Workbench drawers - Carving handles

I finally finished the two handles that will find their way on the first drawer.
From where we ended in my last post, I carved the concave space for the fingers when grabbing the handle to open/close the drawer. To do this I started to mark two half ellipses on the handle back and bottom to use as a visual reference of the section to be carved.

Two half ellipses that will act as a visual reference.

I started to carve the concave shape using my old spokeshave. I am certainly not very skilled with a spokeshave but I like the tool, I find it very pleasant to use. I need to get one with a curved bottom.

My old spokeshave #51

When the cut was deep to the point that the spokeshave was not able to bite in the wood I switched to my old draw knife that I got from my great grand father (see my previous post about my woodworking legacy), it is still quite sharp.

My old draw knife I got from
my great grand father.

When the cut was deep enough I used a piece of sand paper rolled around a metal pipe section to smooth the cut. I ended with two nice handles with smooth curves. The whole process to make each handle from scratch took me around one hour per handle, not too bad.

A pair of nice and smooth handles.

I was not able to resist to the desire to see how these two would look on the drawer so I used some double side tape to dry fit them to have a quick preview. Be ready for some real wood handle porn:

Using double side tape to dry fit...

Front view...

... an low-angle shot, really artistic!

...and finally from the top, this will be enough.

To fix them permanently I may use two dowels that will show through the handle on each side, not sure yet but I think this should be nice.

To concluded this post on a touch of humour, yesterday I was browsing EBay to satisfy my vintage tools addiction and I came over a plane for sale. I discovered a new way of setting a plane cap iron:

New way of setting the cap iron (photo courtesy of EBay).

I will try it for sure!