Spokeshaves: Types, Uses and Technique

A spokeshave is a plane with a sole only an inch or two long, and a handle on each side instead of a tote and knob. The short sole is the point: it can follow a curve that a bench plane would bridge, taking the same kind of clean shaving along a chair leg, a curved apron or a paddle blade. It is held with both hands, thumbs just behind the blade, and can be pushed or pulled — Veritas designs its range for either. How a plane’s blade, mouth and sole work together is explained in the hand plane guide; the spokeshave follows the same rules at a smaller scale.

The sole decides what a spokeshave can reach (see the plate above). A flat sole rides the outside of a convex curve, and handles straight edges too. A sole curved from front to back fits inside a concave curve; the tighter the curve, the smaller the radius the sole needs. A flat sole in a tight hollow rests on the rims and never reaches the bottom. A third shape, a sole hollowed from side to side, wraps around a round part such as a spindle, and rounds it evenly.

Many metal-bodied spokeshaves, including Lie-Nielsen’s Boggs pattern, hold the blade bevel down on a bed, like a bench plane, so the bed angle sets the cutting angle and a depth adjuster sets the projection. Veritas’s low-angle spokeshave, which it describes as configured like a traditional spokeshave, holds a thin blade bevel up, almost flat, so the bevel angle sets a much lower cutting angle. Veritas explains the consequence: with the blade forming the sole, the tool has to be tilted forward slightly to give a relief angle behind the edge, because the fibres spring back after the cut; held flat, it glides without cutting. A low angle also makes the direction of cut matter even more, which is why Veritas stresses always working with the grain. Sharpening either kind is covered in the sharpening guide.

• Start fine. A spokeshave takes thin shavings: Lie-Nielsen sets up its Boggs pattern for about 0.008–0.010 in at most.
• Set it against a flat board. Lie-Nielsen’s method is to lay the sole on a flat piece of wood, loosen the cap and advance the blade until it touches evenly, then tighten.
• Keep the edge parallel. On a design with two adjusters, such as Veritas’s, the two wheels set both depth and the blade’s angle across the sole; turning one more than the other lets one side cut deeper, which can be used deliberately for a roughing side and a finishing side.
• Close the mouth for fine work. As with a plane, Veritas advises a mouth as small as will let the shaving escape, which supports the wood ahead of the edge.

The grain of a board runs along its length, but a curved edge cuts across that grain at a changing angle. The Wood Handbook describes grain as the direction of the wood’s axial cells; wherever a surface is not parallel to them, fibres run out of it, and a cutting edge moving the wrong way gets under their ends and lifts them. On a curve, that wrong way changes as you go round.

• Hollows: from the rims to the bottom. Work down each side toward the lowest point, and stop there.
• Crowns: from the top down each side. Work from the highest point down toward each end.
• Reverse at the turning points. At the bottom of a hollow and the top of a crown the fibres change direction, so the cut must too. On complex shapes Veritas notes this may mean frequent changes of direction, pushing and pulling as needed.
• Skew the tool. Holding the spokeshave at an angle to its path, so the edge slices, lowers the effective cutting angle — Veritas recommends it for the best results.

• Very tight curves. A curve tighter than the sole’s radius cannot be reached. Lie-Nielsen points tighter work to a smaller spokeshave; below that, a rasp shapes where no blade can follow.
• Heavy removal. A spokeshave takes thin shavings; saw the waste off first, or use a drawknife on large work.
• Straight, flat surfaces. A spokeshave’s short sole follows bumps as readily as curves, so a plane will make a straight edge flatter.
• Wild or reversing grain. Where the grain changes too often to follow, a rasp or a card scraper tears less.