Set of planes for trying boards.

Kit I use are

Jim in Burlington On


>I have a 22" long woodie with a 1 1/2" wide jack from Knight toolworks for edge work. Some kind of plane in the 9-12" length for a scrub if you own one with a large mouth. And a nice 15" or so length Jack plane. A smoother can be any length you'll have to try a few out and see which plane is your go to plane for smoothing. You can resole and there have been alot of good posts. My vote would be to just patch up rough spots. Many good posts and articles on tightening up the throat to perfect smoothers.

Re: Set of planes for trying boards.

Dave Thompson


>Jim covered the subject pretty well. Though I do prefer my smoother to be shorter than my jack planes... only because I don't always complete my jointing (trying) in a day, and slight wood movements can change how well a long "smoother" may still pull off gossamer shavings.

Good news, is that going a woodie route like your interested in is dirt cheap. Most people spend more on a good cheap used Bailey jack than what it can cost to get a full woodie set. I only mention this with regards to patching. I've patched the soles on some woodies for fun, though on post reflection, I could have bought a fine replacement that didn't need patching for < $10. If aesthetics count, personally, I like the look of a resole than a patch.

Re: Set of planes for trying boards.

ThomD


>You can glue a sole on your cracked plane if you like to. It doesn't always make maters better it can lead to a variety of problems relative to uneven moisture take up and dif shrinkage.

If it isn't changing it's shape and giving unreliable resutls, then I would just leave it. I might also feed it as much thin CA glue as it would soak up, assuming it's a "user".

Exactly what planes you really need is affected by what kind of starting point you are at. One of the points that surprised me a little with one of Adam's collumns was when he mentioned that there were standard wood sizes that cabinetmakers designed around, and why not I guess. I probably think of them doing more of the work from the rough than they really did, and that would determine their plane sellection so simply following some norm is not necesarilly the best approach.

Anyway, when I work wood I tend either to use highly finished wood from the planer or stuff i cut myself which is often pretty rough, and slow to convert by hand. I use various types of scrub plane, or jacks to knock off the high points and get things in order, and then mover on to the kind of planes that will get where i want to go for the finsihed pieces. While it isn't ideal scrub jointer smoother is enough. I like to have lots of different cuts and curvatures in practice, but they mostly fall into those catagories.

I also at times use axes, drawknives and adzes depending on the situation.

Re: Set of planes for trying boards.

Reds


>Thanks for the info. guys. I have not actually done this process yet. I am a finish carpenter by trade, but I have always had a strong interest in the old ways of doing things. I am trying to get a good set of users together at this point. Right now I have a 22" long plane, 2 15 inch jacks and several coffin smoothers. from this group I think I can put a set together.

A few more questions. What is the difference between a fore plane and a jointer? The only thing I have come up with is the length differences, but there is ovelap in the info. I have read. Also, as far as pricing, in my area of the country (NW Montana) I can not find good users cheap. Where are you finding your good deals? Lastly, how many planes have you guys ended up with?

Reds

Re: Set of planes for trying boards.

ThomD


>I have something like 70 planes works out to about 2 a year. I make planes so about half of those are ones I made. Right at the moment I have three racks around the bench, for Canadian, German and Japanese planes about 5 of each for basic work.

Here is at least one description of the for etc...

http://www.planemaker.com/sample/

Re: Set of planes for trying boards.

Dave Thompson


>The names are fuzzy. A fore plane is a short jointer or a long jack, or some use it as a combination of the two. Typically around 18" in lenght. The name suggests before other planes, though it's after scrubbing, if scrubbing is needed.

Regarding source for cheap woodies... My best deals came from auctions. The last auction I was at had dozens of wood jointers, jacks and fore planes selling around 2 for $12. E-bay is another good source, though the shipping often costs as much as the plane. About a 1/3 of the woodies I've bought on e-bay had broken side wedge hold downs, and I haven't found a satisfactory way of reparing this. If you buy woodies on e-bay, mentally prepare yourself for the possibility of getting wall decorations. ;-)

MWTCA is a good resource for finding about local tool sales, though I'm not sure how active they are in NW Montana. Perhaps PNTC might be better in your area.

good luck,

Dave

Re: Set of planes for trying boards.

Dean J in MN


>The names are fuzzy. A fore plane is a short jointer or a long jack, or some use it as a combination of the two. Typically around 18" in lenght. The name suggests before other planes, though it's after scrubbing, if scrubbing is needed.

Sounds to me like you are describing a try plane. A short try plane, but still sounds like a try plane. Too bad we lost the names and have numbers nowdays.

Moxon makes it pretty clear that a fore plane has a pretty hefty camber and leaves "dawks" in the wood. Others say a jack plane is the joiners name for what cabinetmakers called a fore plane. Either way, it was the first plane to touch the wood. Scrub planes, as we know them, seem to be a "modern" invention. Some say as a "safty hatchet" for edge work. I tend to agree.

I think period workers did very little "thicknessing," instead using lumber very near the required thickness from the lumber yard. So, their fore plane would have been suited to begin working rough lumber to finished boards. If there wasn't much cup/twist a heavy-set try may have been the first plane they used. Edward Cooke wrote an interesting article in Chipstone which describes the thicknesses of lumber available to cabinetmakers. Primary woods in 4/4+ and seconday starting at 1/2. Makes sense to me, let the saywers thickness the wood, it is far more efficent.

Just my 2d.

Dean

Not sure I can completely agree...

Dave Thompson


>[Dave]The names are fuzzy. A fore plane is a short jointer or a long jack, or some use it as a combination of the two. Typically around 18" in lenght. The name suggests before other planes, though it's after scrubbing, if scrubbing is needed.

[Dean]

Sounds to me like you are describing a try plane. A short try plane, but still sounds like a try plane. Too bad we lost the names and have numbers nowdays.

English is constantly evolving, and it might not be accurate to take the colloquialisms of one as representative of all. I think I might have to disagree that the profile of the blade sets the difference between a short try and fore plane at least in the past two centuries. Perhaps there lies the disparity.... which century are we talking about? ;-)

This got me curious, so I went through my catalogs and other resources spanning the last 130 years and representing 14 different notable plane manufacturers, and I can find no reference to blade profile being a distinguishing factor defining a fore plane, except one, (Clark & Williams). All others appear to distinguish by length typically (18" to 20", sometimes 22"). This includes some very notable woodie manufacturers such as Chapin-Stephens, Sandusky, Ohio, Preston. Preston didn't even use the term, but rather called them Jacks.

Having done some thicknessing, and a good deal of surface jointing, I do find the assertion surprising that one would use a heavier and longer plane for this, though I'll admit to having no historical references to draw on.

Dave

thicknessing

Dave Thompson


>[Dave]Preston didn't even use the term, but rather called them Jacks.... Having done some thicknessing, and a good deal of surface jointing, I do find the assertion surprising that one would use a heavier and longer plane for this, though I'll admit to having no historical references to draw on.

Giving this some more thought...the fact that Preston called what others called a fore plane, a jack plane, kind of supports your assertion.... Especially if true that what you said regarding a scrub plane is a modern invention. I presume a broad axe might have been the tool prior to a scrub plane for thicknessing, if one wasn't near a lumber yard... (hence your "safety hatchet" reference)

Dave

Re: thicknessing

Dean J in MN


>[Dave]Especially if true that what you said regarding a scrub plane is a modern invention. I presume a broad axe might have been the tool prior to a scrub plane for thicknessing, if one wasn't near a lumber yard... (hence your "safety hatchet" reference)

Dave --

The #40-like scrub plane has been a puzzle to me. Why did it show up on the scene? Did 17th and 18th C. cabinetmakers have a short, narrow, heavly cambered blade plane in their kits? If not, why not? If so, why? I don't know the answers. But I do know in my work I no longer use my #40, rather a longer woodie with a heavly cambered iron if I need to correct a large amount of twist or cup. I call this plane a fore plane, most would call it a Jack, others may just say it is a long scrub plane.

True, a #40 is a great tool to hog off lots of wood. But, when do you need that? When I flatten a face, the longer fore plane makes it eaiser for me to quickly arrive at a true face. If I need the non-face side parallel I find the minimum amount of material needed to remove to get there. Or, I leave the non-face side rough if I can. I try to avoid removing more wood than needed at every step. Part of that is being picky at the lumber yard; my first step toward being able to work by hand and be lazy at the same time. Finding suggestions that period workers didn't need to thickness lumber helped me to put away my #40.

I'm not trying to say I'm right and others are wrong. I'm trying to understand the whys.

-Dean

Re: thicknessing

Pam Niedermayer - Austin, TX


>Because not all woodworkers work in the same way. There are many who chop down their own trees and/or harvest others' trees.

Pam