Making a single iron fore plane, part 2

I made some more progress on the fore plane this week. I had a nice piece of quartersawn jatoba that I thought would make a nice handle. Jatoba is hard and heavy, quite coarse, but should hold up well. I cut a tenon on the blank, then traced out the pattern and drilled a couple large holes, with a forstner bit, to define the top and bottom of the cutout.

Then I cut to the lines with a coping saw, and refined the shape with a chisel, vixen files, rasps, and sandpaper.

Then I turned to the wedge and iron. The iron is a turn of the century "A.C. Bartlett" that I bought on Ebay. I have never seen another quite like it. Double irons are fairly common on the bay, but single irons are quite rare.  This one needed quite a lot of work, flattening the back, but it turned out nicely.
The  wedge is a piece of tropical mystery wood that looks a lot like jatoba, but is more fine grained.

All that's left for next week is to glue in the handle and apply some finish!