I was the second person to receive the Lee Valley detail palm planes, thanks to John Collocia, who made these planes available and reviewed them here:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...t=#post1782090
My first though upon receiving these planes, was simply how small they are. They are a bit smaller than I thought, and because of that they are pretty specialized tools, which is stating the obvious. Also, for my own uses, I only found the double convex and the flat plane to be of use to me. I would use the double convex for carving archtop guitar tops and backs, or at least to get into the highly curved areas of archtop guitars. The double convex has a pretty small radius, so it is more of a specialized tool for getting in pretty tightly curved areas. To me, it did seem to have more radius than I needed, but I suppose it is only for certain areas, and it would be useful when needed.
The flat detail plane would be useful for me in carving braces for acoustic guitars. I really don't have much use for the concave or the single convex plane. I can usually use other tools for creating those shapes, whether rounding off the edges with a block plane, or using a hollow or round wood plane. So I don't need such a small tool for those shapes.
Using the tools was actually very comfortable. Despite their small size, they can be held a variety of ways. Depending on how you are using them, the knobs can either be nice or, just get in the way, but the knobs are easily removed. One of the really really great things about these planes is that they can be held used with two hands, like a block plane. Much like when you are using a block plane, you can push with your right hand on the sides of the plane, and then use your left hand can help guide the plane by placing your thumb or fingers on the front of the plane. While there is no small front knob like on a block plane, it seems that these planes were cleverly designed to have a nice flat area on the toe of the plane where you can place a finger to use two hands, which is VERY helpful for reducing hand fatigue when planeing for longer periods of time.
So anyway, whomever who like to test out these planes, just send me a PM, and I will send you out the four detail planes. Then when you are done checking them out, you can either send them back to John Coloccia, or send them on to the next person who wants them.
I hope someone else gets a chance to try these out. And oh yeah, thank you John Coloccia for making these available, and also Chris Griggs for sending them on to me!
Jonas Baker
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. Myka has played with his own set of these and I think he mentioned using the concave one to round braces.
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Originally Posted by John Coloccia
