I will keep this blog entry brief (in case the baby wakes up and I have to run).

I have been working on a new kerfing plane. For background on what a kerfing plane is, see Tom Fidgen, though we are going much further. Like there are plow planes and then there are 3-arm plow planes, I am making a 3-arm kerfing plane. I started working on it Sep 7, 2021 and it is currently Jan 1, 2023. That means that at the time of this writing, I have been working on my patent 3-arm kerfing plane for over a year (almost 16 months now).

The design considerations became so overwhelming that I developed a new method of design for keeping all the parts and cuts accounted for. This ultimately resulted in a design canvas that is now currently, if I printed it on paper at 1:1 scale, 12-feet wide by 6-feet tall. Everything from the tiniest of screws, thumb nuts, knurled knobs, and brass rod inlay, right on up to the full-size Stanley plane tote integrated into the body of the plane as a single piece of 8/4 waterfall Bubinga.

I have selected lumber for 2 prototypes and finalized all the parts for each individual unit as-though they were kits I bought from somewhere, but assembled into little parts baggies myself and then put those bags into a larger bag. Everything is labeled and there is even a "ghost bag" containing slips of paper describing what I need to restock for each unit.

I have circled back to the designs to double-check that the physically stocked lumber and dimensioned blanks match the template dimensions. I painstakingly rejected multiple rounds of Gaboon Ebony that exhibited voids after hand dimensioning attempts.

We are in-essence "Go" for the first prototype.

In the coming parts of this blog series, I will go over each aspect in-detail as we work toward the 2023 manifestation of a tool that does more than any kerfing plane, stair saw, or similar hand-tool with a saw attached to it has ever done before. We are talking about kerf-bending, cross-cuts, grooving, dados, cuts referencing an edge, cuts referencing a face, cuts referencing a guide edge clamped in the middle of a board, ... if you can think it up, you can probably do it with this 3-arm kerfing plane equipped with 2 micro-adjustable fences and a micro-adjustable saw depth, and reversible 2-sided blade with both cross-cut and rip teeth. I went crazy on this one, because I have a small shop, lots of neighbors, I hate paying the electric bill, I like working with my hands, and I want a really cool tool to hand down to my kid that has our family name emblazoned on it.

And I'm giving it away for free.