Holtey 11SA High Angle Smoothing Plane

Here is a Holtey 11SA high angle smoothing plane made by renown British infill plane maker, Karl Holtey. The style of the plane is reminiscent of a smoothing plane featured in the circa 1850 brochure by Scottish maker, Stewart Spiers, though it’s a much more sophisticated plane than the Spiers.

This particular plane features a rosewood infill, though other versions of the 11SA high angle smoothing planes were available with either an ebony or boxwood infill as well. As seen in the photographs the gunmetal sides are expertly dovetailed to a steel sole. Karl also offered an “all-steel” version of this plane as well.

The cutting iron is bedded at just under 60 degrees, which makes it ideal for working difficult and interlocked hardwoods in particular, resulting in less tearing of the wood. Furthermore, the cutting iron can be reversed to turn the plane into a scraping-type handplane (with an effective cutting angle of around 90 degrees) for really difficult timbers. As Karl has said on his website “This has resulted in a plane which will be ideal for the finishing of difficult grains in cabinet and instrument making.”

This plane is 6-5/8″ long and 1-7/8″ wide, with a 1-1/2″ wide cutting iron made from A2 steel. The adjuster is based on a Norris-style adjuster but, like all of Karl’s work, is a much better and more refined affair.

For those interested, you can see more of Karl’s wonderful handplanes at his website, here.

More Images