Ok, when something just isn’t working, it isn’t working. I was NOT happy with the way the foam handplane shape was coming out- I think the 1.5 pound was way too coarse, and I was trying to do something with it that just wasn’t going to happen.
So, let’s start over again. This time, I picked up a scrap of poplar from Home Depot for a buck. It’s 1/2″, about 16″ by 12″.

Poplar piece

Once again, I made a template, but more in line with pictures I had seen of wood handplanes (thanks Wavegeek!). So here’s the next attempt at an outline, and the result I cut out on a scroll saw:

Outline for handplane

Piece cut out

I did sand a little concave into the bottom with a rotary sander, but nothing extraordinary. I curved the rails by hand sanding, but for the most part they’re straight, so we’ll see how that goes. I used 60 grit mostly, then 80 and 100, proceeding up to 220 to finish.
I decided to glass this board with some of my slow cure epoxy:

Preparing to glass

First side glassed, not cured yet

So, it’ll take a couple of days to get this glassed and cured. I did mount the board on a couple of scrap pieces of wood to let the epoxy drip without sticking.
For the handslip, I’m going to drill shallow holes into the deck, fill them with epoxy, redrill and screw the strap down on either end- but I’m going to put in one of my adjustable plastic buckles so more than one person can use it. I’m also going to use on of the fin heel guards I made from a past project to overlay the strap so it doesn’t tear up my hand.
Something I haven’t seen is grip on the deck for your hand…..hmmm…still got some SeaDek around here somewhere…..