It Depends On The Light

Last week for the first time ever I saw this faint embossed pictogram on the rosewood plane.  It was all a matter of the light hitting it at precisely the correct angle.  It is fascinating but not especially helpful a priori as my literacy of Chinese pictograms is exactly where it was the moment before — nil.  If anyone knows what this means I would love to know.

I’m still thinking of fabricating a wood-planing iron for this beast and putting it to work.  I believe one of the blog’s readers identified the original tool as an apothacarist’s or herbalist’s plane for shaving plant medicines, or perhaps a cook’s plane for shaving vegetables.  If I  can make an iron made for it and working well it would be a beast of a wood plane.