I want to introduce you to something that I've used all my woodworking life
50 years of working with spoke shaves but wooden spoke shaves are one of the
most wonderful tools and I don't want anybody to ever dismiss them as being
practical for today's woodworkers so I want to introduce a couple of them to
you I've got three or four here that I've made with adjusters on,
automatic easily wingnut then you've got some that you tap and set
with a hammer here and here very fast very effective not old-fashioned at all
they work really well but what I want to do is just to give you some idea of what
you can do with them I'm going to just pop these out here like this
just to get this down to a place where I can use one of the spokeshaves and show you
how effective they are so there I am I've just got down to near to my depth
I'm creating an art on a piece of furniture and they have cut this on a
bandsaw that would be great but you alternately come to a point where the
finish is not good enough do you sand it do you spokeshave it let me give you an
idea here of what these are particularly good at so if I'm using this one this
one is one that I made it's got one piece of steel, one piece of wood four
screws and it really hits the spot so I've got beautiful smooth here so this
would take care of your saw marks your sanding marks and look how it works
and it is so smooth you get almost zero friction when you're using this
spokeshave and you end up with a perfect result if you want to take the re saw
you take it off simple like this look at this this is so exciting so simple so
that's what that does it's a wonderful tool and all the spokeshaves will give
you the same results here's a piece of wood where I put a cove in here this
could be the end of a dresser or something like that again see that all
the marks the undulation is taken out and you can microadjust these so simply
you know you think that you have to have adjustment but not necessarily so see
this spokeshave here is one of the earliest Spokeshaves it's got two tangs
protruding through the body of the spokeshave it's got the blade here you
can align this as you might think it is like a plane you tap this tap this
eyeball through from one side to the other to see if it's even but most of
these Spokeshaves were actually used in an uneven state so you tap this end and
what you get when you put the spokeshave to the wood here here I've got a heavy
cut when I go to this side I've got a very light pass so I can work in between
so if I wanted to put a heavy chamfer on here like this on a table leg or
something like that I take the bulk of it off on the heavy set side then I go
to this side and I refine it and that's the same for all these folks a heavy set
one side shallow set the other infinite variability all the way through from
heavy to very fine if you want a stock jump but let's say we wanted to put a
stop Chamfer on here this is something that we don't do too often these days
that means that the chamfer here to here stops here what we do with this
take your spokeshave again which one shall I use I'll use this one we go in
here we take it down then we go in how can you see this and I
don't think you can let me see I go in this side and then I've got my stop
chamfer so it comes in gradually here we just Inc those edges and so you can see
that's how you create a stop chamfer that's another technique what about if
you wanted to make a walking stick or a dowel or something like that here's
another wonderful method let me go to which one this one this is one I've made
this is an adjustable one and you adjust this in a different way so you pull
this at 45 degrees work down the length now often you'll have one that has a
heavy set like I might take this one that we had before with the heavy set
take off that corner and then refine that with another spoke shape so you can
do that too so you work around here work around the
corners and then not very long you have this nice radius so this could be a ball
note on a stair tread it could be the windowsill with a round over on the edge
but if you go to all four corners keep turning it round and you take off that
corner just like I said look at this it's just peels away like peeling
potatoes get the bulk of it off with a heavy set and then refine it with the
finest spoke shapes so I've already ahead of you because you're still looking for
your router bits and I'm already halfway there there's my ball nose to the stair
tread the ball nose for the windowsill a little bit of scraping a little bit of
sanding and that's what I would do if you don't want to go to that much
trouble of making a spokeshave or buying one you can just take a piece of 3/4
inch by one inch one and a half inch piece of wood and put a blade into it
make your own blade very simple very quick and add that to it because you
don't actually need the shaping this would be the poor man spoke
shave it's one I've made and I would use this without hesitation on anything that
I'm working on it's just when you're working long term with it with a tool
you want this fits here this fits right on the side of your fingers your thumbs
go on this side that gives you direct punchiness into the wood it's perfect
these are different methods that we use for working with our wood there are so
many other things that I could tell you about the spokes shave but I think this
will get you started you will enjoy working with these tools just as I have
for the last five decades wonderful tools don't dismiss wooden spokes shaves