Thanks to my job and the freelance work I do for The Fine Tool Journal, I get to see a lot of specialty handplanes that most people see only in the catalogs or in one of the lusty tomes by The Sandor.
But despite getting to actually use a corebox plane and dozens of other unusual and cool forms, I tend to stick with the basics when I build. I use the jointer plane more than any other bench plane, followed by the smoothing plane and block plane. A few other specialty tools – router planes, a moving fillister and a plow plane – round out my personal set.
One plane I’ve never quite made nice with is the Stanley No. 95, the edge-trimming block plane. This tool is now made by both Veritas and Lie-Nielsen Toolworks in iron or bronze. And though the two brands have some significant differences, the basic form is the same.
The No. 95 is a block plane with a skewed blade and an integral and fixed 90° fence. The idea is that you press the fence against the face of your work and the tool planes the adjacent edge perfectly square to the face.
I’ve never been fond of the tool – I tend to use my jointer plane to dress edges square to the faces. But during the last few projects I’ve built I’ve found the tool in my hand a surprising number of times. I’ve been using it to plane solid-wood edging square and flush to plywood. I’ve been trimming face frames flush to carcases. And I’ve been dressing rails and stiles of doors and face frames before assembly.
That last task finally convinced me that the tool is a gem for a shop that blends power and hand tools. Here’s why: When I dress stock by hand, all the edges of my rails and stiles end up planed square from the jointer plane. So the No. 95 sits idle.
But when I dress my rails and stiles with a powered jointer (as I’m doing this week), the edge-trimming plane shines. The goal there is to remove the toolmarks, to keep the edges perfectly square and to not remove a lot of material. The No. 95 accomplishes all three goals with aplomb. Typically one or two light passes is all it takes to get crisp inside and outside edges on the parts for a frame-and-panel construction.
Here are a few tips for use: First, the set-up is key. The iron has to project evenly from the mouth or your edge won’t be square. Take some test passes and examine the shavings. Their thickness should be the same on both long edges. Shift the iron around until the tool makes a consistent shaving and a square edge.
Second, press down on the toe of the tool with more force than you would use with a block plane. The plane tends to want to rise out of the cut in softer woods. Also, use one hand to press the tool’s fence against the work and use the other hand to press the work against the fence on the opposite side. All this pressure ensures your cut won’t go astray, which can be trouble.
Now, despite my crush on this tool, I haven’t been able to justify getting both a left- and right-hand version, however. Because my stock is dressed with a planer, it’s true on both faces, so I can work with the No. 95’s fence on either face of the stock without worrying about grain direction. The tool can be pushed or pulled with ease.
Now if I could just find the same love for my chisel plane/paperweight I wouldn’t feel so guilt every time I open a certain drawer in my toolbox.
— Christopher Schwarz
As woodworkers dive into handwork, they usually start with a block plane, then the bench planes, the saws and the joinery planes.
Joinery planes – such as plow planes, router planes, shoulder planes and rabbeting planes – are some of the easiest planes to set up and use. Their irons are straighforward to sharpen (no curves needed), and because the tool doesn’t produce a show surface, you don’t need to be a maniac about the keenness of your cutting edges.
One of the most essential joinery planes is the moving fillister. It cuts a rabbet either across the grain or with the grain. And it can make a rabbet of almost any size thanks to its adjustable fence.
Moving fillisters are different than other planes in the rabbeting family in that its fence is adjustable (planes with a fixed fence are called standing fillisters), plus it can work across the grain because it has retractable nickers (planes without the nickers are just plain old rabbet planes).
The iron Stanley No. 78 is the most common vintage version of this tool, however I’m not fond of the form. The fence wobbles because of the way it is attached to the body, so the plane does a poor job in hard woods (in my experience). Record, by the way, fixed this problem with its metal version of this plane, though it’s a tough tool to find in North America.
This really is a case where the wooden versions of a plane are superior. Wooden-stock moving fillisters are fairly common in the secondary market, though they usually require some rehabbing to be usable. So what do you do?
You could ask Clark & Williams to make you one – they showed me an excellent moving fillister they make a couple years ago. You could buy an ECE from toolsforworkingwood.com. Or you could buy a new traditional one from Philip Edwards at Philly Planes in England.
Philip’s planes are excellent. I recently reviewed his miter plane plus a plane designed for raising panels for drawer bottoms. They both work like a charm. So it’s very exciting to me (and a good sign for hand work in general) that there is a new moving fillister on the market from Philip’s shop.
We’ve ordered one for our shop here, and I will offer a full report once it arrives. Until then, however, if you need a moving fillister, I can recommend Philip’s planes highly.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Want to learn more about joinery planes? Then definitely pick up a copy of “The Wooden Plane” by John M. Whelan.
When a young Thomas Lie-Nielsen set out to start making premium handplanes in the early 1980s, he launched his business with an adaptation of the Stanley No. 95 edge-trimming plane.
But Lie-Nielsen wasn't the first person to make this tool in bronze. That footnote goes to machinist Ken Wisner, who made the planes in small batches and sold them through the Garrett Wade catalog. When Wisner decided to get out of that business, he turned over his patterns to Lie-Nielsen, who took them to Maine and set up shop in a shack on his farm.
I've always wanted to own one of these Wisner planes – partly out of curiosity and partly out of my desire to own a piece of recent history. But they're hard to come by. And they're expensive when they do come up on eBay.
So this weekend, I got a little schoolgirl thrill when Jeff Skiver pulled a Wisner out of his bags of tools during a class on handplanes at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. He wasn't looking to sell it, and I won't tell you what he paid for it. Suffice it to say that Skiver practically stole it from a starving widow who had substantial medical bills.
The Wisner is an interesting piece of work. On the one hand, the main casting was nicely polished and the machined areas were crisp and clean. But the thumbscrew on the lever cap was black plastic (the screw itself was metal, however). And the main screw that joined the lever cap, iron and body casting was an off-the-shelf hex-head screw.
Wisner signed his name on the plane with some sort of rotary tool (perhaps a Dremel). And the blade was thinner than the Lie-Nielsen version.
Of course, when you are blazing a trail like Wisner was, you have to overlook details like this and appreciate the sheer fact that this plane exists. Plus, look at what this little plane led to in Warren, Me.
And if anyone has a Wisner plane they'd like to part with (for the sake of history, natch) please drop me a line.
— Christopher Schwarz
The fore plane is a traditional English tool used to get rough boards fairly flat so that you can then make them really flat with a jointer plane and ready to finish with a smoothing plane, scrapers and (sometimes) sandpaper.
Fore planes are supposed to be about 14" to 18" long. If you want to use an old metal plane as a fore plane, a No. 5 jack plane or No. 6 fore plane would be a good choice. I use a Hock Tools A2-steel replacement blade in my fore plane. A2 is a little harder to sharpen for me, but this modern steel takes a heck of a beating before it gives up, so it's perfect for a fore plane. I also have a couple wooden-bodied fore planes that are nice because their light weight makes them less tiring to use.
Fore planes are supposed to have a curved cutting edge and are used directly across and diagonal to the grain of your board. Most people understand the idea of working across the grain (it allows you to take a deeper cut without tear-out). But many people are flummoxed by sharpening the curve on the edge. In fact, I've had about a half dozen readers send me their irons and ask me to do it for them.
Because I don't want to open a sharpening service, here is how I grind and hone the curved edge of a fore plane's iron. It's a simple process. And if you take your time the first time you do it, I know that you will succeed.
This week I noticed that the edge of my metal fore plane was chipped up and the tool was getting quite hard to push. It was time to grind and hone a fresh edge. The first thing to do is mark the shape of the curve on the iron so I can replicate that shape. I use a curve that is an 8" radius. I've experimented with lots of curves between 10" and 6" radii. I like 8".
I have a wooden template that is the same width as my iron and has the curve shaped on one end. I place the template on flat face of the iron and mark the curve with an "extra fine" point Sharpie.
Place the template on your iron and trace its edge on your iron. A thin, consistent line is best.
Then I go to my grinder to remove all the nasty chipped-up metal. I keep my grinder's stock tool rest set to always grind a 25° bevel. I don't futz around with the tool rest. The first thing to do is to grind away the excess metal right up to your marked curve. This is done with the iron at 90° to the stone. I just balance the iron on the tool rest and go to town.
Grinding at 90° to the stone removes metal quickly to the shape you want and it creates a small flat on the edge of your iron. This is a good thing. The flat helps prevent your steel from overheating while you grind away the bevel at 25°. Thin steel heats up really quickly.
Hold the iron 90° to the wheel and show the edge to the iron. Remove all the steel right up to your Sharpie line. The first time you do this, take your time. It gets easy real quick.
When you get to the Sharpie line, put the iron flat on your tool rest and start grinding the bevel until the flat spot on the end is almost – repeat almost – gone. You remove the last little whisker of the flat on the sharpening stones.
Start by showing the middle of the iron to the grinder wheel. You'll feel when the bevel is flat on the stone. Then sweep the iron right to grind up to the left corner. Try to keep the bevel in full contact with the wheel the entire time. Then repeat this process and sweep left.
Continue to grind and watch the flat shrink. Don't use a lot of pressure when applying the iron to the wheel or you will cook your edge (it will get black).
 Show the center of the iron to the wheel and sweep left or right. Here I'm sweeping right to grind to the left corner.
Here is my completed edge, ready for honing.
Here is the flat left on the tip of that edge. The reflection makes it look bigger than it really is. It's a little less than 1/64".
You can then hone the edge freehand. The edge doesn't have to be perfect because the fore plane never produces a finished surface. However, you can use your cheap little side-clamp honing guide to help you (and your edge will look a lot sweeter, as well).
Put the iron in your honing guide and set the iron to hone a 30° secondary bevel. Place the iron on your coarse stone (#1,000-grit or coarser if you've got it). Put finger pressure hard on one corner of the iron and press that to the stone. Pull the guide toward you and shift your pressure to the other corner. This will feel awkward at first. But eventually you'll rock it smoothly and naturally.
Repeat this process by starting with all your finger pressure on the other corner. If you are doing this correctly you should see an X-shape appear on your stone. Then it's just like sharpening any tool.
Rock the edge back and forth as you move the jig. This might look hard.
It's not. It also tends to shape the wheel of your honing guide into a
slight barrel shape – which is a good thing. Remove the flat bit on the end of the iron – you'll know it's gone when you can feel a burr on the other face of the iron. Then move up the grits until you run out of grits or patience.
Now reassemble your chipbreaker and your plane. Sight down the sole of the plane and tweak the lateral-adjustment lever until the curve of the iron is in the center of the sole. This is easy to see.
When you are done sharpening you should have a nice even secondary bevel.
Then work directly across the grain of a board. Increase the projection of the iron until you are removing material quickly and can easily push the plane. The shavings should be thick – I shoot for 1/32"-thick with most woods.
You can probably take a larger shaving in a softwood, but I usually poop out if I try to take a shaving thicker than 1/32" – but yet, that's a lot of material for one stroke of a plane.
The fore plane is really useful for me, even though I have a nice powered planing machine. It allows me to remove material in a localized area with ease or to peel the edge off a rough board faster than my jointer (because I can work only the high spots). And it allows me to flatten boards and panels that are too wide for my jointer and planer.
— Christopher Schwarz
“After many vain attempts at ornamentation ‘on my own’ I learned that choice classic designs had been well thought out and established before my birth. It was for me to study them, to revel in their line and proportion until the spirit became my own and controlled my perception.”
-- Walter Rose, “The Village Carpenter”
Among all the many types of handplanes, it is the so-called moulding planes that generate the most confusion, consternation and frustration among beginning woodworkers.
Drawing a fair moulding profile, selecting the tools to cut it and actually proceeding with the work is enough to make many woodworkers cling to their collection of router bits forever.
If you’re curious about cutting mouldings by hand, then I heartily recommend a new DVD from Don McConnell and Lie-Nielsen Toolworks that will lay the groundwork for you to understand the tools and how they are wielded.
And as valuable as these lessons are, I think the most eye-opening aspect of the DVD is that you get to watch McConnell make several profiles from start to finish. Seeing the profiles appear stroke by stroke, plane by plane, is a convincing argument that the work is fairly straightforward and do-able. And plus, the results are more beautiful than anyone can achieve with a routed and sanded moulding.
McConnell is, in my opinion, one of the most knowledgeable scholars on early woodworking tools who is working today. Plus, McConnell spent many years as an interpreter at The Ohio Village, a professional hand-tool furniture-maker and a highly regarded ornamental carver in the Columbus, Ohio, area. I’ve always thought of him as the Indiana Jones of the hand tool world – his encyclopedic knowledge of early woodworking is backed by years of putting his book-smarts to use at the bench.
As a result, this entire DVD is a jewel. McConnell, now a planemaker at Clark & Williams, explains the basic anatomy of mouldings so you can understand the difference between Grecian and Roman shapes, and you can see how complex mouldings are in fact the assemblage of simple forms.
McConnell then demonstrates a couple basic complex moulding planes (the side bead and the ovolo) so you can see how a complete (usually simple) moulding can be created with one plane.
Then he moves into the hollows and rounds, which are the tools that you can use to create almost any shape or size of moulding. McConnell efficiently shows how to lay out a moulding on your work and then prepare the profile with cuts from either a rabbet, plow or moving fillister plane. Finally, he demonstrates how the hollows and rounds bring the final moulding to shape with little fuss if you have followed the correct procedures. Proper rabbets help guide your hollow and round planes as they do their work.
In addition to creating several mouldings, McConnell also demonstrates how to sharpen moulding plane irons and how to maintain (and fix) their cutting profiles. He also shows how to properly saw (and shoot) your moulding so it can be applied to your project. That is followed by an eye-opening discussion of snipe bill planes, one of the least understood wooden moulding planes in the traditional toolkit.
When you’re done watching the DVD, be sure to print out the accompanying glossary and bibliography on the disc. The glossary will help reinforce the names of all the shapes McConnell discusses in the DVD. And the bibliography suggests some books on furniture and tools that will help you build on the basic principles in the DVD so you can create well-proportioned, classic and crisp mouldings for your own work.
— Christopher Schwarz
Legacy Planeworks officially opened its doors on Tuesday and began selling kits that allow a home woodworker with no metalworking experience to build an English-style shoulder plane with naval brass sides, a steel sole and an exotic wood infill.
The company currently offers two sizes of shoulder planes – 1" wide and 3/4" wide – with prices starting at $425. And two more infill kits are on the drawing board: a chariot plane and a Norris-style A6 smoothing plane with a mechanical blade adjuster, says Marty Sivar, one of the owners of the company.
The kits have been in development for many months, Sivar says, and the parts are so finely machined that you can literally snap the metal dovetails in place when you take the parts out of the box.
"We wanted to offer a refined kit," Sivar said today in a phone interview, "not something you had to spend hours prepping the parts for assembly and cleaning them up."
The kits come with all the metal components you need (even the drill bits for boring the wood components). The home planemaker will need a ball pien hammer, a steel plate (or anvil) and a handful of files to complete the project, Sivar says. Legacy Planeworks also sells all the files required for planemaking on its web site: legacyplanes.com.
Some woodworkers might remember the kits that were sold by Shepherd Tool, a Canadian company run by two partners outside Toronto. After Shepherd's early success with its first Spiers-style smoothing plane kits, the company ran into some rocky times and shuttered its doors in early 2006 with a crowd of angry customers who were upset about a variety of problems, from not being able to get technical questions answered, kits that were missing parts, and credit cards that were charged with merchandise never shipped.
Sivar was one of those angry customers of Shepherd, and he said he and his partner, Ernie Barber, have set out to make sure that Legacy Planeworks is everything that Shepherd Tool was not.
Sivar says that the company's web site will not sell you a kit unless there are more than two in stock, and that every order will be shipped within two or three days of it being placed. Plus, Sivar says that Legacy now has plenty of kits on hand to sell right away (one of them is heading for our office for a full review, by the way). 
The kit components for a Legacy shoulder plane (both photos courtesy of Legacy Planeworks).
Every kit has a money-back guarantee and includes a 52-page instruction manual that includes many step photos that will walk the planemaker through the process. The manual, Sivar says, has taken a long time to develop and has been through many revisions to make the instructions as complete and foolproof as possible.
"I think our customers will be very satisfied from the minute they open the box," Sivar says.
Sivar has experience both as a woodworker and a metalworker. He started his career as a machinist and then went into the military. After a short stint as a corporate pilot, Sivar completed some marketing and management training and went to work for a petro-chemical company, where he is now an area manager and nearing retirement. Barber works in law enforcement and is an accomplished woodworker and carver who specializes in 18th-century furniture.
Sivar says all the plane components are going to be professionally made by other metalworking companies to Legacy's specifications; that will leave Sivar and Barber to focus on working with current customers and developing future products.
Personally, I'm quite pleased to see someone getting back into this business. I built several of the Shepherd kits, including a couple smoothing planes, a chariot plane, a shoulder plane and a panel plane. Despite the glitches (my kits were missing critical parts, too) the overall experience was fun and you learn a lot about plane mechanics by building one of the tools.
I think it's especially encouraging that Legacy has started out offering just the shoulder plane kit. Of all the kits I built, that one was the easiest to complete and will likely give would-be planemakers a good taste of the process.
In the coming weeks, I'll post photos of the new kit and my progress building it.
— Christopher Schwarz
When I was first learning to use a handplane, I was both intimidated and skeptical of some of the claims made by the "handplane gods."
The gods claimed they could plane any species of wood, with any grain direction and with any sort of figure in the wood without the wood tearing out. So what was the secret of the gods?
Sometimes it was the tool (usually an infill plane, but sometimes a Bedrock that had spent some time in a peyote hut in New Mexico getting in touch with its inner frog). Or sometimes it was their sharpening skill and waterstones (#100,000-grit stones, or perhaps the trail of split hydrogen atoms they left in their wake.) Sometimes the secret was their skill – they could plane any board with a piece of tin foil taped to a Monchhichi doll.
But I was skeptical, because these boasts were never accompanied by photographic evidence.
So here's a bit of truth about my own work. I've been handplaning boards for more than 15 years now, and I still fight and struggle with tear-out, even in some domestic species. Usually, the way I deal with tear-out is to choose my wood with extra care and stay away from boards that are going to give me trouble. Careful planning makes for easy planing.
After that, I must say that I have the most success in removing tear-out by using a plane with an iron pitched at a high angle (usually 60° to 62° – whatever my honing guide can manage).
This week I'm building a blanket chest for the Summer 2008 issue of Woodworking Magazine, and the wood is some kicking tiger maple that I bought from a fellow woodworker's private stash. While machining all the boards, the grain tore out in some critical spots.
Then I flattened all the boards and assembled panels with my jointer plane. It was freshly sharpened, pitched at 45° and set for a fairly light cut – .003" or .004" I'd say. The tear-out didn't recede much, but I didn't panic.
That's because I have a plane with a 62° angle of attack that is for just this purpose. The one shown on my bench is the Veritas Bevel-up Smoothing Plane, but don't take that as an endorsement of that single brand. I have a Lie-Nielsen version at home (the low-angle jack) set up identically. And I can even get this 62° angle on a standard old-school handplane by honing a back-bevel on the iron.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that it's not the tool as much as it is the angle.
The photos show the results of the high-pitch plane. The tear-out took about eight passes to remove with the tool set to take an extremely thin shaving. I don't think I've entered the realm of the handplaning gods, but when you have small victories like this, it sure makes you feel like one.
— Christopher Schwarz
One of the best things about building old-style workbenches (like Andre Roubo's bench above) is that there are little lessons you learn by using them. At times, you learn the lesson unconsciously and it takes a couple years for you to even learn that you learned it.
This morning I was flattening the panels for the blanket chest I’m building for the Summer 2008 issue by planing them directly across the grain — what Joseph Moxon calls “traversing” in his book the “Mechanick Exercises.”
So I’m minding my own beeswax while traversing, and I notice something I’ve been doing for a while without really thinking. While traversing, I wedge my left foot under the stretcher, and I use that foot to help pull my body back on the return stroke.
So I paused and I pulled my left foot out from under the stretcher and tried planing with both feet planted on the floor instead. That felt a lot like working. So I wedged my foot back under the stretcher and returned to work.
Did Roubo design this workbench with this little detail in mind? Likely, no. But the stretcher’s location has always been curious to me – it’s only 5" off the floor. Other benches I’ve worked on (and constructed) put the stretcher considerably higher off the floor. If you have a low stretcher, give this a try and let me know what you think.
— Christopher Schwarz
Memory is a funny thing, especially in my family. But I swear that during my last days as a college undergrad there was a car dealership in Chicago that offered a special deal to its customers.
Buy a car and get a Yugo for just $1.
If there is a Yugo of the woodworking world, it has to be the Stanley planes that are called “the transitionals.” These poor suckers have a wooden body with a metal Bailey-style adjustment mechanism that works a bit like an Australian toilet (that is, they spin backwards than what we are accustomed to).
Most modern woodworkers first encounter these planes through Patrick Leach’s venerable web site “Patrick Leach’s Blood & Gore.” This site offers commentary on almost every plane made by Stanley. Tool collectors print out every page of this enormous site. They put the pages in a three-ring binder. They live by the advice, which is, for the most part, totally dead on the money.
For example, Leach contends that the Bed Rock series of planes are overrated (bingo). He laments the fiberboard planes (fair enough, but so do small children, invalids and lunatics). And he mocks the No. 55 (which deserves it). But he also runs down the No. 6, a plane that I find quite useful. And he advocates the ritual burning of almost all the transitional planes. He even has photos!
Let me be the first person to say that the transitional planes aren’t perfect. Many of the defects he points out are dead-on. But some of these tools have some distinct advantages that, when realized, are impressive. Here’s my take. 
Downside: The adjustment knob is too puny.
The transitional planes are excellent for some jobs, and are fairly worthless for others. You just have to think about it for a minute. Personally, I think the transitional planes that are jointer planes and fore planes are outstanding. I’m not so fond, however, of the many transitionals that are smoothing planes.
Let’s take a look at the way these planes work for a minute and I think you’ll see where I’m coming from.
In essence, these planes marry a Bailey-style blade adjuster with a wooden body. The advantages of this sort of tool are:
1. The sole is tremendously easy to true compared to a metal plane.
2. The tool is lightweight, thanks to the wooden body.
3. You can purchase enormously long and accurate jointer planes (up to 30") in this form because the wood is so inexpensive.
4. You can dial in your shaving thickness with great accuracy thanks to the patented Bailey adjuster.
5. You get the same sweet wood-on-wood feel as you would when working with a traditional wooden plane.
The disadvantages are:
1. Closing up the mouth of this tool is a stupid exercise in shimming under the blade with cardboard.
2. The tote and knob are poorly attached to the plane (most are wobbly).
3. The blade-adjustment mechanism works opposite of the same adjuster on a Stanley metal plane – you spin the wheel counter-clockwise to extend the blade.
4. The blade-adjustment wheel is too puny.
If you carefully sort through these advantages and disadvantages you’ll see why these planes make excellent jointers and fore planes. First, the soles are easy to true – far easier than truing the sole of a metal plane. When I fixed up my first jack plane, I spent days (yes, days) lapping the sole to dead flat. I want those days back.
When I flatten the sole of a transitional plane, I set my power jointer to the lightest cut I can manage and make a pass on the plane’s sole. Then it’s dead-flat and done. When readers ask me how to flatten the sole of a metal jointer plane, I’m at a total loss. I’ve never been able to manage it to my satisfaction. I just make the sole worse, turning it into an iron banana. With a fore plane and a jointer plane, the mouth aperture is fairly unimportant. So the fact that it gets larger as you true the sole is immaterial. However, it’s this problem that makes the transitionals troublesome as smoothing planes. You can stupidly adjust the plane’s frog forward to close up the smoother’s mouth, but that just makes the iron chatter because the wooden bed and the iron bed that hold the iron are then out of alignment. The best way to close up the mouth on a transitional is by patching the mouth with an extra piece of wood. 
Downside: The metal frog and wooden bed are two separate pieces. Close the mouth (or open it) and you'll make chatter, not shavings.
The light weight of these planes makes them excellent jointer and fore planes. They are easy to wield, even if you have the arms of a little girl (of which I am guilty).
And you don’t have to create a perfect surface with these two classes of tools – that’s the job of the smoothing plane. So if you have a jointer plane iron with a few pits in it that leaves a few plane tracks behind, then so be it. The smoothing plane (or Fein sander, or Timesaver wide-beltsander, or the abject blindness of your loved ones) will fix that.
But here is why you really should buy these planes. They are dirt, dirt cheap. The No. 32 shown in these photos was $35, and I overpaid. You can get transitionals really cheap. In fact, some tool dealers think they are too lame to even sell them.
Some people give them away like Yugos.
— Christopher Schwarz
If you are one of the thousands of people who have taken a chair class at Michael Dunbar's "The Windsor Institute," then you have certainly used one of the travishers or spoon-bottomed planes from Crown Planes.
The makers of these fine tools, Leon Robbins, passed away earlier this month. If you don't know the interesting story of how Robbins came to make chairmaking tools, I highly recommend you link over to Dunbar's blog, where he has posted a fitting tribute to Robbins, one of the pioneering modern planemakers.
The good news here is that Crown Planes is still in business and making high-quality tools for making furniture and chairs. Jimmy White, who now runs the business, has promised to loan us a few tools in the coming months so we can publish a review of his wares.
— Christopher Schwarz
Whenever I'm in the presence of a piece of furniture that is designed and built to perfection – such as a chair by Brian Boggs – it is a thoroughly humbling experience. Like I should just put my tools up for sale on eBay and take up a serious hobby of finally mastering tiddlywinks.
And after a few years of using planes from Clark & Williams, I should, by all rights, feel the same way. The planes that come from this planemaker's workshop in Eureka Springs, Ark., are as perfect a piece of woodworking as you will ever find. Every detail, inside and out, of the planes is crisp. The surfaces of the beech tools look as good as any piece of fine furniture at Winterthur. And the overall design aesthetic of the tools connects you directly to the best 18th-century British planemakers.
But here's the thing about these tools. When I use them I'm not humbled. I am, instead, inspired to push my furniture-making skills to their absolute limit. To make my furniture look as good as these planes look (and work).
I'm not alone. Whenever we have visitors in the shop (or whenever I teach), I put a Clark & Williams 3/16" beading plane in their hands and show them how to use it. Within four or five strokes, they are hooked, usually forever.
I've owned a small coffin-shaped smoother from Clark & Williams for more than five years. But it wasn't until almost two years ago that I became totally ensnared. I got to borrow an entire set of hollow and round moulding planes, plus, I logged some time on the company's plow plane (for cutting grooves) and moving fillister plane.
The list of moulding planes I want has gotten to the point that I am considering teaching more woodworking classes somehow just to get the scratch up to buy them. Don't get me wrong. I don't think these tools are expensive at all. Considering the craftsmanship and handwork involved (not to mention the performance) I consider the Clark & Williams planes to be a bargain. A half-set of hollow and round planes (that's 18 planes) is $2,455. That's $137 per plane. Buying them one at a time is, obviously, more expensive.
Now, if you are interested in these planes but cannot afford the tools, your gut reaction might be to buy old moulding planes instead. This can be a perilous path. For every four moulding planes I buy off eBay, usually one is serviceable. The rest have warped wooden stocks, hopeless wedges or irons that verge on worthless.
So instead, I have a second option for you: Make your own. Larry Williams has a new three-hour DVD that is just out from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks that explains the process. Not just making the wooden stock, but about how to design the plane, how to sharpen and use the planemaker's tools and how to fabricate the irons. The DVD is a time capsule of traditional methods that have all but been lost and is enjoyable to watch even if you don't want to build a plane.
A few weeks ago a couple readers visited our shop, and one of them brought a couple of his Karl Holtey planes. Holtey makes the finest metal planes I've ever seen. Every construction detail is perfect, no matter how closely you look. We set up one of the Holtey planes and started making shavings on the nastiest Jatoba board we could find.
But the hero of the day was my little 3/16" beading plane. After making their first bead, both readers were ready to order one for their shop. That beading plane is as perfect as anything I've seen from Holtey's shop. And I've seen quite a few.
If you ever have the opportunity to get your hands one a Clark & Williams plane at a woodworking show or in a friend's shop, do not pass up the chance. The planes were my ticket to the next stage of craftsmanship. And they might well be yours.
— Christopher Schwarz
Kelly Mehler has opened the registration for his 2008 classes, including three classes that I’ll be teaching on precision handsawing, planecraft and building the Holtzapffel workbench from Issue 8 of Woodworking Magazine.
There are still spots available (as of this posting). If the classes fill up, I encourage you to sign up for the waiting list. People’s schedules change and so many of the people on the waiting list get in.
Before I drone on about the classes I’m teaching, I also want to point out that Larry Williams and Don McConnell of Clark & Williams will be teaching a class on making wooden moulding planes at Kelly Mehler’s school on Feb. 25-29. I would take this class if I had the time in my schedule available. These two gentlemen are a living treasure, and the way they build these tools is without compromise or shortcut.
OK, now for the self-serving part of the entry that helps keep my children in Nikes.
Precision Handsawing: March 1-2
 This is one of my favorite weekend classes to teach because I think there is so much to learn about sawing and sawtooth technology. During the weekend, we’ll be learning all about an English-style of sawing (though you don’t have to use Western saws to do it). And we’ll be building a traditional sawbench. That’s a good thing, because I keep giving my sawbenches away to woodworkers as gifts.
Building Furniture With Handplanes: June 14-15
This is a new weekend class that I’ve developed based on requests from other woodworkers. Many handplane classes focus on the bench planes but they ignore the joinery planes and how to actually use the tools to build furniture. In this class, we’ll learn a bit about sharpening and a great deal about using both bench planes and joinery planes, such as rabbet planes, plow planes, router planes and shoulder planes. And we’re going to use all these planes to build a Shaker silverware tray.
Build the Holtzapffel Workbench: Sept. 8-13
This six-day class is going to be the highlight of my fall. We’re going to build the Holtzapffel Cabinetmaker’s Workbench, the bench on the cover of Issue 8 and the bench I use in my shop at home. I’ve modified the construction process slightly so we’ll be building benches that can be knocked down and shipped back to your home when we’re done. You’ll be able to build the bench in ash, yellow pine or maple. We’re going to source all the wood for you and do the brutal machining before you arrive so the first day we’ll be gluing up the top.
If you have any questions about the classes, feel free to drop me a line. Also, I’ll soon be posting my schedule with the Marc Adams School of Woodworking as well.
— Christopher Schwarz
Preparing small tabletops or irregular-shaped tops for finishing can be difficult with handplanes. If the top has a lot of mass, you can usually count on friction to help hold the top in place. Or you can screw it down from the underside – assuming the underside is not a show surface.
But sometimes the best solution is to make some cauls to grip your work, which is what I did this morning in the shop to plane the top of some 18"-diameter tabletops for the next issue of Woodworking Magazine. The cauls are made from the scrap parts that fell off when I cut the tops to rough shape on the band saw.
Then I skipped the scrap pieces through my planer to reduce their thickness (I also could have used a jack plane). Then I bored 3/4"- diameter holes in the cauls so they would press-fit over my 3/4"- diameter round dogs in my benchtop. Finally, I pinched the top between the two cauls using my wagon vise (though any end vise can do the trick).
When I've done this on workbenches with square dogs, the solution is to cut the pointy end of the caul so it is flat. Then you brace the flat against your square dog.
No matter how you rig your cauls, pinching the work between two cauls has some advantages, as long as you don't use too much pressure. With two cauls you can rotate the top to work cross-grain if necessary or move the top so it's more convenient to plane.
This arrangement works great with belt sanders. It's not necessary if you use a random-orbit sander to prepare your work. Then you can just place the work on a blanket and get to work.
— Christopher Schwarz
Whenever I get into some serious handwork, I always try to boil down the processes so that I can 1) remember it myself and 2) occasionally explain it to others (including a couple children who are slack-jawed with boredom).
Today as I was cleaning up the half-lap joints for the Stickley 603 tabouret on my workbench, I was reminded of one of the guiding principles: Don't work the end grain unless you have to. End grain is unruly. It is usually confined to small surfaces that are hard to work accurately. And working it poorly will rip out chunks of precious face grain as well.
This is why I don't own any side-rabbet planes. In all my years of working wood, I have honestly never encountered a situation where I had to have those tools and no other tool would do. (Boy they look cool, though.) If a dado is too skimpy, I'll thin the mating shelf's face grain instead. The face grain is so much easier to plane, my tools don't have to be as sharp, my work is less at risk and it is another chance to remove tear-out in the shelf.
So when I was fitting the first half-lap shown in the photo above, I cut my shoulders just a hair tight. So I took two swipes of the edge of the mating piece. Perfect fit.
One side item: In the magazine world, we're supposed to ignore our competitors. It's a time-honored tradition. We're supposed to pretend they don't exist so that readers don't flee our product in droves. So with that in mind, I'm actively ignoring an interesting new workbench plan in the newest issue of Woodsmith magazine (No. 173). I suggest you also ignore their quite excellent and robust plans for a wagon vise (what they call a tail vise in the book) in that issue.
– Christopher Schwarz
Let’s talk about the historial and controversial scrub plane. First a little history, then the controversy.
Whenever I talk about the fore plane, the handplane used to get boards to rough dimension and flatness, there’s always someone handy who asks if the fore plane is the same as a scrub plane.
They’re not the same. A scrub plane has a shorter sole and a cutter that has an edge that is far more rounded. Traditionally, scrub planes were a European tool (the Germans called them Bismarks or Cow planes), and fore planes were an English tool. Yet Stanley made two metal-bodied scrub planes between 1896 and 1962, and Lie-Nielsen and Veritas make them today. So confusion abounds as to which tool one should use for roughing lumber to build furniture.
You can use both. I think the longer sole of the fore plane makes it easier to get a board flat, but I’ve seen people who can do wonders with a scrub.
OK, that’s the history. A few years ago I wrote an article for the Fine Tool Journal that discussed a little theory of mine that the metal scrub plane was more useful for working down the edges of boards on a job site than for working down the faces. And I have taken a beating for that article from a few people. And hey, that’s fine. I like a good airing of the grievances. (The original article is available at Wiktor Kuc’s fine site.)
Recently a reader, Jeff Ross, passed me a few entries from old Stanley catalogs that helps shed further light on the scrub plane and its historical role. It turns out that it was used both to remove wood from edges and from faces. Here is the text from an 1898 Stanley catalog:
“It is particularly adapted for roughing down work before using a jack or other Plane.”
OK, that sounds like it was used in a cabinetshop for processing rough lumber: Point: Critics. Let’s read an entry from a 1914 catalog:
“With these planes the user can quickly plane down to a rough dimension any board that is too wide to conveniently rip with a hand saw, an operation that is sometimes called ‘hogging.’ ”
OK, that sounds like working on edges. Point: me, mostly, I think. And then the 1958 catalog:
“A time and energy saver! When you have to remove quite a bit of wood from the edge or surface of a board – not enough to rip with a saw but a great deal to plane – use a Scrub Plane.... Use it to back out base boards, true up sub flooring, size rough timber, clean gritty boards etc.”
OK, that sounds like carpentry work, mostly, a view supported by a retired union carpenter I interviewed a few years ago. So I’d say that the scrub plane was probably used for any operation that was rough. Use it on edges. Use it on faces. Use it anywhere you need to remove a bunch of material in a hurry.
Any more theories or evidence are always welcome.
— Christopher Schwarz
Shooting boards are one of those hand-tool jigs that people talk about (a lot) but few people actually know much about. Whenever I teach, students always clamor for a demonstration of the device, even when I'm teaching something that doesn't directly relate (sawing tenons, sharpening, steaming salmon).
Recently, Bill Kohr at Craftsman Studios in San Diego loaned me a ramped shooting board that he sells in his catalog and store to try. So here's a short review of the shooting board and a brief tutorial on using it to trim end grain.
First things first: Why do you need one? Shooting boards are one of the most powerful trimming tools in my shop. They are the only tool, machine or jig that I have that reduces the length of a board in .001" increments. They adjust the ends of boards so they are square, even if you have only 1/32" or less to remove. Trimming cuts like this can be tricky on power equipment because the spinning saw blade can deflect in the cut, giving you an inconsistent cut through the thickness.
The shooting board (some call it a "chute board") holds your work in position and 90° to a track that a handplane rides in. Push the plane in the track and it will trim the end of the board until it is square. (Note: There also are shooting boards designed for long grain, but I generally plane these freehand or use the tail vise and dogs to do the job – but that's an entry for another day.)
The shooting board shown here is made by Micheal Connor in Australia from New Guinea Rosewood, a dense and stable material. This shooting board is unusual in that the area that holds the work is ramped about 4° along its length. This ramping does two things: It spreads out the wear on your plane's iron a little. For example, a 3/4" x 6"-wide piece of stock will wear an area of your iron that's 1-3/32" instead of a 3/4"-wide area of your iron. Plus, the ramp makes the plane a bit easier to push through the end grain because the ramp creates a shearing cut.
Having the ramp is nice, but I wouldn't call it a do-or-die feature. My shop-made shooting board is flat and made from plywood. It's fine. I just have to push a little harder and sharpen more often.
The downside to the ramp is that you have to do some extra rigging to support long workpieces that stick out off the shooting board. I have an adjustable planing stop on one of our benches that can be angled to support the work at 4°. Another option is to make a block of wood that has a 4° ramp – easy work on a band saw.
The Connor shooting board is well made and dead-nuts accurate. The fence, which is the most critical component of the jig, is secured in a dado in the ramp, so it's not ever going to move. My only real quibble with the jig is that the finish on the fence and ramp allow your work to slide around more than I like. I'd put a layer of stick-on sandpaper on the fence, which is what I have on my shopmade shooting board.
Shooting Board Use
There are many ways to go about using a shooting board. David Charlesworth has an excellent DVD on the topic that explores his simple shooting board and the techniques to use it. I've used his shooting board and his techniques with excellent results. But perhaps because of my American-ness, I do it differently. Charlesworth takes a pass with the plane, then pushes the work up against the sole of the tool and makes another pass. He repeats this until he makes a full-width cut and is at his destination length. I usually use his technique when reducing boards in length, but do it a bit differently when correcting the angle on the end of a board.
So I start with my out with a board I've trimmed on our out-of-whack (surprise!) miter saw. It's out by a couple degrees. I put plane in the track (I always use a heavy plane with an iron that is sharpened straight across). Then I put the jointed edge of the board against the shooting board's fence and show the wonky end to the plane's sole. That shows me which corner is high and which corner is low.
Now relieve the corner of the work that will go against the fence. Cut a tiny bevel with a chisel to reduce blow-out on the end. If I am working to a knife line I'll chisel the corner to that line. 
I take the plane off the track and position the board so the low corner is flush to the track and the high corner stick out over the track. Then I push the work against the fence (push hard!) and then place the plane in the track and begin planing. Focus on pushing the plane down and forward. Use just enough force against your workpiece to keep the tool in the cut. If you push too much to the side you'll push the work out of position instead of cutting it.
When the plane stops cutting, the edge is square. Check your work to confirm.
The Connor shooting board is available in both left- and right-hand versions and is $95. For woodworkers who don't want to build one or question their ability to do so, I think it's an excellent way to get a jump-start on shooting.
— Christopher Schwarz
To most handplane users there are three principal ways to adjust the cutter in the tool: You can use a Bailey-style adjuster made popular by the U.S.-made Stanley planes, you can use a Norris-style adjuster made popular by T. Norris & Sons in its English infill planes, or you can use a mallet and tap the thing into position.
For years the debate had raged about which sort of adjustment mechanism is best (the American, the English or the Neanderthal). Me, I prefer the Bailey-style adjuster in metal-bodied planes, but that’s not the reason I’m writing this. Instead, it’s to explore a little wrinkle about the history of the Norris-style adjuster. As tool collector and carpenter Carl Bilderback told me: “Norris might have made that adjuster popular, but they didn’t invent it.”
Exhibit A is the Stanley No 12 Victor “Pocket Plane,” made by Stanley between 1879 and 1884. Bilderback showed me this plane from his collection in May, and I was intrigued. After taking the sucker apart, it’s clear that the adjuster is indeed almost identical to a so-called Norris-style adjuster, which wasn’t patented in England until 1913 (Patent No. 11526-13). Leonard Bailey patented his adjuster in 1878 (you can read the original patent on Google patents or download it: IMPROVEMENT_IN_CARPENTERSJ_PLANES.pdf (77.97 KB)
The adjuster on the No. 12 works exactly like the adjuster on my Norris A5 smoothing plane. There are two threaded sleeves that (with the help of a couple studs) control both the projection of the cutter and its position in the mouth of the tool. 
The No. 12’s adjuster works quite well. Bilderback had even sharpened up the blade on it and let me use the little guy for a bit. It was pretty sweet. In fact, it was so sweet that toolmaker Paul Hamler developed a keen interest in the plane and asked to borrow the tool so he could make a copy of it.
So perhaps we need to start calling both types of mechanical adjusters “Bailey-style” adjusters. (I really doubt that will happen.) But this little bit of research actually opens the door to some more research (if you’ve ever known an academic, you know that this is always the case, even when the additional research would be really uninteresting). Dig into the description of Bailey’s patent for the No. 12, and he admits that he wasn’t the first to come up with this idea for an adjuster, though he doesn’t name the person who beat him to the idea. Curious.
— Christopher Schwarz
Some manufacturers require a thousand square feet of booth space to show you the new tools they are going to introduce before the end of the year. Others require you to simply push the water glasses aside on the dinner table to see the new line.
This evening the editors of Popular Woodworking had dinner with Robin Lee, president of Lee Valley Tools, and his spouse, Lucie. We brought our appetites. Robin brought a bag of new handplanes and tools that he pulled out one after another. First there was a round of beer. Then came the new router plane and some new rulers. Salads. Squirrel-tail planes. Bread. The long-awaited plow plane. (While I had salmon for dinner, this tool was the main course for me.)
Plus, Robin shared lots of information about the products you are going to see appearing in the catalogs in the coming months. Just remember this: You are among the first to see some of these tools, so the photographs aren’t my best (a bedspread is a poor photographic sweep). And that you should be patient when trying to get your hands on them. With that in mind, here’s some of the really cool stuff.
Veritas Small Router Plane
The Veritas Router Plane is one of the company’s most finely made tools, in my opinion. So I’m pleased to report that the Veritas Small Router plane is another winner. This is a closed-throat router, and it reminds me more of the routers built by pattermakers than it does of any historical model.
Here are some details: The small-scale router is ideal for cleaning out shallow grooves or recesses, such as hinge mortises. The 1/4"-wide blade is simple to adjust up and down using a knurled brass knob threaded through the body. Loosen the knob to adjust the blade and nothing happens. Yup. Nothing. That’s because of a wave washer that keeps the blade in position quite well, even with the blade’s locking mechanism loosened.
Nudge the blade and it shifts in position. Then lock the sucker back up. The router is quite comfortable to hold with the tips of your fingers. And the 3-1/4"-wide and 2-1/4"-deep body is made from ductile iron; the sole is flattened with a special lapping process that makes it dead flat. In addition to the standard position in the mouth of the tool, the blade also can be adjusted for use in bullnose work. The price is $45 (U.S.). Lee said this tool should be ready by Sept. 1. 
Other cool planes and accessories in the works:
• Two Squirrel-handled Planes: Based on the “Little Victor” handplane released recently, the company is expanding the line of tools with these two new palm-sized planes. One is quite similar to the Little Victor except it has a nice palm-rest that looks much like the curled tail of a squirrel. The sole is flat and the blade-clamping mechanism is the same as on the “Little Victor.” (Read a review of this plane on our blog.)
The second plane has the same body style but the sole is curved, like that on the Stanley Model-Makers Plane. However, the curvature on the sole of the Lee Valley version is not as extreme. The side-to-side radius is 1-1/2". Front-to-back radius: 12".
Both planes measure 3-3/8" long at the sole, 4-7/8" long overall and 1-3/8" wide. Pricing: The pair will be sold for an introductory price of $65. After that, the planes will be $36 for the flat-soled tool and $42 for the curved one.
• A set of Phi Rulers: These cool rulers allow you to draw Golden Rectangles using the Golden Section (a proportion of 1 to 1.618). The rulers work like a CenterPoint ruler with a direct-reading scale. Translation: No math! You use one edge of the ruler to draw the longer dimension of the project, then you use the Phi ruler to generate the shorter one. You also can start with the smaller dimension of the rectangle and determine the longer side. A fair number of woodworkers use the Golden Section in designing furniture as this ration of 1 to 1.618 is pleasing to our eyes.
Also, Lee says that his staff prepared a 16-page instruction manual for the rulers that covered the history of the Golden Section and explored its application. Lee said, with a laugh, that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to send a 16-page instruction sheet with a ruler, so they’re going to post that on the web site.
The price of the rulers is right: A set of 6", 12" 18" and 24" is $15.95. (Available soon, if not now.)
• Veritas Small Plow Plane: The highlight was getting to see the much-anticipated Veritas plow plane, which is based loosely on the Record #044 plow plane. The plow plane is still a useful plane today for making the grooves for drawers bottoms and for small-scale box and door work – grooves for panels in rails and stiles. This plane (which was not ready for me to photograph) has a streamlined design.
Unlike other plow planes, the rear tote is wood instead of metal, which feels nice to the hand. The fence is designed to encourage the proper grip of the tool. And the way that the fence is held fast has more to do with the technology surrounding router bits than with historic tools. Think: router collet. Then think: very cool.
The Veritas Small Plow Plane should be available by the end of September. It will come standard with an A2 1/4"-wide blade and sell for $199. You also will be able to purchase the plane with four additional blades (1/8" up to 3/8") for $245, or purchase individual blades.
I didn’t get to use the plow plane (a couple key parts were plastic, plus we were in a restaurant), but the overall profile of the plow is curvier and more fluid than I expected. It was a bit hard to hand back over the table.
• A 30th Anniversary Plane: To celebrate the company’s 30th anniversary, Lee Valley is going to make a limited edition stainless steel edge plane. Lee says they are going to make 300 of them (using the lost wax process) and then destroy the molds. The plane looks like a cross between the company’s bronze version of the edge-trimming plane and they company’s more recent ductile iron version. No word on pricing or availability (and that’s my fault – I forgot to ask).
• The Veritas Hold-Down is getting an accessory – an optional shorter post. This will be a boon for people who don’t have a lot of extra space below their benchtops but still want to use a hold-down. The post is 5-1/2" long and will cost $7.20.
— Christopher Schwarz
Long-time toolmaker Paul Hamler has developed a new device that can turn many handplanes (both vintage and new) into a scraping plane that is easier to set up, tune and use than any other scraping plane I’ve used.
I’ve been working with a pre-production version of this scraping insert – which simply replaces the frog on your plane – for about three weeks now. And already I’m convinced that I want one in my personal toolkit and I’ve placed an order with Hamler. This is despite the fact that neither the price (an estimated $125 to $150) nor the delivery date (some time later in 2007) is yet firm.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. There are lots of questions that first must be answered about this unusual piece of equipment and why it might belong in your shop. Some readers might even wonder why anyone should spend money on a scraping plane when a card scraper can be had for $7 to do the same job. (The reason is that a card scraper is more likely to dish your surface, leaving ugly ripples that show up when you apply a film finish. Scraper planes don't do that.)
In fact, one of the first questions is why bother with this scraping insert when there’s another one available from Lee Valley Tools. Good question. The interesting answer is that the Veritas Scraping Plane Insert was invented by Hamler (he, Leonard Lee and John S. Lynn are listed as the inventors on the 1996 patent papers). Hamler says he thought the design and materials of the original could be improved upon and so he developed this new insert and is producing and selling it himself.
And indeed, this new insert is almost nothing like the Veritas version. Here’s how it works:
The insert fits into the wide-bodied Bailey-pattern and Bed Rock-pattern planes made by Stanley – the Nos. 4-1/2, 5-1/2, 6 and 7. The Bed Rock version also will fit Lie-Nielsen wide-bodied planes of the same sizes.
To install the insert you remove the entire frog assembly of your plane and replace it with Hamler’s device. Tighten the plane’s frog mounting screws and the job is done. The scraper, a thin 2-1/2"-wide piece of steel, drops into the tool and is secured with a single thumbscrew. This looks and feels just like Stanley’s old scraper planes, such as the Nos. 12, 112 and 212. But this is where the similarity to the old (and existing new) tools ends.
Intuitive Controls
The way you adjust Hamler’s scraping insert is truly ingenious and improves upon more than 100 years of doing things the hard way. What’s the hard way? If you own a scraping plane, you already know the answer. You adjust the cut of a traditional scraping plane by pitching the scraper backward and forward. Tipping the scraper forward makes the cut deeper and more aggressive. Tipping it back has the opposite effect.
One of the most frustrating things about the old mechanism is that it’s a true pain to change the angle. You change it by loosening two jam nuts. Then you twist one to tip the tooling forward or twist the other tip it back. Then you have to retighten the two jam nuts and test your cut. If you don’t get it the first time (and you won’t) then it’s back to the jam nuts for another round of righty-tighty time.
Hamler’s insert replaced the forward jam nut with a strong spring. So to adjust the scraper forward you turn the knob counter-clockwise and take a cut. To move the scraper back you turn the knob clockwise and take a cut. No jam nuts. No overshooting your mark. It works and feels much more like using a bench plane than the torture device that is the No. 112’s mechanism.
So how does Hamler get away with removing that forward jam nut? Isn’t it necessary to keep the insert rigid during the cut? Nope. The forward jam nut is a gill slit or an appendix. You need only one nut to keep the insert rigid because rigidity is important only when the tool is cutting – and that’s what the rear knob does. The spring keeps all the parts in tension so things aren’t flopping around annoyingly on the return stroke.
But About That Length…
The other curious aspect of the insert is that Hamler made it for (and demonstrates it in) a jointer plane body. That’s a 22"-long plane. Traditional scraper planes are much more like smoothing planes (the No. 112 is about 9" long). Why do you need a scraper insert in a jointer plane?
I haven’t talked to Hamler about this specifically, so he might have another opinion on it. But here are my thoughts. Scraper planes excel at dealing with large surfaces that have a lot of grain problems. I use them especially when dealing with glued-up tabletops. When you glue up a top, the first order of business is to arrange the boards to best appearance. But that might involve a lot of boards that have grain running in opposite directions.
Handplaning a top like this is a massive pain. And getting the seams right is enough to drive one to the random-orbit sander. But a scraper plane can generally ignore grain reversals. So you can flatten the top with a jointer plane and then follow up with a jointer-sized scraper with no problem. In other words, just skip the smoothing plane when the deck is stacked against you and go right to the scraper plane.
This is a time-saver in unexpected ways. Typically, I’d try to deal with a top first with a jointer plane, then a high-angle smooth plane, then a card scraper to deal with localized tear-out, then sandpaper to blend the planed and scraped surfaces together. With the Hamler insert I can go from jointer plane to jointer scraper to a bit of hand sanding.
If you like the shorter format, you can always put the insert in a No. 4-1/2 and it will be much like a No. 112. But I like the extra mass of the No. 6 that I have the prototype in. Plus, the longer plane will result in a flatter surface than a shorter plane or the washboarding that comes with a card scraper in inexperienced hands.
Another objection that some woodworkers might make is that you can convert a bench plane, HNT Gordon plane or bevel-up plane to a scraping plane using various tricks (such as large back bevels, turning the iron over or honing a very steep secondary bevel). All of these work; I’ve tried them. But they don’t allow you to change the pitch of the tool forward and back, and that’s useful when dealing with different species and different hooks on the scraper. The Hamler insert handles this task with enormous ease. Plus, the Hamler insert can hold scrapers of different thicknesses so you can choose a thick one for aggressive work or a thin one for light cuts in tricky burls.
The pre-production model shown in these photos is utilitarian-looking, according to Hamler. The production version will have more spit and polish. Believe that. If you’ve ever seen any of Hamler’s other work (he specializes in miniature tools), it’s impressive.
Hamler doesn’t have a web site, but you can contact him via e-mail at hamlertools@alltel.net to inquire about getting your name on the list for one of these tools.
— Christopher Schwarz
While my blog might pinch your checkbook on occasion, Konrad Sauer's new blog is a mugger in a dark alley with a Bowie knife. Yes, planemaker Konrad Sauer is now a blogger.
Oh sure, he lures you in with a hilarious story about the mummified squirrels in his house. Then there's a little entry about our trip to John Sindelar's hand tool event (for the record, our desperate search for a decent beer in northern Indiana was much more tragic than Konrad lets on. Note to self: Must blog about monkeys, fires and Corona – the other Guinness).
But then he wallops you with a photo of his newest little jewel. A high-angle, no-chipbreaker, toteless smoother that absolutely stole the show at Sindelar's. Several people (who shall remain nameless) ordered this plane. I am not on that list yet.
I got to use this little beauty and it works and feels as good as it looks. You can use it one-handed if you please. Or you can cradle it between both hands and coax out sweet sweet gossamer shavings from the escapement. I would say the shavings come from the mouth, but I couldn't find one on the plane.
Konrad plans to add an entry to his blog every week. So get in line at the plasma center (behind me). It's going to sting a bit.
— Christopher Schwarz
(And by the way, his entire site has been redesigned. Very nice.)
If you've ever struggled with sharpening a card scraper or using your
handplanes while building furniture, there are two new DVDs on these
topics you should find useful.
"Hand Scrapers: Understanding,
Preparing and Using the Ultimate Finishing Tool" and "Building
Furniture with Hand Planes" were produced by Lie-Nielsen Toolworks and hosted by Woodworking Magazine editor Christopher Schwarz (that's me).
The
DVD on scrapers is based on my research into all the conflicting advice
given on sharpening scrapers. I went through every one of my
woodworking books and found 14 distinctly different methods explained
for preparing this simple rectangle of steel. Using each of these techniques, I then prepared 14 scrapers and we compared the results in our shop here at Popular Woodworking.
And, as is our
way, we took the best details from all the techniques to create a 15th
way to sharpen card scrapers that is fast and makes a hook that is far
more durable than those on any other scraper I've used. This 30-minute
DVD shows you, step-by-step, how to prepare a scraper using these
methods and how to properly use the tool.
Now, I generally am
the harshest critic of own work (just ask Lucy, my spouse), but this
DVD and the technique shown is one of the things I'm most proud of in
my 11 years here at the magazine. It really was one of those few "a-ha"
moments of my career. I hope you'll agree.
The other DVD,
"Building Furniture with Hand Planes," explores a realm of hand-tool
instruction that gets little ink. While there are endless articles on
how to set up a plane (I should know, I've written some of them), there
is precious little advice out there on how to actually use the tools on
furniture. After all, we don't make shavings, we make furniture.
This
60-minute DVD shows you how to use a jointer plane, smoothing plane and
block plane when building furniture. I offer my method for setting up
all three planes with slightly curved cutting edges and how to use
those curved edges to your advantage when making furniture.
With the jointer plane (one of my all-time favorite tools), I discuss:
• How to work on edges to produce square, straight edges and spring joints.
• How to work on assembled panels and case sides to flatten them using cross-grain and diagonal strokes.
• How to turn your tail vise into a huge shooting board (an old French trick).
• How to gang-plane your boards to identical thickness.
• How to cut tapers to fit an inset door.
• Match-planing, the pros and cons.
With the smoothing plane, I discuss:
• How to set up the tool to take a very fine shaving.
• How to use your smoother as little as possible (and why)
• How to smooth assemblies.
And for the block plane, I discuss:
• Why a curved iron is sometimes desirable.
• How to trim end grain without blowing out the ends of your work.
• How to use the tool for chamfering and in conjunction with your jointer plane to eliminate the splintering of edges.
The DVD on scrapers costs $20; the DVD on using planes in furniture work is $25. Both are in stock and available from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks. Also, all Chris's proceeds from these two DVDs go to the Roger Cliffe Memorial Fund, a charity that provides tuition assistance to students in need at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. So your purchase will help other woodworkers.
— Christopher Schwarz
This weekend I got a chance to show off the Holtzapffel workbench at the Sindelar Tool Meet, talk to a bunch of tool collectors and buy some tools I've been coveting for too long.
But the absolute highlight of the entire event was a brush with greatness.
You see, I got to meet "the boy."
OK, some background for the uninitiated: Tool dealer Patrick Leach has been selling tools on the Internet for as long as I've been buying them. Every month, Leach sends out an e-mail newsletter that is (hands-down) the best-written tool newsletter in the business. His tools for sale are always the cream of the crop and his descriptions are oft hilarious.
(By the way, Leach is also the founder of the Blood & Gore web site, the best online reference on Stanley planes, and started Independence Tool with Pete Taran, which made the dovetail saw that Lie-Nielsen now sells. That saw launched the premium handsaw market.)
Anyway, one of my favorite parts of Leach's newsletter is that he has a "Tool of the Month," which is usually the most unusual, minty or rarest tool on offer. And every month, one of the photos that shows the tool features Leach's son holding the tool.
As I've been getting this newsletter for years, I've watched the child grow up, and Leach always peppers the tool's description with some comment about "the boy" or the "tool youth." For example: "Fresh from stuffing his mouth with Oreos while playing with his toy motorcycle, the tool youth wasn’t too happy to pose with this one, the much coveted #164 low angle smooth plane…."
So on Saturday afternoon I took a moment away from my demonstrating at John Sindelar's event to browse some of the tool dealer's tables. I was looking at a small router plane when I glanced up. Now it's rare for me to be speechless (just ask the magazine's staff), but I saw The Boy and all I could do was stutter: "Uhhhh, it's….uhhhh… The Boy!"
He and his father were set up right by the entrance to the building that houses the collection. Leach was working the crowd, cracking jokes and making deals. The Boy was helping out, arranging the tools and tending to the tool bargains that were arrayed on the blue plastic tarp off to the side.
"The best tools are back over here," The Boy called out to the crowd.
I obeyed him and went to have a look. I snatched up a brass router plane made by a patternmaker and an accessory for my brace that would allow it to accept small round-shank bits. The Boy was right.
I wanted to say something like, "I've known you since you were just a wee lad holding an ebony plow plane in a bouncy seat." But that sounded stupid. And I'm sure that it would seem creepy if I started talking to The Boy, and so I just admired him from afar. If you've ever wondered about it, The Boy is a good kid. He helped Leach the entire weekend and was one of the most well-behaved elementary-school kids I've met.
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