Reply To: Round Bottom Plane
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This is just an idea, for what it’s worth (this would be cheating, and probably a hideous butchery of an existing wooden plane) you could (possibly!!) take an old wooden smoothing plane, remove the blade, put it in your vice upside down, reshape the sole with various tools (spokeshave, etc?), with a curve in both directions (along and across the plane), then reinsert the blade so it just protrudes, even at the centre, trace the curve onto the blade with a pencil, then remove the blade and reshape it to that line on a grinder or belt sander…….. but that might be a complete cheat, lol. It’s just an idea that crossed my mind briefly!
Yes, possibly a hideous waste of an old hand plane.
Potential problems you might encounter? I’m guessing the mouth of the plane might open up too far at the sides if you did this (the same way old planes did when the soles were reflattened too often. So you might end up with a very chattery blade and lots of tearout. I’m not sure. I’ll personally just wait to watch Paul’s video and use an old blade probably!