kit from Hock for a spokeshave & kit from Blackburn tools for a frame resaw.  Not sure when I will get to them but Covid-19 has hit the place where I normally get my dimensioned wood and I'm waiting for an order I placed for the next big project.  These tool builds might happen while I wait.