Travisher

[Philip Davies]

Attachment 46223

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.
Attachment 46224

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.

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.

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.

In use, the mouth will certainly wear very quickly.

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