Spokeshave

A short, two-handled woodworking hand tool with a blade set into its body, pushed or pulled with both hands to shave and smooth curved or shaped wood such as chair legs, paddles, bow staves, arrows and, as its name preserves, the spokes of a wooden cart or carriage wheel. Its small size makes it well suited to detailed, curved work but poor for large flat surfaces, and like a hand plane it cuts best worked with the grain to avoid tearing the wood. The word is documented from at least the sixteenth century, tied to its original use by wheelwrights shaping wheel components. Early spokeshaves had wooden bodies, typically beech, fitted with a steel blade; mass-produced metal-bodied versions became common in the late nineteenth century, though wooden spokeshaves remain widely available and are still used today.