Travisher

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A travisher is basically a wooden spokeshave with a convex blade and is used for dishing chair seats and is also perhaps a cooper’s tool and possible a cartwright’s. Not possessing one, I decided to make one. This is just an experiment, to see how it handles.
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The 4” blade was cut from a sickle. I formed the concavity by heating it to a red heat and tapping it down on the piece of oak salvaged from a dining chair back. This was the former, if you like. It was only slightly charred. Then I allowed it to anneal, before cleaning up and drilling the two holes.
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I cut two pieces of sickle, which was just as well, since when it came to hardening, one showed two minute cracks. There is a small crack in this. It would have been better to have quenched in oil, but I didn’t have any.

Then followed three hours or more of paring away the chair back to form the handle.
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At first it produced only dust, choking the mouth, but gradually, by laboriously unscrewing the bolts and paring a bit more from the throat, I was able to produce some shavings from this old piece of elm which was itself a chair seat.
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In use, the mouth will certainly wear very quickly.

How good is the blade? A lot worse than when it was a sickle!