When I produce a pair of planes I always make them out of a single piece of wood. I try to make sets out of as few pieces as possible. I spend a lot of time indexing my beech to keep everything in order. I spend more time lining up sap lines and other silly things, but I digress. Rabbet planes and dedicated planes usually get made from the odd leftover pieces: the fifth foot in a 5 foot length.
Today I separately packaged a group of three rabbet planes that were all made from the same piece of wood since I had run low on the aforementioned 'extras'. Each plane was boxed and 7/8" in width. One was left handed and bedded at my normal 50 degrees and two were right handed and bedded at 55.
I found myself staring at these three planes that effectively look exactly the same. One is going to England, one outside of Boston and the third is going to Hawaii. It was fun to think that three people, separated by thousands of miles, will be using the same plane and the planes will never see each other again.
The whole thing, this wonderful job, etc., just struck me and left me staring for a few minutes.
I again thank my patient customers.
