I made a few hand planes recently and I am loving them. I had an idea that is completely unnecessary, but sounds awesome/ dooable for me. I thought it would be cool to make a hollow hand plane with a fin using balsa wood from a hobby store. I could glass it stain it or cover it in epoxy…It sure would look sweet. Anyone ever done it?
Hand planes have the probability of slapping you in the head .
Chances are a balsa fin, insufficiently layed up with glassed, would break while slapping your face/head, complicating things quite a bit.
Theresultant jagged bits are probably more to be feared than an intact stronger blunt fin.
so what about the idea of a hollow handplane
I dunno…just think of safety.
If performance lag and planing abilities are lacking , then you’d want to do something like that or something else like make it wider or longer etc
…which I dont believe they are…lacking.
You can do anything you want or do them for a reason!
So far you havent listed any reasons or problems you are trying to solve.