Logan Cabinet Shoppe

I was reading through my copies of Moxon and Nicholson over the weekend and I got to thinking (always dangerous) about planes. I'm not sure why as I'm not really infatuated with planes like a lot of folks get when it comes to hand tools. I don't have dozens of them and I have no problem passing up a $5 user if I don't have a need for it. I also don't have any multiples. Call me crazy but I pretty much limit my tool kit to tools I actually use. Currently in my arsenal of bench planes I have an 8" smoother, a 17" fore plane, a 22" try plane a 30" jointer and a Stanley #5 jack plane that I use mostly for carpentry tasks.

 What I really got to thinking about though was plane setup. The more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that thin shavings are over rated. Now this is not a new concept for me as I have never been a big advocate of thin shavings and I always chuckle quietly to myself when I read or hear mention of measuring plane shaving thickness with a dial caliper. I mean, does it really matter if your jack plane can take a 0.001" thick shaving? Is it actually 0.001" anyway? Wood is a fibrous cellular material and in a shaving that thin likely compresses under the pressure of caliper jaws so are you actually taking an acurate measurement anyway?

But the rediculous practice of measuring plane shaving thickness to thousandths of an inch isn't really what this post is all about. What I really want to discuss is the application of shaving thickness. As I thought about my planes this weekend, I realized that most people spend way too much time futzing with planes trying to get every one they own to take a whisper thin shaving. I don't know why it wasn't so obvious to me before but for some reason, it made sense to me this weekend why planes historically were not made with the super tight mouths that seem to be expected today. Asside from the fact that highly figured fast growing timber wasn't as commonly used as it is today, cabinetmakers of yore simply didn't want planes with tight mouths because they were of limited use.

As a hand tool user, my most used bench planes are my fore plane and try plane, followed by the jointer. My fore and try planes are used on every single surface of every single board of every single thing I build. My jointer is used anywhere I need a long straight edge or a matched and glued joint (as in wide panels). By contrast, my smoother is used only as a final treatment on only the most important money surfaces, and even then, only for a couple of passes to make a show surface shine before applying a translucent finish. On a painted piece, I may not use the smoother at all.

The fore plane and try plane are used for probably 80% of the planing that is done in my shop. These planes are set up to bring rough stock to flat in fairly quick order so I want them to be able to hog off material or at least take a relatively thick shaving. I don't want to spend all day planing these surfaces. For this reason, a thight mouth and a fine shaving is not necessary and actually isn't even desired.

By contrast, in a mixed shop, one which employs power and hand skills, the most used planes are likely the try or jointer and smoother. In this case one may want a thinner shaving as they are only putting the final finish on the surfaces of stock that was prepared using a powered jointer and planer.

So for those of you who have stuck with my rant for this long, I guess my advice is this. Before purchasing and tuning your first (or next) plane, ask yourself a couple of questions. First, what is your intended use of the plane? When you have answered this question, then ask yourself if this task requires a tissue paper thin shaving. Really think about it too, don't just nonchalantly say yes and move on. When you really think about it you may be surprised at the answer. Then move on and get some work done and forget about those cottony thin shavings. They may be impressive to some, but what is more impressive is the actual work you can get done with a tool properly set for the task at hand.

Thin shavings really are over rated ;)!

After several years of hard use, my trusty striking knife broke on me over the weekend. This was one of the first tools I ever made for myself so there was a moment of sadness, but only for a moment as I've been looking for an excuse to make a new striking knife (like we ever need an excuse for a new tool).

The design of my old knife, while functional for several years, was bound to fail eventually. Without some type of ferrule to reinforce the area where the blade is inserted into the handle, the side grain is left unsupported and prone to breaking out when too much force is applied down on the knife, which is exactly what happened here. One solution is to make the blade run all the way through the handle or simply rivet scales to the blade, however, I was working with a broken jigsaw blade to make my striking knife blade so this was not an option for me at the time. No matter, I was never really crazy about this knife to begin with. It worked ok, but something about the spear point design just didn't do it for me. I can't explain it really but it just didn't feel right. It was also more difficult to sharpen being a spear point and in use, I only ever used it as a right handed single edged knife anyway. I can't recall ever using the opposite side of the spear point. So for my new knife, I decided to change the design.

To start with, I decided to use a longer blade stock to provide more support. I had two old worn out small files, a flat and a rat tail, that would make excellent knife and awl blanks, almost like they were meant for the task. Therefore, I decided on a double ended striking knife with an awl on one end and a knife on the other. The tangs of the files were round, unlike most files which have square tapered tangs. This made mounting the tangs in a new handle easy as I could just drill a hole, however, it also means that they might spin loose in the future. Time will tell. The old file handles also had ferrules that I could reuse on the new handle.

The first step was to separate the files from their existing handles and remove the ferrules from the handles carefully so I could reuse them later. Once this was done, I annealed the files by heating them to cherry red with two propane torches and then letting them cool slowly in a pile of ashes in the fireplace. This made the metal soft enough to work with hacksaw and files.

I started by working on the awl end. Unlike my woodworking, I use power when doing metal working. I don't like metal working. However, being resourceful (read cheap) means that sometimes I need to work metal when I need a new tool. At any rate, I have a few power tools I mainly use for home improvement but they double as hack metal working tools as well.

I chucked up the round end of the softened rat tail file in a drill press and worked the blank with a bastard mil file while it was spinning. This is my make shift metal lathe. The file work was slow going but eventually I was able to shape the awl. The final sharpening of the awl point was done with various grits of sandpaper wrapped around a flat wood block. I didn't want to gouge my oil stones for this rough work. At this point, the awl end was done. I decided not to heat treat the awl end so it would be less brittle and less likely to snap in use. It also makes it easy to reshape and hone the point with simple files and honing stones or sandpaper.

With the awl end completed, I turned my attention to the knife blank. I chucked up a small belt sander upside down in a machinist vise (remove the dust collection bag first to prevent a fire). Using the belt sander with a coarse belt, I sanded the teeth off of all four edges of the small flat file. Once the teeth were gone, I used a hacksaw to cut the flat file to the length I wanted and then used the grinder to grind the chosen skew angle and rough bevel. The knife is a single skew, single bevel type set up for right handed use.

After lapping out the faces of the knife, I heat treated it using two propane torches. I heated the blank to cherry red and quenched it to quickly cool and harden the steel. However, this made the steel so hard that a hardened file just skittered across it so it needed to be tempered to be able to be sharpened and to prevent it from snapping in use. I lapped the faces shiny so I could see the color change in the metal as I tempered it. Using a single torch I slowly heated the knife blank, watching the color change where I had just polished the metal. When the color got to a dark straw color, I quickly quenched the knife again to prevent over heating. Once you get to a dark straw color, it goes to blue quickly thereafter so you have to watch closely and work quickly. If it gets to blue, the metal is too soft to hold an edge. If this happens, you will need to reharden the blade, then try the tempering process again.

I chose a piece of bubinga I had in the offcut pile to use as a handle. I planed the blank square and cut off a 3½" section. I used the drill press to drill a hole completely through the blank for the tangs of each end. The ends were then shaped for the ferrules using an old plug cutter in the drill press. This worked very well. I got lucky to have a proper sized plug cutter still left in a box in the back of my garage (from my power tool days). The ferrules were heated to expand them slightly and then fit to the ends of the handle. The handle was then shaped with a spokeshave, rasps, files and some sanding. The knife and awl were inserted into the ends of the handle with some epoxy to hold them and keep them from spinning. Finally, the whole thing was finished with linseed oil.

So far I like it, though it hasn't really seen a lot of use yet. The handle might be a little full and may need to have it's shape refined a little more, but I'll use it for awhile before I make any changes. With the tangs of the two ends going all the way to the center of the handle and the ferrules supporting the ends, this striking knife should be around for a long time.

Now to get back to working wood!

Recently, I had the opportunity to rent Don McConnell's new DVD "Traditional Molding Techniques: The Basics".  That's right, I said rent.  I've been interested in seeing this DVD for some time, being the traditional woodworker that I am, but I was hesitant to shell out the $25 to own it, especially if I decided that I didn't need to own it after watching it.

The service I used to rent the DVD was SmartFlix.com. When I first linked over to the site, my first thought was "why didn't I think of this?" SmartFlix.com is an online rental store for how-to DVDs. You choose what you want to rent from their collection (which is pretty impressive from my perspective), they mail you the DVD, you keep it for a week and watch it as many times as you want and then mail it back in the prepaid envelope. I think this is a real great way to see some of the instructional DVDs I've wanted to see, without having to buy them all (most of which I won't watch more than once or twice anyway).

Their woodworking collection is fairly extensive, with over 325 woodworking how-to titles in categories from furniture making, to turning to tools. The selections are old and new alike with videos from Chris Schwarz, David Charlesworth, Rob Cosman, Don McConnell, Mario Rodriguez, Frank Klausz and a whole bunch of other well known names.

They have other how-to video selections as well not just woodworking.

If you are the type of person who learns best by seeing something done, or if you just like how-to videos, this site may be of great interest to you.

I have no personal interest in the site, I was simply asked to try it and review the service for the readers of my blog. In exchange for my unbiased review, I got a free rental and you also benefit by getting a discount if you use the coupon code listed below. With that said, I do think this service would be of interest to a lot of my readers, so I urge you to check it out if you like how-to DVDs.

Use the coupon code LOGANCABINET when you check out and SmartFlix will give you $2 off of your rental.

So now that I have the doors for the built-in designed, I need to get the case completed. It's been almost there since the end of September, however, I haven't had much time to work on it the last several weeks. October is always a busy month in my family. So this weekend, I rough cut and planed the lower face frame parts, but that's about all I was able to accomplish.

Here's a picture of the case in it's current state. It got too big to keep it in the shop any longer so I had to move it to it's permanent home. The rest of the assembly will be done there. As you can see, there are no face frames yet. I'm working on those now, as mentioned above. The two doors will go on the bottom. The top will remain open shelves. The final case will be painted to match the trim in our house and the built-in effect will be accomplished by wrapping the room's baseboard and crown molding around the case.

This is by far the largest piece I've built to date. It stands almost 8' tall and is about 32" wide. The case and shelves (and the face frames and doors to follow) are solid poplar, all about 7/8" thick. It was all prepared by hand from rough sawn 4/4 stock. The back boards are beaded tongue and groove pine. These were purchased planed from the home center. The case is heavy and I certainly don't want to move it from where it is now that it is all assembled.

Once the face frames are installed, I'll scribe the case to the wall so it fits into the corner seamlessly. The pine back boards are set into an extra deep rabbet to make this possible. The face frame will overhand the case slightly on the right side for similar reasons. Then, it's on to the doors. I'm looking forward to that part. The detail work like the doors is my favorite part.

In past projects, I've done several square raised panels. For an example of a door with a square raised panel, check out the Cabinet for the Shoppe under Current Projects. These types of doors are fairly simple to make if you take your time. Square raised panels are very easy to do with only a rabbet plane but this simple detail results in a very elegant and stable door.

Of course there are several variations on the raised panel door. Just peruse the kitchen section of your favorite big box home improvement store to see several examples. The one example you won't see however is a traditional tombstone raised panel. This is because it is impossible to make true, traditional tombstone raised panel doors entirely by machine because router/shaper bits cannot shape a sharp inside corner. These tools create rounded inside corners. A traditional tombstone raised panel must be at the very minimum, finished by hand carving. Therefore, mass production cabinet shops don't make them as they are too expensive and require skilled hands.

So I decided that for my current built-in cabinet project, I would like to try my hand at making traditional tombstone doors. This will give the cabinet a look that says this piece was meticulously hand crafted with care. It will also provide me the opportunity to try something I've never done before, which is always exciting.

Of course the first step is designing the doors. This is half the battle with something as complex as a tombstone door. Being the traditionalist that I am, I decided to turn to my Chippendale references and employ the classical column orders to aid me in proportioning the doors. There will be 2 doors on the cabinet, therefore, I began my design by sketching the outer dimensions of a single door.

I used the proportions of the ionic order to proportion the parts of the door. The door dimensions are roughly H (height) by H/2 (width). I divided the height of the door, H, into 5 equal parts. The bottom 5th (H/5) would be the height of an ionic column pedestal and the remaining (4/5) H include the column (with its base and capital) and the entablature. Click on the picture at left to see a larger image of how this works.

The next step is to divide the remaining space, (4/5) H, into 6 equal sections. This gives us the height of the entablature, and the height of the remaining column, including its base and capital. I used the height of the entablature as the height of the top rail for the door. I tried using the height of the base (H/5) but this looked to wide to my eye so the height of the entablature was a logical next choice. That is one of the interesting parts about designing this way. There are no rules, per se, only guidelines. In the end, how the final design looks to your eye should be the deciding factor.

With the height of the top rail established, I could move on to proportioning the remaining parts of the door. I divided the remaining space, (2/3) H, into nine equal parts, following the guidelines in Chippendale. One of these nine equal parts comprises what Chippendale refers to as a module (M). One module is equal to the maximum diameter of the column shaft. I used this dimension for the stiles of my door frame and made them 1 module wide.

One module seemed to narrow to me for the height of the bottom rail, so I experimented with different proportions of 1 module until I got a rail height that looked good to me. It ended up being 1-1/2 modules high. Finally, I played with the proportions in modules again to determine the width of  the tombstone top shoulders and the width of the raised panel field. This was again a place where experimentation proved to be the best way to proportion the parts so they looked good to my eye.

You'll notice that I haven't given the actual dimensions of the door. That's because it doesn't matter what the actual inch measurements are. As long as the door is proportioned properly as noted in the pictures, it should look right. If one dimension changes, all the other dimensions change proportionally. This will allow me to modify the design as I go along since the parts will all be based on each other, not on a theoretical cut list.

Of course, this is all still in the design phase. I'll be building a prototype door based on these proportions prior to building the actual doors for the cabinets. Stay tuned right here to see how it goes!

Being the cheap wood hoarder that I am, I have trouble getting rid of leftover scraps and offcuts from projects long since completed. I use plane shavings as packing material when mailing out boxes. They also make great tinder for starting the grill or fireplace so I can't bring myself to throw them in the trash. I'll go as far as to burn the excess shavings and put the ashes in the garden or flower beds rather than send them to the landfill, even though they are biodegradable. I still have a piece of 12/4 African mahogany from a project I completed some 6 years ago. The piece has a large diagonal split acros it's end, effetively making it useless for anything but the fire, but I keep holding on to it thinking that someday I'll find a use for this small offcut. Until that time is sits at the bottom of my scrap bin.

One very good use I have found for many of my offcuts is to make tools or small toys from them. Making tools for the shop is a great way to use up some of your small offcuts that would otherwise end up in the fire. I made these try squares from offcuts of different species just floating around the shop. The miter square was made from cherry offcuts of trim pieces from our kitchen remodel last year (the pieces supplied with new cabinets for use as filler strips between the end cabinet and wall). It's also very satisfying working with a tool you made yourself. The wood squares also have the benefit of not damaging your work should you drop them and they have thicker blades, giving a striking knife more to register against.

The adjustable bevel was a fun one as well. I knocked it out is about 40 minutes. I do want to make it sliding however so that it can be used as a drilling guide in addition to a marking tool, so this one isn't done yet.

The marking gauge is a good way to use up thicker but smaller offcuts. This one is based on an article by Dean Jansa in the Dec 2006 Popular Woodworking. It is very comfortable to use and can be adjusted one handed, a feature missing from most commercially made gauges. I have plans to make a matching mortise gauge with two pins on each side of the beam permantly set to 4 chisels in my kit. This will reduce time spent setting the adjustable pins on my current mortise gauge.

I'm still trying to locate a good source of marking gauge pin stock though. I'm not happy with the way modern HSS drill bits work. They can only be shaped on the high speed grinder and cannot be honed on stones or shaped with a file easily. If you know of a source of good pin stock, please let me know.

The plane adjusting hammer was made from scraps of purpleheart and oak. The purpleheart is extremely hard, however, because it is wood, it still doesn't damage my planes or mushroom the irons over like a steel hammer would. The panel gauge has a mahogany head and an oak beam. I took the pin out of this one as I made it from an 1/8" drill bit but wasn't happy with the way the drill bit performed so I need to replace it with something that can be shaped and honed by hand. The drill bits just don't work well.

The taper reamer was fun as well. It was designed by John Alexander. There was a lot of spokeshave work in this one as I do not yet have a lathe. It's obviously not perfectly round, however, it doesn't matter as it only serves as a holder for the scraping blade, which is made from an old handsaw blade from a broken saw. I made this reamer to ream the holes in Windsor chair seats, which I have not attempted to build yet. I did use it to ream the holes for the legs in the bench of my shave horse and it worked very well.

Speaking of spokeshave work, here are a couple I built from offcuts of bubinga. These were fun to build and a lot of fun to use. I have a Stanley #51 high angle shave but my shop made wooden shave is much nicer to use. The hardware is available at most home centers (#10-32 machine screws and matching knurled brass knuts). The blades were made from annealed 1/8" x 3/4" O1 tool steel and heat treated with a simple plumbing propane torch. The travisher still needs heat treating and tuning but I'm not at the point of making my chair seats yet (only due to a lack of time) so I have time.

So next time you have a limited amount of time in the shop, dig through the scrap bin. Who knows what kind of gem you might find in the firewood pile. The possibilities are almost endless.

Based on period invntories available for 18th and 19th century cabinet shops, one can get a good idea of the common tools that may have been found in a cabinet shop of the time. Further reading of period texts like Joseph Moxon's Mechanik Exercises or Peter Nicholson's Mechanic's Companion gives us some clues as to how period cabinetmakers worked with their tools. One thing that is apparent from both the period inventories and texts is that these shops typically had a good number of tools for specialized tasks.

This brings me to the subject line of this post. In the modern day, it seems we are constantly looking for bigger and better. We want one stop shopping, universal remotes and hybrid SUVs (I still don't understand this one). In our shops, many of us are looking for more versatile tools, hoping to avoid the purchase of multiple specialized tools that can perform fewer tasks. I too once subscribed to this camp of thinking. However, as my skills continue to develop, I'm finding that more versatile usually does not mean better. Even worse, it usually means more effort and time to complete a task.

Versatility can be a good thing is some cases, but there are also drawbacks. When something becomes more versatile and less specialized, it usually means that you give something up that made the specialized version...well special, and usually better. I do like being able to go to the local big box home improvement store to get all of my plumbing, lumber, electrical and landscape supplies for the weekend's projects in one trip. However, have you ever needed help in one of these stores? If you need to talk to someone who actually knows something about plumbing, electrical or roofing, you're SOL. When I need to talk to someone knowledgable, I still go to the specialty store.

The same can be said for our tools. One of the most common questions that comes up for new woodworkers is what plane to buy first. Without hesitation a slew of recommendations will be made for a tool with the most versatility. There is a problem with this approach, however. In my experience (yes I have used them), while these planes can be made to perform a lot of different tasks, they typically don't do any one thing particularly well. They are too short to be a good jointer or try plane, and they are unnecessarily long and heavy for smoothing work (though they do smooth just as well as a good smoother if set up properly).

Can one of these tools perform all of these tasks, sure, but it requires a lot of additional effort and time, as well as constant changes to the tool's setup. If you do most of your work with machines and want a plane just for general smoothing and trimming, a smooth plane will serve you better. If you want to hand flatten panels or joint edges, a jointer or try plane will server you much better. Our ancestors knew this and therefore had tools set up for specific tasks that they could just pick up and use. This was an absolute necessity for them to be able to get a piece done quickly and done well.

I liken it to a modern shop with job specific machines. You could joint your boards with your planer with some ingenuity and a few jigs, but would you want to? Is the additional time required worth it? Probably not. You could size a board to width with your jointer or planer, but would you want to? A table or band saw makes this super fast and effecient. The way I see it, your hand tools should follow suit. Anyone who has tried to face a board with only a jack plane should be able to attest. Sometimes, there's just no substitute to having the right tool for the job.

I needed a 20" wide board for the built-in project I'm working on, but like most people, I don't have access to 20" wide boards. At least not in my price range. So the solution to this problem is to edge glue two or more narrower boards together to make a single wide panel. I prefer to do this with as few boards as possible so I choose the widest boards I can that will result in the panel width I need.

Before gluing two boards together, it is vital to know which direction the face grain is running. If you get the two boards glued together with the face grain running in opposite directions, planing the final surfaces true after the glue has dried will be difficult due to opposing grain at the glue joint.

Notice here that I've marked the grain direction of the two show faces as well as the two joining edges. The direction of the edge grain is also important to know as it is helpful to have the grain on both edges running in the same direction when match planing the edges. However, this is not always possible with every pair of boards and becomes more difficult when edge gluing more than two boards. It is not as import as having the face grain running in the same direction and also flowing together well. The edges will be hidden in the joint so a little tearout will not be seen. If you cannot orient the boards with the face grain and edge grain running in the same direction, choose to run the face grain in the same direction if the appearance of the final panel will allow it. The appearance of the final panel should be the main priority. You want the grain from the two boards to flow together on the show faces so that the edge joint almost disappears after glue-up. If your final panel will be painted like mine, this is less importand and you can orient the boards with the face grain running in the same direction regardless of final panel appearance. On my boards, I was lucky to be able to get the face grain and the edge grain of the two boards running in the same direction.

The first step in creating a seamless edge joint is to plane the show face of each board flat and true. This will be the reference face so it must be fairly flat. Slight cupping is ok as long as it can be clamped out when the two boards are placed face to face, however, for this process, flatter is better. It is only necessary to plane one face at this point, the show face. The bottom faces of these two boards are still in the rough.

After the faces are planed flat and true, orient the two boards how they will be in the final panel. Next, fold the two boards together like a book with the show faces touching each other. In this picture, the edge facing away is the edge that will be joined together. Notice the rough area on the near edge of the upper board. This will be cut away after the panel is assembled so I'm not concerned with it now. This is a good place to use damaged boards like this.

With the two boards face to face, align the edges to be joined as best as possible to minimize the amount of planing. Use a pair of handscrews to hold the boards in position and place the pair in your vise or clamp to the front of the bench. Notice here how the edge grain of both boards is running in the same direction. I got lucky here but if I couldn't get them running in the same direction I would take a lighter cut with my try plane to minimize tearout in the edge that was being planed against the grain.

I start with the try plane to clean up the rough sawn edges and plane both edges at the same time. This plane will also begin to straighten the edges. The iron is cambered slightly as this plane is also used to true board faces. I don't like to glue panels up right from the try plane due to the cambered iron. I could just use my staight ironed jointer, however, it is set for a very light cut and therefore would take a lot longer to clean up the rough sawn edges. Starting with the try plane, I can take a thicker shaving to clean up the edges and then refine the edges for gluing with the jointer.

After cleaning up the rough sawn edges with the try plane, I refine and straighten the edges with the jointer. This iron has a straight edge for a tight glue joint. Again, plane both edges at the same time. A good practice when match planing edges like this is to begin planing only the center few inches of the boards. When the plane no longer takes a shaving, lengthen the stroke slightly. When the plane again stops cutting, lengthen the stroke again. This creates a slightly concave edge. Finally take full length strokes. At first, the plane will only cut at the start and end of the stroke (the high spots along the edge). Gradually, the shavings will begin to lengthen until you are taking one long full length shaving from end to end. When you get to this point, stop. You are done. The edges of the two boards will be straight.

A common misconception when creating an edge joint is that the edges of both boards need to be square. When jointing by machine this is true as the reference is the machine's fence. However, when edge jointing with hand planes using the match planing technique, the edges do not need to be square. The reason for this is that any angle created by the plane will be cancelled out when the two boards are opened back up.

The picture demonstrates this with a very exagerated angle. The angles of the two board edges are clearly not 90 degrees, however, the resulting angle between the two boards when the "book" is opened up into a panel is 180 degrees, or a flat panel. This is because the angles created during match planing are complimentary. This method works every time as long as the thickness of the two boards together is not wider than your jointer plane's iron.

Here's the final result. These boards are not glued up yet. The top board is just sitting on top of the bottom board. The joint is tight, there is no light showing between the two boards. The resulting panel is flat and the show face will require very little cleanup. All that will be left will be to plane the rough sawn back side of the panel after the glue dries and cut the panel to final dimensions.

Recently, one of the first planes I ever bought, a very nice Stanley #65 low angle block plane, had to be retired. The adjustment screw threads in the casting stripped, leaving the adjustment mechanism unable to function. For awhile, I adjusted it like I do wooden bench planes, however, this was a good opportunity for a proper replacement.

When I saw this plane online, I took a chance on it without actually seeing it in person. From the pictures I saw online, it appeared to have a lower bed angle than a typical bench plane. In addition, there is no tote, and no mortise where a tote would go. I was guessing, but I thought it was a strike block. Well, when the plane arrived earlier this week, I was thrilled that my guess was correct. What I had bought was the precursor to the modern block plane.

In the 18th century, this type of plane was referred to as a strike block. Later in the early 19th century it was referred to as a straight block, presumably, because the plane had no tote like other bench planes of the period. Later in the 19th century, these planes became known as miter planes, as their primary function was to trim the end grain of miter joints. Today, metal versions of these planes are much more common than this early 19th century wooden version. Stanley later made a version they numbered #9 and called a coachmaker's block plane.

My strike block is pictured here with my stripped out #65 and a #5 jack plane to give you an idea of it's relative size. My version is about 10" long, though 18th century versions were usually closer to 12". Unlike a modern block plane, this plane is bedded with the iron bevel down like a typical bench plane. This identifies it as likely being an American made plane (which it is). English versions were typically bedded with the iron bevel up but at a lower bed angle like today's low angle block planes.

The effective cutting angle on both types of planes is the same, however. A typical low angle, bevel up block plane is bedded at around 12 degrees. With the addition of a 25 degree bevel on the plane iron, the effective cutting angle is around 37 degrees. My plane, typical of American made planes, is bedded bevel down at an angle of 35 degrees.

Today I cleaned it up, honed the iron and tried it out on some pine end grain. The finish left behind was super smooth and polished. The plane cut just as well as a bevel up low angle block plane. I am extremely happy with this replacement. Anyone want a low angle #65 with a stripped casting?

Few planes cause as much confusion for today's woodworkers as the try plane. Depending upon who you talk to, what part of the world they are from or what text you are reading, this plane may be called the try plane, truing plane, long plane or jointer plane. In addition, some folks will recommend these planes be honed with a slight camber while others will insist on a straight edge. So why all the confusion? In my opinion, the confusion began from the naming conventions used by the manufacturers of the metal bench planes when they first appeared on the market.

I'm going to pick on Stanley for a minute only because they are the most common. Stanley identified their line of bench planes by number, #1 through #8. They also named these planes so that users at the time would be familiar with their intended use. The problem is, that Stanley based their naming of the planes only on a particular plane's length. Over time, the true meaning of what made a fore plane a fore plane and what made a try plane a try plane got lost. This is a common example of what can happen when people in a marketing position with little real  knowledge of a subject are allowed to make decisions related to that subject.

I discussed Stanley's #5 and #6, and their shortcomings, in my blog on the fore plane. This time I'm going to pick on the #7 and #8. Stanley called their #7 (22") a try plane and their #8 (24") a jointer plane. They based these names on the relative length of the plane. In all fairness, the #7 does make a very good try plane and the #8 does make a good jointer, when they are set up correctly. This is where the confusion begins.

Peter Nicholson, in his 1845 text The Mechanic's Companion states that the purpose of the try plane is to "reduce the ridges made by the jack plane, and to straighten the stuff: for this purpose it is both longer and broader, the edge of the iron is less convex, and set with less projection...." On the other hand, the jointer "is principally for planing straight edges, and the edges of boards, so as to make them join together; this operation is called shooting, and the edge itself is said to be shot."

This makes things a little more clear in the distinction between the try plane and jointer. Nicholson does give lengths for these planes as well, but as with most measurements of the period, these are generalizations and not rule. A try plane and jointer plane could potentially be the same length. The true difference in these planes is in their purpose and therefore their setup.

As the try plane is for trying (or truing) surfaces after the jack (or fore) plane, it's iron is cambered, though less than the fore plane, so that it does not leave plane tracks on the surface, which is wider than the plane. The jointer on the other hand, while resembling the try plane in appearance and length, is actually a joinery plane, not a surfacing plane. It's purpose it to straighten board edges and especially to "make them join together" in an edge joint, hence the phrase "jointing the edge." With this in mind it makes more sense for a jointer to have a straight iron like other joinery or fitting planes (e.g. rabbet planes), not a cambered iron like the surfacing planes (fore/jack, try and smooth), because the iron of the jointer is wider than the surface being planed.

Now don't confuse jointing the edge with trying the edge. If an edge needs to be squared to a true 90 degrees (for example, the front of a case which will have a face frame applied), a trying plane actually makes this process easier. The plane can be shifted side to side to take a tapered shaving, with the thicker part of the shaving being taken from the higher edge. However, when making a joint between two boards, one wants a flat edge for gluing. This is the purpose of the jointer plane.

Jointed edges need not be a perfect 90 degrees if the two boards are match planed. When match planing, the money (show) faces of the two boards to be joined are placed together and the mating edges are planed at the same time. When planed together, the boards can be opened like a book and the angles of the edges will be complimentary to each other, resulting in a flat panel, no perfect 90 degree edges necessary. If you don't believe me, draw it out for yourself and see how it works (I may make match planing a future blog). A cambered iron cannot make this joint as well as a straight iron.

Hopefully, this clears up some of the confusion surrounding the try plane. You can see now that a #7 and #8 both can actually make very nice try planes or jointers. It all comes down to how you set up the iron.