Nothing wrong with plastic – actually expensive acrylic. It doesn’t distort or shrink. It is a personal choice. When you are working in stainless steel I feel that man made compounds can be almost impervious so I like to think you could dunk the plane in a bucket of water and leave it without any ill effect.

The taper is approx 2mm and overall 20%. These planes have my own precision made screws (another one of those hidden jobs) so the bottom and the sides are in contact with the precision shank of the screw and the taper section has a 2mm contact. The whole structure will be assembled with a locking compound to the threads. I would probably prefer this system out of the others – dovetails or rivets. The part I like the most is that it doesn’t put any stress into the materials.

Karl