Spill Plane

 

When matches were not common, you could use a special plane to transform pieces of scrap wood into  supercoiled chips, suitable for using them to take fire from a brazier or a fireplace and transfer it to a candle or other. In a nineteenth century country house this tool should have been quite common. 


The model vary, but the concept is more or less the same: a cone-shaped mouth and a skewed blade that allows to side chip ejection in the strongly twisted form.
The plane I found is home-made (I newer saw  this plane in wooden plane-maker lists); the wood is mahogany. The sole was warped so I had to remove the side fence to straighten it properly. I put a patch to tighten a little bit the mouth. The wedge is extended almost to the cutting edge and its end is an integral part of the conical mouth.
The blade is bedded to 42 ° and the blade skewed at 45 degrees. The asymmetrical fence helps to angle the tool even more and produce spiral chips.


I tried to light one: it burns slowly and does not burn out easily. Perfect!
 

Sliding Bevel New Screw

The sliding bevel is a useful tool when you need to get a different angle from 90°, being the blade  full adjustable. A pivot screw allows you to lock the blade in place. It can be screwed directly into a thread cut into the brass side metal plate, or be provided with a wing nut.
Another possibility, in my opinion the best, is when, instead of the wing nut, there is a lever with a threaded hole, very convenient and easy to operate with a simple thumb movement. One of my two squares adopted the screw tightening system without blocking nut and needs a screwdriver for tightening and loosening.

So it was easy to change the system and I had the opportunity for replacing the steel screw with brass fittings, a metal which contrasts nicely with the mahogany wood.