Historical information

A spokeshave was made with a wooden body and metal cutting blade. With industrialization metal bodies displaced wood in mass-produced tools. Spokeshaves can be made from flat-bottom, concave, or convex soles, depending on the type of job to be performed. They can include one or more sharpened notches along which the wooden shaft is pulled in order to shave it down to the proper diameter.

Historically, spokeshave blades were made of metal, and the body and handles were wood. Unlike a draw knife, but like a plane, spokeshaves typically have a sole plate that fixes the angle of the blade relative to the surface being worked. By the twentieth-century metal handles and detachable blades had become the most common. A convex, wooden, variant of the spokeshave is called a travisher, at one time mostly used in chair making.

Significance

A tool of the joiner and other woodworking tradesmen that has been in use since the making of furniture for hundreds of years without much change to the design or how the tool is used to smooth and shape timber.

Physical description

Spokeshave,

Inscriptions & markings

Marked AH, (believed to be owner)