Is it a rabbet or a fillister?

Re: Is it a rabbet or a fillister?

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>I am reminded by this of the reality that in hand work, everything gets done from the face side or edge, which one has spent some time getting straight.

Re: Is it a rabbet or a fillister?

Jim in Conowingo, MD

>I thought a rabbet was a notch along the edge of a board parallel to the grain, and a fillister was a notch along the edge perpendicular to the grain.

Re: Is it a rabbet or a fillister?

George Makowski

>JIm, That is the question that got me looking in my books and on-line. Adam, writing a response below about cutting rabbetts, assumed what you have said. I did not find any evidence that end grain rabbets are called fillisters.

I have a suspicion, an IMHO educated guess, that there may be a connection between what a fillister is, a rabbett along the grain on the out facing edge of sash window elements to hold the glass and putty, and the use of the term for a rabbet plane with fence, depth gauge, and spur. Such planes would produce the uniform rabbets for window making faster and with less thought, once set up, than a simple rabbet plane. The sash fillister would allow you to cut both the close and far fillisters with the work in one position in the sticking board. With the spur, of course, these planes cut end grain rabbets well too.

Thanks for chiming in,

George in AL

A fillister

Frank D. in Montreal

>Hi George,

Usually a fillister plane has a skewed blade and an adjustable fence that sits below the sole (not like the fence on a plow plane). It's made to plane end-grain rabbets. A rabbet plane does not have a skewed blade and is made for long-grain rabbets. A dado plane has a skewed blade but no fence. I'm sure Mike Dunbar's book (I don't have it with me just now, something like "Adjusting and Using Old Hand Tools") explains this. I'm not familiar with sash planes.

HTH,

Frank

Re: A fillister

paul womack

>Frank D said:-

A rabbet plane does not have a skewed blade

(1935 catalogue showing moving and sash fillisters)

http://www.roseantiquetools.com/imagelib/sitebuilder/misc/show_image.html?linkedwidth=actual&linkpath=http://roseantiquetools.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/hickmanplanes2.jpg&target=tlx_new&title=Wood%20Planes

(ditto, showing both "square rabbet" and "skew rabbet")

http://www.roseantiquetools.com/imagelib/sitebuilder/misc/show_image.html?linkedwidth=actual&linkpath=http://roseantiquetools.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/hickmanplanes1.jpg&target=tlx_new&title=Wood%20Bench%20Planes

BugBear

Ah

Frank D. in Montreal

>I see, so a sash fillester is like a moving fillester with a plow fence. Of course I should have put "usually" for the rabbet. The skew is one way to tell them apart, but I guess it pretty well comes down to the fence again? I use my skewed rabbets as panel raisers and as fillesters.

Thanks for the pics!

Re: A fillister

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>The "smoothing pattern" old woman's tooth plane on that second site is quite interesting. First time I'd seen anything like that.

It's really quite amazing in how many specialized patterns the woodies could be obtained.

Re: Ah

paul womack

>I see, so a sash fillester is like a moving fillester with a plow fence.

You could put it like that; the KEY difference is that the moving fillister uses the near face as a reference, while the sash uses the far face.

This from Larry Williams:

http://nika.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/archive/get.phtml?message_id=76151#message

BugBear