Luban's beautiful and highly functional Bronze Spokeshave is really great value.
Spokeshaves are, simply put, very short soled planes for working curved surfaces. Their uses include refining convex, biconvex, slightly concave, and concave/convex surfaces after your initial shaping with the bandsaw and rasps.
The Luban Bronze Spokeshave is 267mm in overall length. It is cast from Bronze and features a T10 cutting iron hardened to RC59-63.
Spokeshaves are wonderful tools to use, especially when you are really 'in the zone' as you need to be very aware of the grain to get the best from them. Always work with the grain, on a straight grained piece of timber this means working towards the centre of concave shapes and away from the centre of convex ones; i.e. always going downhill.
T10 Steel, also known as Tool Steel or High Speed Steel is the designation for an alloy made of Carbon steel and Tungsten (W1 in the United States of America). The alloy contains a higher tenor of Carbon compared to other Carbon Steels (about 1%) and a small fraction of silicon (0.35%).
Please note! Photos are for illustrative purposes only and may not represent the actual product specifications.
Disclaimer: I am a novice woodworker and by no means a spokeshave expert, this being my second one.
Straight out of the box I was impressed as the parts seem to be of high quality, the thumbscrews, the thick blade, body and handles. I was able to create shavings out of the box on hardwood with little chatter.
My esteem has only increased with use and I find it a joy to look at and to use.