Hand Plane for colonial era Tavern Table

Re: Hand Plane for colonial era Tavern Table

Adam Cherubini

>You could/should just camber the blade of any jack plane and use that to get the look you're after. So any Stanley #5 would work fine for this. That will give you the look you're after.

The question is, is that authentic. The English custom (surviving to this day in some places) is to eat without any sort of table cloth or placemats. After each meal, the table top would be wiped down or maybe even scrubbed with a brush. The resulting tops, likely once stained or painted if maple, would be bare and worn, but probably smooth.

My advice would be to camber the blade, open the mouth (by setting the frog back) and plane the whole top, accepting any resulting tearout. I'd probably stain or paint then sand to produce the wear There should be no sharp edges left. A real tavern table would be worn like a river stone.

Adam

Re: Hand Plane for colonial era Tavern Table

Warren in Lancaster, PA

>When I was beginning in business I made reproductions for a man who was not satisfied with a hand planed surface- he had to have pronounced ridges and valleys. I kept a special plane iron to doctor the surfaces after I was done. The truth was that I could not have made dovetails, mortise and tenon joints etc., if that was as well as I could plane.

Colonial woodworkers did not deliberately put a rough texture on their table tops. I think what was most common was a very mild ridging from the smoothing plane, perhaps only visible in the right light. A slight rounding of your smoothing plane iron will give this effect. The refinement of the top should be in keeping with that of the rest of the table. It would be peculiar to have a top that looked like it was made by a barn carpenter while the legs and were obviously made by a joiner or cabinetmaker. One of the signs that an antique has had new parts made for it is that the craftsmanship doesn't match.

Re: Hand Plane for colonial era Tavern Table

ThomD

>I agree with all of that about authentisity, but... when I am doing what is being asked here, I use a jack plane with a 9" radius on the edge. Just punch a mark 9 inches back from the edge and scribe a radius. Gind it back blunt (blade below radial to grinder, like using a scraper on a bowl), then resharpen. The new shaving will be quite thick so open the mouth/move back frog. I made a wooden Jack for this purpose.

I also have a 4.5 inch radius plane, and have even used the scrub plane blade from ECE, which is probably about 3/4" radial.

These all have flat bottoms.

Unless you are after tear-out, which I am not, you need some pretty good wood. You also need to take a great deal of care to ensure you have glued up the boards so they plane in the same direction. If one has a lot more run-out. try to match it to adjascent boards with the next worst run out, or you can still get spliting at the joints. Of course other issues about how to glue up the top can take precendence, but if you have a choice.

Re: Hand Plane for colonial era Tavern Table

Adam Cherubini

>Hi Warren,

Only thing I'd like to add to what you said is this;

I know people like this style, and its not wholly without examples. Moxon mentions that the fore plane is so named for it is used afore other planes, while carpenters, presumably lacking other leveling planes, call it a jack plane. In that case, calling it a fore or one's first plane makes no sense when there is only one plane in the kit.

That all said, I have seen furniture, nailed together, that may well have been made by a guy who had no smoothing plane- I know it sound preposterous, but there it is. It isn't the sort of thing that's particularly fine and the ridges are extrememly subtle. I can get a board, pretty darn flat with a smoother.

So I agree that leaving scrub plane marks is kitchy and inauthentic. But subtle undulations from sharp jack plane aren't out of the question. BTW: A 4-1/2" radius sounds way too tight to me.

Adam

Re: Hand Plane for colonial era Tavern Table

ThomD

>It is kitchy, like leaving tear-out.

4.5 inches, 1.5 inch blade, at 45 degrees with full blade extention, is .04" max depth. Usualy I don't have full blade extension.

9" is .02"

Re: Hand Plane for colonial era Tavern Table

Warren in Lancaster, PA

>I have enjoyed seeing furniture that looked like it was made by a guy who had only seven tools or so. It would make an interesting challenge to make something with only one saw, one plane (one iron), one chisel ,etc. But if you make a table with fine turnings and 16 mortises and moldings or scroll work, and then rough plane the top, it looks like decoration that doesn't fit the design or the rest of the piece.

I agree

Adam Cherubini

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