Hi Allan,
Nice to see someone else taking an interest in spokeshaves.
There is a bit of a problem with the very name as it gets applied to the all metal shaves of Bailey decent as well as low angle shaves chair devils travishers and even #80 scraper planes. Time Team even claimed the had found a Stone Age spokeshave 400,000 years old and dating from the Palaeolithic period! It was in fact a two handed flint knife!
I am not sure I agree with your potted history.
Wooden spokeshaves probably go back as far as the plane and draw knife beyond the Egyptians and certainly the Romans. When wooden planes started to be made by plane makers in the eighteenth century, the same thing happened with the wooden spokeshave. They carried on being made into the 1950s and possibly later. While there are some, usually the smallest made of box, the vast majority were made of beech. They were also used in a very wide range of trades and seem only relatively to have acquired the name suggesting wagon spokes.
By coincidence, here is a beech shave I have recently ‘boxed’ with some box wood.
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There is a Leonard Bailey patent of 1858 for ‘an improved spoke shave’ made of iron and it was he of course who made the first commercially successful cast iron planes. These are still made today and while they can perform similar tasks I consider them to be a small cast iron plane with handles on the sides. The wooden spokeshave on the other hand is clearly a development of the draw knife.
The low angle shaves will cut end grain easily when an iron shave baulk or chatter. A high quality or highly tuned iron shave is a very useful tool however. Like a metal bench plane they will almost never wear out.
With the low angle shaves, I find a well tuned wooden shave much more comfortable than the Veritas LA but I applaud them for making a modern interpretation of this excellent tool.
Jon.
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