528 pages, 935 illustrations and 575 marks in colour, with an appendix of 269 plane-iron marks.

13 3/8" x 10". (339 x 254mm)      £90

Packing and shipping:

 Per copy within the UK: £9.50.   Per copy within Europe: £22.50

Per copy rest of the world: £25.50 (surface)

Order From:

John Adamson Publishing:  90 Hertford Street, Cambridge CB4 3AQ, UK.

Telephone and facsimile: +44 1223 313717

E-mail: jadamson@orangefr

 I have borrowed back the most ornate jointer that I have ever made, for the show at Westonbirt.  It has 8 cupid bows scattered about, some of the best Rosewood I ever found and I made it in 1991.

A picture of my 2 mallet's, on the left the ash one I made 51 yrs ago, having found a felled log in the bottom of the hedgerow.  Fortunately the log was well seasoned.  After I made my mallet everyone in the shop wanted one out of the same log.  The one on the right is Lignum Vitae, a friend bought me this from a David Stanley sale.

These are my peening hammers and my punch.  I love the big old one on the left.  Karl Holtey made me the punch.  Thank you Karl.

 Wednesday 4/6/08

Jointers

Our thanks to John at David Stanley Auctions for sending these pictures of 3 of my 36" jointers.  The one in the middle had cupid bow dovetails, which nearly killed me to make,  I made 6 in total.  At a later date I cut 2 down to 28 1/2" as Norris made.  Karl Holtey made the leaver caps, the irons and the adjusters.  Ian Houghton did the engraving by hand on the lever caps and the adjusters.  Both Carl and Ian's work was perfection.

This is a piece I cut off at a later date.  People have said you must have hesitated when you offered up the hacksaw to both the front and back of the plane.  I do set myself some tasks, because when I had sawn the front and back off, I then had to shape both ends in place, which involved reshaping the Rosewood, the Bronze sides and the steel base whilst in place.  As you can imagine this was far more difficult to do than to shape the separate pieces before assembly.  One of the sawn off rear ends went to the USA, with the plane to be used as a sandpaper block.  This must have been the most expensive sandpaper block, labour wise. 

If you were wondering why I reduced them in size, one of the reasons was, when people lifted them out of my car boot at a sale, they would very often knock my car in so doing, I put this down to the weight which they were not used to lifting in a restricted space.  This didn't do the plane or the car any good.  I hope you get a smile out of this.

Oil Stones

This is a massive Charnly Forest oilstone in a Maple and Mahogany box.  These stones have been quarried for a known period of 400 years and probably a lot longer.  They were highly prized in English cabinet makers work shops, until in the 1890's when the first Washtita's came over to England , they proved to be far superior and from then on interest in the Charnly stone's dwindled.

This shows an Elm box with a 2" thick stone, the true colour of this stone is karki, I have no idea where this stone came from, but I do know it is the most wonderful finishing stone, equal to a Arkansas and it's origolan box when found, appeared to be easily over 200 years old, and yet the stone was perfectly flat.  This stone appears to be indistructable, I have only ever found one other like it.  I used to collect stones.

In this oak box is a 3" wide black Arkansas modern stone, everyone knows about these.

This shows the Oak lid of the previous stone upside down with some of my Sheffield made marks I use on my planes.

This is a scanned picture of a Burr Elm oilstone box, such a simple thing I made, but it turned out to be one of my very best items.

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