planes....learning curve

[Kevin McMichael]

You guys have me intrigued. I have used a small cheap plane that I have to trim doors that have swollen etc. But now I am interested in a large plane for jointing boards. Reading some of the posts, it seems to be a steep learning curve for these things. Is it? Where can I get the basic information on Jointing planes and maybe a shooting board?

[John Schreiber]

There is a learning curve for planes. In fact, for me there are at least three learning curves: You've got to learn to sharpen properly. You've got to learn to set up or "fettle" a plane. You've got to learn to use it.

If you buy a quality new plane from Lee Valley or Lie Nielsen or one of the other smaller high quality makers, you will have the first two taken care of and you can concentrate on the third knowing that the plane is capable of the work you are trying to do. Soon you will have to learn about sharpening, but that is such a core skill for hand tool woodworkers, you need to know that anyway. If you want to refurbish old planes or make cheaper planes useful, you will have to learn about fettling. You might be able to recover you're door trimmer that way.

It's worth the effort though. I have been know to plane just for the joy of it.

[Robert Rozaieski]

Not a steep learning curve at all. The most important thing is to make sure you can sharpen the iron really sharp. A sharp iron can solve 90% of the problems/frustrations people have with planes.

For my method of jointing and joining two boards in an edge joint, see here.

[Bill Houghton]

I've never done much tuning up of my garage sale planes, other than taking them apart and cleaning them up, though I have gotten rid of some that didn't work.

But, the better I learn to sharpen, the better they work.

My other three (related) lessons when I started to learn to get better were:

1. Blade camber (curved edge) is a good thing on all but final smoothing chores. The more material you want to remove, the greater the curve should be.

2. When you want to remove a lot of material, planing across the grain or at an angle to it will remove a lot of wood with less perspiration on the operator's part. When you want to get smoothness, planing along the grain and in the direction of the grain (I'll explain that in a minute) will remove less wood but leave more smoothness. "In the direction of the grain" - one classic (simplified) metaphor is to picture wood like cat's fur, which has a normal way of lying on the cat's body. Stroking against that normal way results in funny-looking fur (and, in cats, is thus worth doing sometimes), but an angry cat. Another way of thinking about it is to picture the wood as a bundle of drinking straws laid out so that the ends are at an angle. Planing wood against its normal "lay" (raising up the cat fur or planing into the straw ends) results in roughness; planing with the "lay" (stroking down the cat fur or planing in the direction of the straw ends) leads to smoothness.

3. At the same time, for any given planing work, less blade extension below the sole is better than more - (relatively) finer shavings better than coarse. Less effort on your part, less fighting by the wood.

Beyond that, you're dealing with the old punch line to the joke about how to get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice. This may sound deadly, but, once you pass the initial learning stage, which can happen moderately quickly, it's, in my opinion, a far more enjoyable experience than running a router or sander. No dust mask, no hearing protection, an intimate communion with the wood (if I plane just so, it will be smoother), and a real feeling of artistry.

[Michael Faurot]

Reading some of the posts, it seems to be a steep learning curve for these things. Is it?

As others have mentioned, there's the sharpening and fettling aspects to consider if you go with a used or vintage jointer plane. If you go for a new quality plane from companies like Veritas or Lie-Nielsen, you can pretty much take the plane out of the box and go to work. Now the only learning curve is how to actually use the thing.

Jointing boards actually isn't all that difficult. It's definitely easier to work the thin edge grain of a board than it is to learn how to smooth the wider face grain.

In addition to a jointer plane you'll also need a good square and a good straight edge. Here's how I do it:

1. Take a few passes on the edge grain with the plane so that you get things essentially smooth.
2. To start the pass, make sure you have good registration of the toe of the plane on the edge and put more pressure there than at the rear. Make note whether the blade actually starts cutting when it passes over the beginning or not. If not, that may mean the beginning is a little low compared to the rest of the board.
3. As you get toward the middle of the board, shift the pressure from your hands from the front of the plane more to the rear. When the blade eventually passes over the end of the board, you don't want the toe to take a nose dive down. Also start to slow down a bit as you get to the end so that after the blade passes the end you can bring it to a stop.
4. After a couple of passes check the flatness of the edge with a straight edge. Hold it up to a light source and look for light to shine through between the wood and the straight edge.
5. If you have a low spot in the middle, that will get taken care of by additional passes of the jointer plane. This is where the longer body of a jointer plane comes into play.
6. If you have low spots on the ends with a high spot in the middle you'll want to knock down that high spot (i.e., take a short pass at the start and end of the high spot). Then check for flatness again. Do this until you get the bulk of the hump out and then go back to full length passes. At this point you should have some shorter low spots at the beginning and end of the edge. For the low spot at the start of the edge, this is where the longer area in front of the blade of a jointer comes in and why you need to be sure you have good registration and more pressure on the toe before you start a pass. For the low spot at the end, this is why you need to shift the pressure more to the rear and slow down, because to flatten this you need for the blade to stop cutting before it reaches the end. If you're still pushing down more on the toe, it's going to keep following that low spot and make it worse.
7. When the edge is mostly flat, check the edge to the face for 90° with your square. Check it in several spots along the length of the edge. Most likely one side will be a little higher than the other. If the right side is a little higher, then using the left portion of the edge of the plane's blade take a partial width shaving that's about 1/3 of the width. Now take another partitial width shaving, using the left edge of the blade that is now about 2/3 of the width of the edge. Then take a full width shaving. Check for square again. If it's square--you're done. If the right side is still high, repeat.

Where can I get the basic information on Jointing planes and maybe a shooting board?

When I made mine, what I found to be the most helpful was to be able to just look at a bunch of different ones and then emulate the features I liked the best. To do this, I just did a Google image search with "shooting board" as the search parameter.

[Jacob Mac]

Kevin:

I am a noob at the handplane game, and ww in general, so let me share my experience. I have bought several older planes, one from the creek, and 3 others from Walt at Brass City. And I have had a bear of a time getting two of the planes to work. I have spent hours messing around with them, and have been frustrated to the point of just wanting to chuck them out of my shop. The other two are simply wonderful to use, and have totally changed the way I look at wwing.

So my suggestion would be to either:

1. Buy LN and/or LV planes, or if you don't have the cash;
2. Find someone willing to teach you how to tune a plane properly.

Otherwise, it can be kind of frustrating if you are left twisting in the wind. But when you get a plane working right, it is terrific.


I also received a WoodRiver block plane as a present. Taking aside the geopolitical realities that are attendant with these planes, mine works really well. All I had to do was adjust the mouth and start using the tool. I really like it.

[Jacob Mac]

Also, one more thing, there are some videos of Chris Scwarz taking a board from rough to ready on youtube. I picked up some tips from there.

[Tri Hoang]

John & Bill pretty much sum it up.

I would recommend 2 books: The Complete Guide To Sharpening by Leonard lee (founder of Veritas), and The Hand Plane Book by Garrett Hack. If you like to see how it's done, get Rob Cosman "Rough to Ready" video.

[Mark Stutz]

Kevin,
Depending on your location, THE BEST thing you could do is spend a few hours with somone who knows what they are doing. You may spend several frustrating hours by yourself, only to have someone with experience pick up the plane and with just a few little tricks, start making shavings. Well, maybe a little exaggerated, but you get the point.

To this day I blame Dave Anderson for my plane addiction, after spending just one evening in his shop and feeling what it was really like to use a well tuned plane.

Mark

[Archie England]

+1 to finding and watching someone do this!!!

Do you have a ww-ing club near you? Visit, make friends, and see if someone can let you test drive some of their fleet of handplanes.

[David Keller NC]

You guys have me intrigued. I have used a small cheap plane that I have to trim doors that have swollen etc. But now I am interested in a large plane for jointing boards. Reading some of the posts, it seems to be a steep learning curve for these things. Is it? Where can I get the basic information on Jointing planes and maybe a shooting board?

Kevin - you can get most of your questions answered right here. One thing to do is read through the Neander forum FAQ (sticky thread at the top). You will, of course, need a plane, and probably one that's a bit longer and larger than the one that you use for sticky doors.

It is, however, worth learning. I suppose I'll get blasted for saying this, but it really has been my experience - you can be an excellent craftsman with only handtools, you can be an excellent craftsman with power tools and handtools, but you really can't be an excellent craftsman with only powertools. That doesn't mean you need to use planes to joint boards, but it is very difficult to make wood behave like metal - in other words, to get a consitent joint time after time off of a power saw with a material that has all sorts of vagaries of grain, defects, and moves with changes in humidity.

[David Thornton]

how the hell did you post this forum sucks

[Caspar Hauser]

how the hell did you post this forum sucks

Hmm, cogent, coherent and constructive... well played Sir, well played.

[Kevin McMichael]

I do not know of anyone near me that would have any knowledge of such things. I live in Artesia, NM which is kind of the middle of nowhere. I do see that one of you is in Albuquerque.

I am planning to replace the doors in my house. I am contemplating the purchase of an electric hand plane or building a plywood jig to trim them with a circular saw. Would one of the large jointer planes be able to accomplish this? This may be off topic but I am sure that some of you have done this and this might give me an excuse to purchase one

[John Schreiber]

. . . you can be an excellent craftsman with only handtools, you can be an excellent craftsman with power tools and handtools, but you really can't be an excellent craftsman with only powertools. . . .

Well said!