Thursday, February 24, 2022

A Shoemaker's Shave

A few years ago while perusing some of Curtis Buchanan's Windsor chair videos, I saw him using a small, tightly curved spokeshave to smooth out a carved seat (see here and here).  He called it a shoemaker's heel shave and I've been intrigued by it since then, especially because I've had zero luck finding a scorp in the wild.

I found a similar tool recently from a tool dealer.  According to the write-up, iwas originally made to shape shoe "lasts".  Of course, I had to look up what a shoe last is.  From Wikipedia, " A last is a mechanical form shaped like a human foot.  It is used by shoemakers and cordwainers in the manufacture and repair of shoes" (now, what's a cordwainer?).

Top view

View of the bottom

The curvature

The shave's body is 
9 1/8" long and the 2" wide iron is curved with about a 2 1/2" radius.  Aside from the 6 screws, there are only three parts: the body, the iron and the brass wear plate.

Exploded view (after some clean-up)

The following picture shows some details of how it goes together and works.  It also shows the condition it was in when I got it.

How it works

Two screws (red arrows) extend through slotted holes in the body and thread into the brass wear plate, making the wear plate's location adjustable front to back.  Two screws (blue arrows) hold the iron to the shave body.  These screws go through slots in the body, making the iron adjustable vertically.  The two screws shown with yellow arrows limit the vertical adjustability of the iron.  They essentially adjust the depth to which the iron and blue-arrow screws can be tightened in their slots.

The only marking of a maker on the tool is at one end of the brass plate - A. E. Johnson.  I could find zero information about this company.  At the other end of the brass plate was the number "4".

A. E. Johnson

OK, on to the rehab.  I let some 3-in-1 oil soak the screws and they turned out not to be too hard to remove.  After brushing the parts with a wire wheel in a drill and giving the iron a lot more attention (including grinding tools in a Dremel) to remove heavy rust and corrosion, I gave the iron and screws a 3-hour citric acid bath.

Lookin' pretty rough before any work

While they soaked, sandpaper easily cleaned up the brass wear plate.  The iron and screws got some more wire wheeling after the bath.  The screws cleaned up nicely, but I could see there was some pitting on the iron.

Back side of iron: the black areas are pitting

I used diamond stones to work the back of the iron and got rid of most of the pitting.  Fortunately it was mostly shallow.  But there's still a little there and I didn't want to thin the iron too much - it's pretty thin already and there's zero chance of ever finding a replacement iron.

For sharpening, I made a simple jig to hold the iron as I filed, ground, sandpapered and stropped the bevel.

The iron in its jig, with a few implements of sharpening in background

It took a while and a lot of patience, but I got a pretty good edge.

Cutting the edge of 3/4" thick pine - nicely curled shaving

Here's where it will shine - hollowing the surface of a plank

Glamour shot #1: top view

Glamour shot #2: bottom view

Curtis cut off the handles on his heel shaves so that he could get it into tightly curved areas of his chair seats.  I'm very reluctant to do the same.  But I have tried to hold it as if the handles were not there and there are comfortable ways to do so while getting nice cuts.  Maybe when I finally get back to making some chairs I'll cut off the handles.  I'll cross that bridge when ...

10 comments:

  1. You are correct it is a heel shave as you described. The No 4 is an indication of its sweep (curvature). It use a similar system as to described carver gouges but it is not the same at all. It start at 0 being a straight edge. 1 to 13 being the steepest Below 0 there are 3 inverse curvature (concave or convex depending how you look at it) No 4 is a shallow curvature. Past 13 there are four weird shaped curvature XL, X, 1 pomp, 2 pomp. Guessing something to do with foot characteristics.

    If you have Thomas Lamond book on spokeshave, look at page 67. Clark tool co is on page 61

    Bob

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    1. Bob, it's a little scary how much you know about heel shaves (haha). Thanks for the info. This #4 has a fairly tight radius (2 1/2") - hard to imagine what a #13 might look like.

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  2. It seems "cordwainer" is be the equivalent of the French word "cordonnier".
    Cordonniers are those people who repair shoes and sometime other article in leather. It seems the name comes from the city of Cordoba in Spain which was renowned for its leather.

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    1. Hi Sylvain. I had read that a cordwainer had to do with shoe repair, but I didn't know the derivation of the word. Thanks for that!

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  3. I can't tell from the pictures. How is it different from a curved spoke shave other than attachment?

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    1. I don't know much about curved spokeshaves, so can't help much with your question. I do know that some spokeshaves are curved front-to-back, whereas this one is straight front-to-back (just curved laterally). Perhaps the Lamond book that Bob references above could shed some light, but until I get a copy ...

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  4. That's a nifty little tool. Thanks for sharing. I wanted something small myself to work on curved surfaces and have on back order from Lee Valley a palm hand plane (kind of thing a Luthier would use). One that I am getting is convex in two directions. Hoping it will let me do what you are doing with this tool.

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    1. Hi Joe. I know you've been interested in making some of your own tools. Sellers made a small wooden plane, rounded in two directions in 2014. Here's the link: https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com/videos/making-wooden-planes-info/
      I made one years ago and don't use it often, but it has come in handy a few times.

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  5. if you google "book binding spokeshave", you will find various blogs about its use with leather.
    This one for example:
    https://www.westdean.org.uk/study/school-of-conservation/blog/books-and-library-materials/modifying-spokeshave-paring-leather

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