O Galoots

I have three planes that take double-edged razor blades, from two makers
in two designs, neither of which has been shown yet. There is some
discussion of them in this link

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t including a further link
to instructions on how to make your own out of wood, and about a third
of the way down there is a bunch of photos of different types. Mine are
a curved-sided Little Giant (I agree with someone in the link, this is
best of the lot, or at least the best I have handled) and two Wilkros.
The blades of the Wilkros stick out to the sides and cut your fingers
when you try to hold them (just the sides of the blades, not the edges,
but that is enough) so I suspect that fifty or eighty years ago razor
blades were narrower (had shorter edges, I mean... I mean, the long
dimension was shorter).

 All mine are bare, now rather oxidized, aluminum. I've also seen the
 Little Giant with a thin blue coating, more like anodization than
 paint. They aren't uncommon in hand binderies, bought with the idea of
 using them to pare leather, almost always ending up in the box of
 totally useless junk. The problem is that there is no way to adjust the
 depth of cut. I do know one good binder who used one for paring leather
 for a while, but eventually she learned to sharpen and shifted to a
 spokeshave. They must have been popular, though, because there are so
 many around, and a lot of the modelmakers on the linked thread clearly
 rely on them.

Tom Conroy San Francisco

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