Scottish Smoother From E Bay.

This is my most recent E Bay purchase. The pictures on the advert weren't great but for £68 including postage I wasn't risking much, especially as the parallel Ward and Payne blade is worth half that alone.
Obviously the rear handle needed repairing but this is not difficult or time consuming. The plane itself was much better than I expected with nicely over stuffed infills and no damage to the metal.

I have a Scottish smoother by Galloway which gives me something to go by, although even this has a repaired spur.

It's interesting to see the difference in the angle of the spur compared to this Matheison smoother from the same late Victorian period.

My method for cleaning up the broken handle is to run it against the fence of my table saw. This gives a perfectly parallel surface to the sole which makes for easy clamping.

The cut revealed a nail which had presumably been used to reattach the broken spur at some time in the past. It also showed the infill wood to be mahogany, which I suspected, rather than rose wood.

I decided to make a second deeper cut to remove any roundness to the sides and to take off more of the nail.

The nail was recessed with a punch to avoid nay risk of fouling the glue up.
I raided my stocks of old Cuban mahogany and chose a piece with the grain running in the same direction.

Here's a shot of the glue up which should yield an invisible glue line.
The fun (and time consuming) part comes next, I'll keep you posted.