Though the new Stanley premium handplanes won't hit stores for a month or more, the company has released these photos of the planes that are going to be used on some packaging. These photos were taken by the company's United Kingdom employees.
Up until now, we've only seen computer renderings of the planes. Though the resolution of the photos here don't really allow you to see all the detail, the tools look quite good under Photoshop's magnifying glass.
In case you've actually been woodworking (instead of reading or writing about it on the Internet), you can read all the details about the new line of planes here.
— Christopher Schwarz
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The new line of premium Stanley planes should be available in January or February 2009, according to Stanley officials. The planes were originally planned for a November 2008 release, but a company official said they needed to fine-tune the finished appearance of the tools – plus Stanley ran into a couple mechanical snags.
The premium line of planes – two block planes, a smoothing plane, shoulder plane and low-angle jack – are aimed to compete with premium planemakers such as Veritas, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks and Clifton. You can read a detailed write-up of the specifications of the new Stanley tools in this earlier article.
Stanley's premium chisels are still being fine-tuned, and no release date has been set, according to the official.
Meanwhile, Stanley officials are working on the packaging and released the updated renderings shown here. You can see how these new planes incorporate the famous Stanley "Sweetheart" logo into the tools. As soon as we have photos of the tools, we'll post those as well.
— Christopher Schwarz
The unveiling of two new Veritas block planes this week has thrilled some customers with their sleek design, and confused others. Is Veritas – a company historically focused on function more than form – changing
its course with these new planes?
"It's not a direction change at all," says Robin Lee, the president of Lee Valley Tools and Veritas (the company's tool-making arm). "We have four planes coming out soon that are all under 100 bucks."
Instead, the new more-expensive planes are a way to provide a full range of choices for the customer, from Lee Valley's less-expensive Utilitas line of planes in a maroon finish, to the standard line of black planes that the company has been building since 1999, and to this new line of shinier planes that are designed for the customer who demands better materials, more features and a more refined design
aesthetic.
"Some people want something that looks better," Lee says. "It's definitely a different aesthetic. But we have never meant for this to be a high-volume product. If it is a high-volume product, we'll go broke."
So why did Veritas produce it?
Check the jump for the full story.
— Christopher Schwarz
Handplanes with corrugated soles vex many woodworkers. If you find them on a vintage plane, should you grab it or should you shun it? If you order a bench plane from Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, should you spend the extra $35 to get a corrugated sole or is that money better spent on some Lehman Brothers stock?
Corrugated soles started showing up on planes in the late 19th century. Craftsmen noticed that their newfangled metal planes were harder to push than their old-fashioned wooden-bodied planes, according to period accounts and patent papers.
So manufacturers began to mill corrugations in the soles of their planes. For a peek at their reasoning, check out this 1869 patent by E.G. Storke:
“…(E)xcessive friction was caused by their exact and even faces (of their soles), which were not materially varied by use or atmospheric changes.
“When used on very level surfaces, there were so many points of contact that the friction was troublesome, and the adhesion was further increased by atmospheric pressure, as partial vacuums would thus be formed.”
In other words, the planes were sticking to the work when the boards became really flat. I’ve encountered this when working with closed-grain woods, especially poplar and maple. In fact, if the board isn’t too large, I can occasionally lift the board off the bench because it is stuck to the tool’s sole. It’s a neat trick.
But is the plane harder to push if it doesn’t have corrugations? Many pointy heads I’ve talked to about this are dubious. Friction, they explain, is a function of force – not the surface area of the sole.
I have planes with both smooth soles and corrugated ones, and if there is a difference in effort required to wield them, I cannot discern it.
But there are some practical differences you should be aware of:
1. Corrugated soles on vintage planes are easier to flatten because there is less metal to remove. So if you have an old sole that needs work, corrugations are a plus.
2. The corrugations hold paraffin or wax. This wax wears away completely during use, so I assume it is lubricating the sole.
3. Corrugations on some sizes of vintage tools are rare. So if you are a collector, keep an eye out for them.
So here’s my bottom line: Corrugations don’t change the function of the plane for better or for worse, so it doesn’t really matter either way. I wouldn’t spend extra money to have them added, but I wouldn’t kick them out of bed for eating crackers, either.
— Christopher Schwarz
A lot of people ask to see my tool collection. I tell them I don't have one – I'm a user, not a collector. If I say that again, however, I'll be a liar.
Somehow during the last few months I've started acquiring edge-trimming planes. I've owned a Lie-Nielsen version – a right-handed copy of the Stanley No. 95 – for many years, and that was all this woodworker needed.
But this spring I heard Thomas Lie-Nielsen tell the story of how he got started in the plane-making business in the 1980s to a group of students at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. I'd heard the story before: Lie-Nielsen began making the edge-trimming plane after picking up the business from machinist Ken Wisner.
This time, the story was different because one of the students at the school (Jeff Skiver) brought one of the Wisner planes to the class to show. (You can read about his plane in a blog entry I wrote in April.) As I held the little sucker, I thought it would be cool to own one of these Wisner planes as a piece of modern planemaking history.
So I started trolling eBay with little luck. Meanwhile, we got the new Veritas versions of the edge-trimming plane in iron, and (mystery of mysteries) those ended up in my tool chest. Then I stumbled upon an AMT version of the tool for sale that I couldn't pass up. The AMT version is, by the way, a complete piece of dung. Its red velvet bag is nice, however.
I knew I had crossed over when I started regretting not buying the stainless steel version of the plane that Veritas offered but is now sold out.
And this week, I finally got my Wisner.
Thanks to some help from Skiver, I found an eBay auction for a Wisner plane and snagged it for a fair price. When it arrived, I was thrilled with it. Not only is it well made, but it is the first used tool I've ever bought that came perfectly sharp and ready to go. That's the good news.
Here's the bad news: My Wisner plane has an iron body with a brass lever cap. So now I'm going to have to look for a Wisner with a bronze body. And the Veritas version in bronze.
And that stainless Veritas plane. Curses.
— Christopher Schwarz
Several years back I was fitting some 1/4"-thick mullions and muntins into a door and needed to plane the little suckers to remove their sawmarks.
Planing thin stock can be a real pain. I've seen how other craftsmen do it. Lonnie Bird drives escutcheon pins into his benchtop (or a planing board) and works against those. It's a neat trick. David Charlesworth attaches the stock to a planing board temporarily with cyanoacrylate. This is fantastic for long stock especially.
Here's how I came up with my method. I like to use planing stops because they are fast. And as I was considering how to plane these little nubbins of wood I was staring off into space outside my shop window and the tool rack hanging before it.
I remember thinking to myself: "For this planing stop, I need a really thin and rigid piece of material. Something with really square edges so they'll grab the work. I need something like a steel ruler."
So I searched over the junk pile in the window well behind my bench. (Note: This is my secret shame area. Though I don't have a tool well in my bench I have a junky window well instead.)
None of the little bits of wood in the window well fit the bill. They were too thick or their edges weren't crisp. Then it occurred to me: Hey moron, why not use a steel ruler?
And so I did, and I continue to use my slender 12" Shinwa to this day. It works great. I clamp it to the bench and go to town. And now to go get some ginseng.
— Christopher Schwarz
 One of the most powerful things about hand tools is that they allow you to work on small areas of a board with ease. Instead of running the whole board through an electric planer to remove a small area of ugliness, you can usually remove it with a couple well-placed swipes of a handplane.
But exactly where you put those swipes is the topic of this blog entry.
This week I'm building a contemporary Arts & Crafts cabinet in maple for the master bath (OK, you caught me, it's a flipping potty cabinet). One of the structural details of the cabinet is that it has a thick base piece and top cap that are attached to the carcase.
The top cap and base are face-glued to the carcase. Getting the pieces to mate can be tricky. There are a lot of surfaces to get flat, and the fit between the carcase and the top cap and base will be highly visible (to me and my spouse, at least).
To encourage mating, I recommend friction (I think the human resources department is going to come down on me for this post).
First secure the carcase against your bench. Then take the mating piece and rub it vigorously against the carcase. About 10 swipes will be enough. Remove the mating piece and then get yourself down low so you can see light reflecting off the carcase. The high spots on the carcase and its mating piece will be burnished and will be shinier than the low spots.
Mark the high spots with a pencil. Then remove the shiny spots using a plane with a short sole, such as a low-angle block plane. Remove the high spots from both the carcase and the mate. Then repeat the process until you get the fit you want.
— Christopher Schwarz
Mark the shiny high spots with a pencil.
Then remove the high spots using a plane that has a short sole.
Reader Tim Williams writes: I have a number of old Stanley planes that I’ve spent a lot of hours cleaning and refurbishing. I’ve read multiple places about how when tuning up a plane, it’s a good idea to flatten the mating surfaces of the frog so the iron beds well, with lots of contact, to avoid chattering.
However, I find that whenever I take a flat iron and attach a chipbreaker to it, the tension of the chipbreaker on the iron puts a very gentle curve on the iron. So, when I attach the chipbreaker and iron to the frog, there’s a very slight gap under the middle of the iron (just enough to see light through if I hold it up to a light). I’ve tried loosening the bolt holding the chipbreaker and iron together to reduce the tension, but if I loosen it enough to remove the tension, the iron slides against chipbreaker.
On one plane, I’m using a Hock chipbreaker. It mates more fully against the iron and doesn’t curve the iron, so it appears to bed better on the frog. Finally, I’ve not really used these enough to notice much chattering. Should I even be worrying about this?
What's happening here is that you have too much curvature in your chipbreaker. When you cinch down the iron, it bends to match the shape of the breaker. There are several solutions to this: You can remove some of the curvature in your chipbreaker. Place one end of the breaker in a vise and push against it gently. It will bend easily. Then try again.
Another solution is to replace the iron with a thicker aftermarket iron. This is always a good idea. The thicker iron will resist bending. Or you can replace both the iron and chipbreaker, which is what I like to do with vintage handplanes that I am going to use for high-tolerance planing (jointing or smoothing).
The bigger question is if the bending is even a problem. It depends. With some forms of planes (such as infill planes) the lever cap puts so much pressure on the iron and breaker right up by the mouth that it doesn't matter if the iron ouches the frog or not.
In Bailey-style planes, the more contact you get between the frog and iron the more stable the whole assembly will be and the less likely that bad things will happen, such chattering or the plane going out of adjustment while planing.
When I set up a Bailey plane, what I shoot for is a flat sandwich of frog, iron and breaker, as shown in the photo above. That works best.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Our RSS feed has been bockety this week. If you like this post, you might also like my post earlier this week on how to understand the system of bench planes which is here.
Almost every day I get an e-mail or a phone call that goes something like this: "I'm a beginner. I want to buy some handplanes. But I have no idea where to start or what to buy. Help."
I'm happy to answer these questions (it's my job), but I noticed after 12 years of answering these pleas that I was saying many of the same things over and over again. So last night I did a mid-sized brain dump on the bench planes – both bevel-up and bevel-down.
It explains my rationale (and the historical rationales) for each plane size, from the No. 1 up to the No. 8. I fully admit that this article has a lot of opinions in it, but they are opinions based on a lot of work and experimenting with many different methods of work (there's a good reason I grew a beard like David Charlesworth's....)
In any case, you might find this article useful, infuriating or amusing. It might also help you if are ever asked: "Hey, I'm a beginner...."
Read the Full Article: "Understanding Bench Planes"
— Christopher Schwarz
Stanley Works will unveil a new premium bevel-edge chisel this year that bears some similarities to the company's vaunted Everlasting line of chisels that were made between 1911 and 1942.
Like the Everlasting chisels, the new Stanley chisels will have the blade, head and shank made from one piece of solid steel with wooden scales. The vintage Everlastings were a little different in that the wooden handles completely surrounded the steel shank. The new chisels will have the beech scales infilled into the steel, much like a H.D. Smith perfect-handled screwdriver.
Stanley officials said the chisels will be made from high-carbon steel hardened to 59-62 on the Rockwell "c" hardness scale. The tools will be hand-finished and be available in the following sizes: 1/4", 1/2", 3/4", 1", 1-1/4" and 1-1/2". The tools will be sold individually or in boxed sets of four and six sizes, officials said. They will be available only in woodworking specialty stores. Estimated pricing for the individual chisels is $17.99 to $19.99 each.
Company officials released the two computer renderings shown above. Production models are not yet available for testing.
Stanley has been testing prototypes of this chisel with woodworkers and builders, and 74 percent of those who used it said they'd consider switching to this tool. Because of its heavy-duty construction, Stanley officials said the tool will be ideal for both workshop and installation work.
From a furniture-making perspective, woodworkers will be interested in how narrow the side bevels of these chisels will be. Narrow side bevels are ideal for hand-dovetailing. It's hard to tell from a computer rendering what the tool will look like in steel, so I wouldn't make too much of the illustrations.
Also, many chisel users are keenly interested in how long their chisels will hold an edge. In my book, Stanley has always done well in this department. The yellow-handled Stanley U.K. chisels have always maintained a terrific edge for me. And the company's FatMax chisels have also been surprisingly durable and easy to sharpen (I have a set at home).
We'll obtain a set of these new chisels as soon as we can and report all the details. The chisel market is a crowded one (just open any woodworking catalog), so the quality of these new tools will be closely watched by competitors and consumers.
Also, a Stanley official sent me updated computer renderings of the company's new line of premium handplanes that we reported on here. There have been a couple changes to the details, particularly in the shoulder plane. I've posted these new renderings below.
— Christopher Schwarz
 The standard-angle block plane.
The low-angle block plane.
The low-angle jack plane.
The No. 4 smoothing plane.
The shoulder plane.
The new Stanley No. 4 smoothing plane.
Stanley Works will release five premium-grade handplane models this year that are designed to compete with planes from Veritas and Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, officials said.
The line includes new designs for a No. 4 smoothing plane, a low-angle jack plane, a shoulder plane and two block planes. All of the Stanley planes will have features that users have come to expect from high-end tools, including irons made from thicker A2 steel, bodies made from ductile iron and handles made from highly polished rosewood. 
The new Stanley No. 62 low-angle jack plane. Additionally, the sole castings will be heavier, all the knobs will be made of brass, the soles will be flat to .003" and many of the planes will incorporate a "patented lateral adjustment locking lever," according to company officials and literature.
The planes, which should be available by November, will have the following manufacturer's suggested retail price: The No. 4 and the low-angle jack will list for $179. The block planes and the shoulder plane will list for $99. The planes will be available through woodworking specialty stores, not home centers. Company officials said the tools’ A2 irons will be made in England and the plane bodies will be made in Mexico.
Stanley officials said they designed these planes after working with the company's "discovery teams." These teams went into specialty stores and furniture-making shops and conducted two-hour interviews with woodworkers about what they wanted in a handplane.
Stanley then designed prototypes and solicited feedback from these users, which they then incorporated into the tools' final designs.
The end results were very interesting. For example, the new Stanley No. 4 is a bevel-down plane. What's different is that the frog and base are cast as one piece. This reduces the opportunity for blade chatter to occur. Also interesting: The plane has an adjustable mouth like a block plane. You unscrew the front knob and slide a throat plate forward and back for different mouth apertures.
The No. 62 Low-Angle Jack Plane also has many of these refinements, including the patented lateral-adjustment mechanism. 
The new Stanley No. 92 shoulder/chisel plane. The No. 92 Shoulder/Chisel Plane also features brass adjustment knobs and a wooden grip at the rear. Though Stanley officials didn't have the finished width of the tool available, the No. 92 was historically a 3/4"-wide tool. 
The new Stanley No. 60-1/2 block plane. The two block planes – the No. 9-1/2 standard-angle plane and the No. 60-1/2 low-angle block plane – have less radical changes compared to their historic brethren. However, they have been redesigned to look like the rest of the new family of planes, and all the planes will use the famous Stanley "Sweetheart" logo from the early part of the 20th century. When asked if other plane designs were in the works, a Stanley official said there was nothing they could discuss at this time.
As soon as functional production models become available, we’ll be testing these new planes and will report the results in an upcoming issue of Popular Woodworking and Woodworking Magazine.
— Christopher Schwarz
The new Stanley No. 9-1/2 block plane.
Veritas has just released its much-awaited Side Rabbet Plane (at a special introductory price) and Veritas was generous enough to permit me to test-drive it here in our workshop.
Though I still am getting comfortable with the tool, below are my initial impressions after trimming out about a dozen grooves and rabbets this week.
About Side Rabbet Planes
Side-rabbet planes are specialty tools that belong in the family of joinery planes. They are used to clean up and widen the difficult-to-trim walls of rabbets, grooves and dados. To be honest, some craftsmen don't use these planes at all. Instead of trimming a dado wider, they will trim the mating panel instead. Both perspectives work.
There are two kinds of metal-bodied side-rabbet planes (and there are wooden ones as well). The Stanley Nos. 98 and 99 have a right-hand version and a left-hand version so you can work with the grain in grooves in rabbets. The other format is to combine both cutters into one tool. Stanley did that in its No. 79 (with mixed results in my book). And the English Preston version (and later Record version) got it right. Lie-Nielsen makes versions similar to the Stanley, but in bronze. I've used them and they work quite well.
Veritas Specifications
The Veritas Side Rabbet Plane is similar to the Preston plane: One cutter is on top. One is below. A handle is in the middle. Veritas, as always, has made improvements to the design that are beyond the "socks on a squirrel" variety.
The sleek handle – which reminds me of a beetle's back – pivots up and down depending on which cutter you are using. The handle is spring-loaded and doesn't slip during use – which is saying something because you have to apply significant hand pressure to these tools in use.
The handle is comfortable. It burrows into your palm without poking you.
The other major advancement for the user is the irons. Veritas has lapped the flat faces of these O1 (high-carbon) steel irons so sharpening them up takes only minutes. And when it comes to skew-cutting planes this is critical. A small sharpening error with a skew plane and the tool won't function correctly.
The other thing to note about the tool is its depth stop, which locks quickly and squarely (thanks to some clever machining) in either direction. You also can remove the toe piece of the tool with a screwdriver so you can work into the corners of stopped rabbets, grooves and dados.
In putting the tool to use, I was impressed (as always) with the irons and how easy they took an edge. Sharpening them without a jig is fairly simple work because the bevels are quite large and register firmly on a sharpening stone.
The only modification I'd recommend to the irons is to relieve the acute corner of each iron as it will dig in a little deeply in use (and will get worn away anyway). Veritas recommends this in the manual, and it is a two-minute job with a file. Be careful not to go too far – the point needs to extend beyond the sole a tad.
The real skill to learn with this plane is starting the tool. All the varieties of this tool have a small nose that you have to register against the sidewall of the joint you are going to trim. So it takes a steady hand to start a clean cut. Once you begin, the tool is easy to manage in the cut. The Veritas works in cuts up to 1/2" deep.
Trimming the long grain of grooves and rabbets is easier than trimming the end grain in dados, so start with the easy stuff first. This style of tool isn't hard to use, but I wouldn't practice on a live project piece.
The Veritas Side Rabbet plane costs $139, but it will be offered at a special introductory price of $119. You can order one through this link.
— Christopher Schwarz 
My first fillister plane was so pathetic it's a wonder I'm not the poster boy for DeWalt routers. But then, I don't look so good in yellow. Mom says I'm a winter.
Abut a decade ago I bought a Sargent copy of the execrable Stanley No. 78. I know I'm being hard on a plane that many people like and use ("execrable" means "not so good"). But every example I've used of this plane has a wobbly fence – no matter how tightly I screwed the thing in (yes, I used a nail) or how tightly I cinched the lone thumbscrew.
So I was quite pleased to buy a C. Nurse moving fillister plane with a wooden body. It is a Cadillac: steel sole, brass wedge securing the nicker, smooth-acting and locking depth stop. But I've always been at a loss as to recommend a new maker for those woodworkers who don't want vintage.
This week I received a moving fillister plane that I ordered from Philly Planes in England, and it is all I can do to stop typing and rush out to the shop and cut some rabbets. In fact, I'm just back from another rabbeting session.
Philip Edwards, the man behind Philly Planes, has done a remarkable job of building a traditional wooden-bodied moving fillister plane that works right out of the box. (Another choice for those who like new planes is the European moving fillister version from ECE. I've also seen one from Clark & Williams.)
Here are the pertinent details: The Philly Planes moving fillister is 9-3/4" long with an 1-1/4"-wide skewed iron that's 1/8" thick and made from O1 – high-carbon steel. The iron is pitched at 55° and (once you get the fence involved) the plane will cut rabbets up to 1-1/8" wide and 1-1/8" deep.
The fence is a ½"-thick slab of beech secured to the body of the plane with two straight-head bolts and threaded inserts – which will ensure many years of long service. The depth stop adjusts smoothly with a knurled brass knob. Also a nice touch: The sole is lined with a sizable chunk of boxwood that covers rabbets up to almost a 1/2" wide – again, it's another touch that says this plane is in it for the long haul.
Everything about the plane feels right, from the action of the wedges to the fit in the hands. And, as a bonus, it comes fully sharpened and ready to go. And that's a good thing because I was ready to go as soon as it arrived.
In use, the plane performs as a well-tuned vintage wooden-bodied moving fillister. Shavings curl up smartly out of the escapement and drop onto the bench. Rabbets form quickly, whether cross-grain or with the grain.
The price is 175 pounds. With our weak dollar that's about $350. Delivery time for me was about five weeks from the time I placed the order.
The moving fillister is as essential to a hand woodworking shop as a smoothing plane, and Philip Edwards makes a very nice version. If anyone has experience with the ECE version, please add a comments below. I'm sure we'd all like to hear about it.
— Christopher Schwarz
Lately I've been planing stuff that has been a lot nastier than your typical run-of-the-mill cherry, oak and walnut. First Senior Editor Glen D. Huey tried to torture me by bringing in some curly maple for the blanket chest on cover the Summer 2008 issue.
Then I built the cover project for the Fall 2008 issue from some walnut that should have been on the burn pile. Honestly, I had to go through about twice as much material as usual to find enough wood to build this 18th-century wall cabinet.
Then, this weekend I had to plane some rowy mahogany while teaching at Kelly Mehler's School of Woodworking. Kelly had prepared mahogany pieces for the project that the students built (a Shaker utensil tray). And a lot of that was rowy – which is when the wood has rope-like bands of grain through it where the grain reverses in each rope.
The tool that has kept me away from the wide belt sander these last few months has been my little Wayne Anderson smoothing plane. I've had this tool for more than two years now and have published an article on its long-term performance in the most recent edition of Popular Woodworking, the August 2008 issue.
Below is the text of that article, plus a link to download a pdf slideshow presentation that shows the evolution of this form of plane using pictures supplied by Wayne himself. Enjoy.
Despite the amount of bronze, iron and beech in my tool cabinet, most woodworkers need only three bench planes: A fore plane to reduce the thickness of boards, a jointer plane to flatten them and a smoothing plane to prepare them for finishing.
That’s in a perfect world. In reality, we work with a material (wood) that is unpredictable, cantankerous and vexing – like my first redheaded girlfriend. During the last few years, I’ve gradually folded a fourth plane into my arsenal, and now I cannot imagine working without it.
It’s a small smoothing plane with a steeply pitched iron (a 57° angle of attack), no chipbreaker and a mouth aperture that a gnat would have a hard time squeezing through without damaging his Dipteran hinder.
This is my plane of last resort. When my 50°-pitch smoothing plane leaves nasty torn grain in its wake, I pull out this plane. It doesn’t care if there’s a grain reversal in the board. Or if I’m planing against the grain. Or if the grain is interlocked, curly or worse. When set for a fine cut, this plane almost never fails me.
This plane has become a staple of Wayne Anderson, a custom planemaker in Elk River, Minn. (andersonplanes.com or 763-486-0834). This form of plane started out several years ago with Wayne’s interest in high-angle planes without a chipbreaker. He built this version for writer Kerry Pierce to test for a competing magazine. Then I bought the plane from Wayne. (Despite the fact that it was a used tool, I paid full price.)
Since that time, I’ve fallen head-over-heels for the plane, and Wayne has pushed the tool’s design in new directions for other customers. If you’re not familiar with Wayne’s work, he’s a bit different than other custom makers. He seldom makes the same tool twice.
The profile on the rear of the iron might change. Or the shape of the sidewall or lever cap will morph. But the tool still looks like itself – like a fraternal twin.
As to the function of the tool, you could set up a 6"-long block plane to do the exact same job, but there’s no way the tool will look as good or fit your hand so well.
With this small smoothing plane, the coffin shape of the body lets you squeeze the tool right in the middle by its mouth. And having mastered the tool, I find I can change the depth of cut merely by squeezing and pressing at the center of the tool, or by releasing that pressure. The weight of the plane (2 lbs. 2 oz.) keeps the tool in the cut without chattering (try that with your block plane) even when I use little-girl pressure to control it. The result: Thin shavings; no tearing. The rear bun is rounded nicely so it feels good against my right palm, and the tall iron keeps my hand right where it should be.
The short sole (about 5-1/2") allows you to plane in areas that longer smoothing planes can’t get to. When I say this I don’t mean tight little spaces inside a cabinet, I mean the small and large hollows that occur on any flat board. A small tool rides the gentle waves of a board where a longer plane skims off the peaks instead. And when you’re trying to get a tabletop looking right (perfect flatness be darned) a short plane is invaluable.
If you’re thinking of investing in one custom plane, this plane would be an excellent addition to any standard lineup. These tools start at $825. Need more convincing? Wayne has provided a slide show of the different forms of this plane during the last few years that you can download below. I’ll warn you, however, it’s dangerous to watch. WAminis-1.pdf (2.16 MB) — Christopher Schwarz
Last week I bought a toothing plane from a Midwestern tool collector. I've always wanted one of these tools, and this one is particularly nice.
Toothing planes are lot like scraping planes: The iron is vertical. What's different is that toothing plane has a serrated cutting edge – instead of a smooth edge with a tiny hook, like on a scraper plane.
Toothing planes can be used in a couple different ways. Some people use them to flatten a board's surface. The vertical pitch of the iron prevents tearing in gnarly woods, and the serrated teeth allow you to take a fairly big bite.
Other craftsmen use a toothing plane for traditional veneering jobs with hide glue. The toothing plane would prepare the substrate – flattening it and giving it some "tooth" – before you apply the adhesive and the veneer.
I'll probably use this tool for both of these sorts of jobs – they're handy and simple tools. This one was probably made by the craftsman, and the maker was likely German. The "horn" at the toe is a feature of many European planes.
Oh, there's one other feature of the plane I like: 
I wish I had a good story about the origin of this tool, but I don't. The tool collector who bought it acquired it during a tool swap meet. So there's no cool history to share – just the mystery of me wondering what sort of work the other "C SCHWARZ" did.
— Christopher Schwarz
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 | |