World's largest hand plane?

[Spalted Walt]

A sharpened steel wedge in a block of wood that will, when set up right, pull off gossamer shavings leaving a polished finish straight off the tool.

[DerbyDad03]

That's pretty cool, but I'm tired just from watching how hard he seemed to be working.

I wonder how many times a day he does that demonstration. His body is tweaked in such a manner that it can't be good for him over the long term.

[Leon]

A demonstration of how Japanese singly ply toilet paper is produced. A single hunk of timber is capable of turning out 1,000,000 plies.

;~)

[Greg Guarino]

It does seem awfully odd that they have a competition like this, but the fact that it draws an audience suggests an admiration for craftsmanship and precision that's hard to argue with.

[Bill Leonhardt]

Greg,

Perhaps it's odd and perhaps not. I belong to a woodworking club on Long I sland and we hold a plane shaving contest along with our annual show. Usua lly the board to be planed is less than 2" wide. You must have a continuou s shaving along the 8 or 10 ft. length and the thinnest one wins. I think last year the winning shaving was about 0.0012" thick.

There's a variety of woodworkers in my club and, I suppose, worldwide. Som e couldn't care less about using a hand plane and some enjoy trying to fine tune their tools to perform to the extreme.

I like to think I'm somewhere in the middle.

Bill Leonhardt