I am currently making my 8 year old cub scout son a walking stick from a scrap of Ash I had in the shop. I’ve been shaping it with handplanes first and now a round bottom Miller Falls spokeshave I was given. The MF handles are round rosewood and very comfortable. Unfortunately, that’s where the positives stop. The blade is thin, prone to chatter, and is very difficult to adjust. I’m not too interested in buying a Hock or other replacement blade as I will still be facing the difficulty in adjusting the cut. I’ve been looking at the Lee Valley Veritas shaves, and have read Chris Gochnour’s review of them in FWW. I am wondering what your experiences have been with the LV shaves. Thanks. Tom
“Notice that at no time do my fingers leave my hand”
Replies
"I am currently making my 8 year old cub scout son a walking stick"
I thought the scout, not the parent, was supposed to be doing this to earn his badge? ;-)
Seriously, I'd think you could get the MF to work fine for this job. Get the blade sharp and set it for a light cut. That said, I always found the curved sole shaves to be a bit harder to use since they try to dig in. No personal experience with the LV shaves -- I have a couple of old stanleys that work fine -- but generally their tools are pretty good.
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
I have the Brian Boggs set of shaves from LN, flat and rounded bottom, and they are excellent. I also have the Lee Valley rounding shave, as I needed it before LN offered it. It is a very nice shave and works well, although not on par with the LN shaves. But, you get what you pay for. If I could have waited, I would have purchased the LN version, as it is now available.
Jeff
C,
I've used all three of the standard Veritas shaves for two years now. I got them to make greenwood ladderback chairs. They greatly impressed my tutor, a long-time maker who had been making do with an old Record and an Anant. They work without any of those chaatter, tear out or go-blunt-in10-swipes drawbacks that seem to plague the cheaper shaves.
Since then I've been on a handtool odessey with all chamfers, roundovers and other volume-shaping done with the spokeshaves, all in dry hardwoods, some of which are quite demanding (teak, iroko, afromosia, oak, beech, cherry and walnut). They've been near-perfect and I struggle to find anything negative to say about them.
Perhaps the only difficulty was sharpening the curved blade of the concave shave. I follow Veritas advice and use a drum sander of the appropriate diameter loaded with a superfine grit (1200). This works perfectly.
Perhaps one other factor is that the blade angle is "standard" which works with end grain but (so I read at least) not as well as a low angle shave, which I don't have and really feel no need of.
In short I recommend them wholeheartedly and without reservation.
Lataxe
Thank you, Lataxe. This is what I was looking for. I would rather spend a little more and get a ready to go tool than spend a less and have to fettle the thing to death, replace the blade, make a new cap iron, etc. to get it to work. Tom"Notice that at no time do my fingers leave my hand"
So, you're saying the MF handles are MF handles?
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