Caution: Sharp objects

I do love me some new tools.

This probably isn’t the safest one I’ve ever made.

See that blade stuck to the bottom?

Yeah…

Jim Poelstra makes a very nice handheld plough for trimming the edges of books, with a few different safety features that this one definitely does not have. The upside is that this one is cheap; a 3” wooden ball sawed in half plus two single bevel circular packing knives cost me about $45 and yielded two of these. Not that I need two.

It does a good job, though! I got some nice, smooth edges on my book blocks. However, since this was my first time using a plough in the first place, my technique needed some refinement, and then my unrefined technique needed to be covered up.

I was totally planning on dyeing those edges all along. Totally.