He can tell in one glance whether a thing was made properly. It is the entire reason he spends his weekends covered in shavings. Which is what makes the usual gift so galling: another pun, another default font, another joke about sawdust. This one is a nineteenth-century trade-catalogue plate: a No. 4 bench smoothing plane, closed tote, front knob, the iron bedded back at forty-five degrees, every contour and grain line engraved over it. Beneath the plate, the specimen label reads THE SMOOTHING PLANE, and under a hairline rule, the caption: FIG. 4, IRON & BEECH. The design wraps both sides, so it reads whichever way it is picked up.
It is the piece a partner or a daughter can hand over at Christmas knowing it will land: admiring, never sentimental, and impossible to mistake for a gag gift.
