About
Hi, my name is Aled, I’m a secondary school teacher, specialising in teaching Engineering, and a little Maths, Science, Games and whatever else no-one else wants to teach, thrown in. Woodworking has been a hobby of mine since leaving University in 2002.
I live in the small village of Caerwedros in West Wales with my wife Heledd and two boys, Osian and Guto. You may have guessed by now from our distinctly Welsh names that our first language is indeed Welsh, in fact I have to think a bit before typing in English so please bear with me.
I began my journey with wood through woodturning, and then gradually moved on to the flat stuff. My interest in high end planes began when I met up with Konrad Sauer at the Axminstrer Woodworking Show here in the UK, back in 2004.
The fit and finish of Konrads planes really blew me away (my background is in engineering so things like this really impress me), and to say that they worked well really is a massive understatement, he was planing a piece of gnarly rock maple to a finish I couldn’t even dream of achieving with even the finest of abrasives. I went away from the show that day with a tiny little seed planted very deep in my grey matter.
A few years later, following many hours (hundreds if you ask my wife) reading up on infill planes on the internet and reading as much as I could in magazines, I decided that I’d have a go at making a small dovetailed infill plane.
The plane I decided to make was loosely based on Karl Holtey’s small smoothing plane, as the overall shape would be quite easy to achieve. Having said that, all the fundamental planemaking skills would be required to achieve a plane that performed anywhere near that of my first (and at that time) only experience of using an infill plane, back at the Axminster show.
Here’s my first infill. It certainly isn’t to Karl or Konrad’s standards, but it performs beautifully, taking absolutely no notice of grain direction when planing wild grained oak – my usual wood of choice. I use this plane on every job that goes through my workshop.
