Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A drawknife of a design originally used for shaping spokes, now used for making rounded edges.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A ring with cutting edge attached to a handle, used in certain operations within the cavity of the nose.
  • noun A wheelwrights' and carpenters' tool, having a plane-bit between two handles, formerly used in shaping wagon-spokes, but now in woodwork of every kind.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A kind of drawing knife or planing tool for dressing the spokes of wheels, the shells of blocks, and other curved work.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A woodworking tool used to shape and smooth rods and shafts - often for use as wheel spokes, chair legs or arrows.
  • verb transitive To shape or smooth with a spokeshave.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a small plane that has a handle on each side of its blade; used for shaping or smoothing cylindrical wooden surfaces (originally wheel spokes)

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

spoke + shave

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Examples

  • Litten's carpenter friend Max John Hollingworth, looked up from his spokeshave with perhaps one too many knowing political apercus; and Litten's "weary" catalogue of his father's objections to the new Weimar republic – "To him, it's all atonal music, flat roofs, Bauhaus chairs, the rumba, Otto Dix, negro jazz, Jewish self-assertion" – could have done with the lumps taken out of it.

    Rewind TV: The Man Who Crossed Hitler; Hans Litten vs Adolf Hitler: To Stop a Tyrant; Random; American: The Bill Hicks Story; The Hour – review 2011

  • Wednesday, February 18, 2009 10:26:00 PM PST spokeshave says...

    A Question on Traveling Mattes Hans Perk 2009

  • He leaves the steamed components hanging up for a year to dry and season thoroughly, turns the legs on his lathe, hollows out the seats with an adze and a spokeshave, then assembles the chairs.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • He leaves the steamed components hanging up for a year to dry and season thoroughly, turns the legs on his lathe, hollows out the seats with an adze and a spokeshave, then assembles the chairs.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • You would only need a spokeshave, and simple scratch stock, and couple of hand planes.

    The Cult kludge 2008

  • You would only need a spokeshave, and simple scratch stock, and couple of hand planes.

    Archive 2008-11-01 kludge 2008

  • At one point I had the bow by both ends and it probably looked as though I was using a spokeshave on the strings.

    drones badger 2005

  • He worked with a large spokeshave in a wood so hard that it grated and rang like metal.

    The Complete Stories Waugh, Evelyn 1998

  • Nonnus used his knife for everything from skinning game to large projects for which the locals would have chosen an axe, a billhook, or a spokeshave.

    Lord of the Isles 1997

  • Final shaping is done with a spokeshave (3), if available, and a wood rasp (see page 6).

    Chapter 4 1989

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