About This Site

NOTE: This website is in its early stages, so please bear with us and bookmark this site for future reference.

First of all I would like to say welcome to The Infill Planes Showcase. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay here.

This website has been created by me, Cameron Miller, and the efforts of hundreds of people who have provided me with information and images over the past 25 years or so that I’ve been surfing on the internet.

As far as woodworking tools go, infill planes are my main passion. Over the last 20 years or so I have collected them, repaired them, restored them for others and made a heck of a lot of planes of my own, most of them unmarked. Like those before me, I’m largely self-taught when it comes to making these planes — for the most part the information just wasn’t out there when I was starting out so I had to learn it myself. Nowadays it’s much easier, with books, magazine articles and websites like Handplane Central and forums such as Wood Central and Sawmill Creek (and others) available to anyone with a computer and internet connection.

I should add that I’ve also written articles and given group talks and demonstrations on infill plane making throughout the years.

But enough about me, what about the site! What’s that all about?

In part it’s about restoring the balance. There has always been ephemera of some kind or another. Collectable memorabilia that usually only lasts for a short time before it disappears or is thrown out. While most hand planes and other woodworking tools hardly qualify as ephemera at all, the medium on which they are often showcased on may very well be. Catalogues, magazine articles, brochures etc. usually have a short shelf life. The same could be said for the internet. In many incidences the web pages that I used to look at a decade or so ago now no longer exist. I’m still trying to find out just who “The New Norris Company” was and where they went to, for instance. Many of the images that I’ve collected over the years are now “un-traceible” from the pages that they originally appeared on. The websites gone… torn down… deleted. The information lost – possibly forever.

By it’s very nature the world’s biggest auction site, eBay, could be considered somewhat ephemeral. Auctions appear, stay in the search engine results for a month or two, then disappear off the face of the earth – never to return. It’s a shame, because often there is a wealth of information and seller descriptions lost — not to mention a plethora of fantastic images. Some of it may have been collected by people like me, but how does that help anyone else? For the most part that information is gone. It becomes ephemera. Here today. Gone tomorrow.

Hence this website. The Infill Planes Showcase is, in some part, a place where I can collate pictures and information, as well as share that information and show others some of the great infill planes I have seen and, in some cases, bought over the years. Ideally I would like it to be a repository of sorts for those people, like myself, who just can’t seem to get enough of those fantastic infill planes. Not just the “name brands” either — Spiers, Norris, Mathieson, Preston, Slater and the like — but the unmarked or unknown makers as well. The unsung heroes. The “user-mades”.

Most of these planes will have come from eBay, so I don’t have a lot of info as to the owners of the material, photographic or other-wise. However in many cases I have asked people over the years if I can use their stuff and most have said “yes”. Some of these people include Darryl Hutchinson, Karl Holtey, Konrad Sauer, Jim Bode, Bill & Sarah Carter, Patrick Leach, Geoff Entwistle, Malcolm Macpherson, Philip Marcou, John Economaki, Matt Hodgson, Paul Hamler, Russell Garcia-Lechelt, Ron Breese, Ian Dalziel, Darrell Chapnick, Wayne Anderson, Aled Dafis, Brian Buckner, Jeff Warshafsky, Steven Thomas, Gary Kramer, Mateo Panzica, Brian Lilley, John Maki, Hans Brunner, Nick Urquhart, Chris Vesper, Gerd Fritsche, Andrew Stephens, Ray Iles, Derek Cohen and many, many others. I’m eternally grateful for the generosity of these makers, dealers, writers, users and collectors.

Enjoy!

C.R. Miller.

p.s. If anyone is annoyed or upset by my inclusion of their images and photographs on this website, or you would like due credit for your work, then please drop me a line and I’ll sort it out. Thank you.