Question about infills, "Why?"

[John Sanford]

Specifically, why bother to "infill" with wood? Why not just cast/machine/build the entire blasted thing out of metal? Same engineering (i.e. minimal/no adjustments), just replace the wood with bronze or brazz or aluminum or whatever strikes your fancy. (Platinum would be interesting, albeit a weeeee bit on the pricy side )

[Dan Andrews]

I suspect it is for the same reason some people climb Mount Everest, or sculpt in wood. They do become a useful work of art. I'll be curious to see if there is a completely practical reason for doing so.

[Dale Sautter]

Well... one fella will even make you one with polymer if that's what floats your boat:



or wood... here

[george wilson]

If a plane was like an infill,except solid metal,it would be VERY heavy. It would most likely slip out of your fingers when planing,and get dropped on your wood!! That Holtey plane is plenty heavy enough with that massive thick sole on it.

[Bob Stroupe]

My guess would be that working with flat bar stock doesn't require the specialized tooling and skill set that machining or casting does, and wood makes an attractive filler that works easily.

[george wilson]

Oh,it takes skill alright,just different ones if you make a dovetailed one,ESPECIALLY a curved sided smooth plane.

[Pam Niedermayer]

Specifically, why bother to "infill" with wood? Why not just cast/machine/build the entire blasted thing out of metal? Same engineering (i.e. minimal/no adjustments), just replace the wood with bronze or brazz or aluminum or whatever strikes your fancy. (Platinum would be interesting, albeit a weeeee bit on the pricy side )

Or, why not leave off the metal and make them all wooden? Oh, that's right, they do.

Pam

[Jim Neeley]

lol, Pam..

[David Weaver]

Specifically, why bother to "infill" with wood? Why not just cast/machine/build the entire blasted thing out of metal? Same engineering (i.e. minimal/no adjustments), just replace the wood with bronze or brazz or aluminum or whatever strikes your fancy. (Platinum would be interesting, albeit a weeeee bit on the pricy side )

I can't speak to buying them, but I can speak to making them for personal use. With relatively few tools, you can make a world beater of a plane - entirely by hand. That equates to it being relatively cheap. Not compared to a used bench plane, but cheap compared to buying one.

The infill gives you, as the planemaker, the ability to bed the iron very very accurately so that the plane is very solid and so it adjusts with a hammer just like you'd want it to.

[Pat Barry]

Why would you want to adjust a fine instrument with a hammer?

[Terry Beadle]

Ok...I'll bite..

The same reason you beat on a drum with sticks....it's designed to work that way. A plane blade with no wedge restriction will shoot right out the bottom of the mouth. A hammer can be used in an aggresive manner as well as a refined manner. Look at any ivory carving and you'll see it take almost an infinite amount of very careful tapping to shape and make the artistic results.

Using my St. James Bay smoother, I can adjust it to take less than a thousandth of an inch shaving. I use a very lite stroke of a 3 oz wooden hammer to do it. It gives me the control I need to set it right. I could not reliably adjust a smoother to take a sub-thou shaving by hand. Key word reliably.

It is an interesting conumdrum though, beating a fine instrument....unless it's my son Dustin at 11 pm at night in the basement making the foundation rock....hoot!

[Ron Bontz]

I don't know about all this but if I had that Holtey, I would be afraid to get it dirty. Just beautiful.

[David Weaver]

I don't know about all this but if I had that Holtey, I would be afraid to get it dirty. Just beautiful.

I would try to use it on every project. As much as possible.

Pat - hammer is the only way to fly if you are not a precision machinist. Most of the adjusters I've seen are either fragile, too coarse or just not as nice as adjusting with a hammer. I hear holtey's adjusters are like silk. I don't have trouble believing that.

Of the three planes I've finished, one was a kit with an adjuster. I'd rather it didn't have one - I wouldn't have to pay so much attention to how much tension was on the lever cap when using it if it weren't there at all.