Plane To See. Leitz Summitar 50mm

I was presented with the opportunity of a colleague taking over my unused woodworking shop.  For the last three years, radiography has dominated my day-to-day and the space I rented to serve as a workshop has served only as storage.  One of the physicians with whom I work asked if I had managed to go there to play in the sawdust and, when I had to confess that I hadn't, she said, "Oh, it's just like a gym membership: you have it but you never go..."  That sums it up.  My machines will be moving into a smaller storage space in the same building, (for much less rent) and my precious hand tools have been brought for storage at home where they will be less likely to grow legs.
My Editor thought it would be nice to put some of the planes on display because they are rather lovely things to behold.  Here they are.  Once upon a time, the best planes came from the UK: Stanley, Record and Clifton.  As hand tools became redundant to commercial craftsmen, so the quality went down...  Cast iron wasn't allowed to mature for long enough after casting, and warped after machining.  Things were no longer as flat or square as they need to be to do very accurate work. I wish it weren't so... If one wants superlative planes they come from small production shops which go through all the steps necessary to keep the quality of the finished product.  In the background are two Stanley planes from Sheffield, a #7 jointer and a #41/2 smoother.  All the rest are from the workshop of Tom Lie-Nielsen in Maine, reproductions of old tools which have been out of production since the 1930s, dead-flat and dead-square to make jointing the spruce leaves of a harpsichord soundboard a process of delight rather than a trial of frustration, wasted time and material.  They're worth the pretty penny.