Buying lumber for totes, woodies, handles, jigs etc. ?

[Fitzhugh Freeman]

I've made a number of things from BORG hard maple and red oak but only a few things from good hardwood lumber yard wood. Those I have made used wood from the shorts, turning blank sections, not from the main stacks of lumber. This is mostly because I haven't had a way to break down larger pieces well. I recently got some great advise here as well as some very generous material help from a member who desires to remain anonymous, so I have the saws and enough understanding to try. To be honest, though, it's also because I find going to the lumberyard or shopping online for wood a bit intimidating.

For now I'm focusing on making or fixing up tools as many of the woodworking tools I need as I can instead of making furniture. I learn a lot, it's rewarding and FUN, it requires precision and care, yet I don't get all worked up if I screw up and it turns out dramatically ugly - as long as it's functional. Of course I also need the tools!

I have 4 foot piece of good annealed 1084 steel to make some plane blades, rasps, floats and such out of. The metal was the easy part! I read the traditional wood for a plane in quartersawn beech (if you want to be choosy). I have trouble finding large enough pieces of quartersawn anything to make woodies. MacBeath Hardwoods, the local yard, says they rarely have much selection for boards over 8/4.

I'm also not clear what species would be a good overall choice for toolmaking. My experience is narrow but I've found the following: Hard maple seems good - wears well, seems to take finer details OK - but it is hard. Red oak is awful - large course grain, a bit splintery. I loved working with the small boards of cherry I got, but it seems too soft for many tools. I have some verawood for plane soles but I'm quite allergic to it and it was a nightmare to work. I'm on a tight enough budget I can't just go buy different woods to try so I'd like pointers. What type or types would you buy if you had to buy just one or two boards to make smaller jigs, tool handles, and such out of? I can't tell how to order online since it seems you can only determine thickness and board feet, not width.

Some examples of sizes I'm thinking of:
Body of woodie: 16" - 28" x 3" x 3"
Closed handle for plane or saw handle: 6" x 8" X 1"
Mallet head: 3" x 4" x 6"
Big wooden screw: 28" x 2" x 2"
Head for big wooden screw: 4" x 4" x 6" (assuming I'd not turn whole thing from 4" v 4")
Nut for screw: 4" x 5" x 8"
Router plane: 2" x 3" x 5"
Plane totes, chunks for infills...

How would you get pieces like above? Do you buy a few large pieces and break it down, say a board that is 2" and another that is 4" that in part gets resawn to some 3" and some 1"?

What woods would you consider or avoid? I don't expect one species to be perfect for everything but I don't know the range enough to choose.

I hope my question makes sense.
Thanks for any input!

Fitzhugh

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

For plane bodies, there's a fellow on eBay that sells decent sized 3"-ish square dried beech blanks. If you search eBay for something like "Beech plane blank", you'll usually see a couple listings by him, he's usually got two lengths listed. No connection to the fellow, and I can't vouch for him or anything, but I've heard him recommended by another creeker.

[Brian Thornock]

A lot of those larger pieces get laminated from thinner pieces. Finding 3x3 material is not impossible, but expensive. You say cherry is too soft, but it is not too much softer than maple, and I think it looks way better. The way I would do the above is to buy a 6-7" wide 4/4 rough sawn board several feet long and cut it down and laminate as needed. It will be much cheaper and you won't be at the mercy of what someone has in stock. Of course, there will be glue lines, but careful grain matching can make it much less noticeable. Also, as for ordering online, I have ordered from woodworkerssource in arizona and they allow you to specify minimum length and width for an additional $.25/bd ft. Shipping is never really cheap on wood, but they are reasonable, and if you sign up for their mailing list they give you a $10 off of $50 coupon. Again, no affiliation with them, but a satisfied customer.

[David Weaver]

Cherry is probably not too soft to make a decent plane, but one board of cherry to the next may be very different. It is a fairly weak wood and will not wear well.

I wouldn't use it.

Nor would I use walnut.

I don't like oak for this kind of stuff, but I would use it before cherry or walnut. Beech, birch, and maybe other dense fruitwoods would be good, but most of them are unstable.

Beech is hard to find in thick blanks because it's extremely poorly behaved when drying and if the boards aren't cut straight down the grain line, even if it's quartered, it will still warp. The reality of it with logs that are thicker at one end than the other makes cutting quartered sections that look like riven wood in their orientation difficult to do, and even if you can, sometimes the tree itself doesn't grow straight up from the trunk, it may grow with a twist in it.

I am probably the person who recommended mike digity, the ebay seller who sells QS beech, etc. I just don't even know anyone else who does. Mike dropped off a load of lumber in my garage about a month ago, he's a good guy. Old school. He doesn't just sell QS beech to people making planes, though, so if you want some from him tell him you want it as close to dead QS as possible because you're using it to make planes. I know he's got some large blanks, because he mentioned them to me when he stopped by to drop off my wood.

Quartered maple and beech would be my two choices, and beech is about as hard as maple but easier to work. You really want something 16/4 if you're going to make a large bench plane. If you try to get by with a 3x3 table leg blank or something, you're not going to have enough. Tote stock should come from a separate board, unless you happen to have something big enough to make it, you'll end up resawing, anyway. Something plus size 4/4 or 5/4 and rift or close to quartered.

[James Scheffler]

I made a plane with laminated quartersawn white oak, and it worked out well. It's in my avatar picture. Hard maple would be a really good choice, but I wouldn't hesitate to use cherry or soft maple for a plane body. As a hobbyist woodworker, I think it would take me a long time at my usage rate to wear out a cherry or soft maple sole. Also, you may learn after your first couple plane attempts that you want something different in terms of the body dimensions or shape. Using a wood that's more available and/or easier to work with may be a good choice for that reason alone.

[Lloyd Robins]

I just wanted to +1 on The Woodworkers Source. The have always been very helpful. I just ordered maple for a Moxon vise, and they exceeded my expectations. Living in the California desert, I either order or drive along way to get wood.

[Ryan Baker]

For making tools, hard maple can't be beat. Soft maple is very close behind. For smaller jobs, like handles, bubinga is great, or something from the rosewood family. Lots of good choices actually.

[Fitzhugh Freeman]

As always, I get great help here when I ask. Thank you.

I've already made a 24" try plane out of oak. Krenov style. Only to find the traditional beautiful curvy old (1930's) boat or car shape doesn't work well at that size with my hands. So, yeah, making some out of whatever reasonable I can find or laminate seems wise. Once I know what I'm doing AND what I like I'll use the absolute best wood I can get. Or not. They're tools, after all.

I did make a bench screw for the leg vise for the bench I'm finally making out of laminated hard maple. I did so because I didn't think I could actually do it: no wood lathe, nothing but a couple saws, chisels and a card scraper. Turned out great! I don't think I'll remake it in solid wood, no reason to. Oh - also used a crappy spoke shave to rough it to something resembling round. I stuck it between a couple "centers" made from filed large brass screws in scraps clamped to bench, spun it by hand with a pencil on the "tool rest" (clamped piece of scrap) to mark the high points and then used the card scraper to rather quickly remove the high spots. Repeat. Repeat again. And again..... ended up very straight and true. I used a metal measuring tape wrapped around to mark where the threads would go then sawed and chiseled away. As I mentioned, it worked great. I hand carved a split nut for it out of pallet scraps - also worked out but I'll replace that with something nicer if needed. Nut doesn't need to be nearly as strong as screw: inner threads don't break as easily.

Only thing is, I thought I was breaking some sacred neander law by laminating up pieces like that. Good to know it is done. I've also read posts here where people argued that proper traditional wooden planes can't possibly be made out of anything laminated because they'll warp all to hell from uneven wood movement. Or something. Here in California we don't have that thing called weather, certainly not muggy summers, so I think I have some extra breathing room wrt wood movement.

Thanks!

[David Weaver]

You do what you want to do and you don't have to worry about others' sacred rules.

I personally agree that a plane that is made of one piece is much more desirable as a display of skill and style than is a laminated plane, but if money is tight and it costs $100 to get a decent blank, with the chance that the plane might not turn out how you like, and $10 to laminate together two pieces of 8/4 scrap, by all means, you can always make a one-piece plane if something nice turns out.

There isn't a great deal of good fruitwoods or exotics out there in 16/4, because they are all a bear when it comes to the kiln. Even the stuff that's described as KD in my experience comes up short, and still moves some the first couple of months you have it.

For making one-piece planes with handtools, the fruitwoods have it hands down. They work like they're impregnated with wax, they are tolerant of errant strokes (as in, they don't chip out massively on you because they aren't splintery), they have good wear resistance for their hardness and they're fairly hard if you pick right. The downside is all or almost all of them have terrible behavior when drying - they crack, split, twist, etc. But you'll notice that when makers could have chosen pretty much anything on old growth wood, they chose birch and then beech for the most part.

[Jim Matthews]

"Only thing is, I thought I was breaking some sacred neander law by laminating up pieces like that. Good to know it is done. I've also read posts here where people argued that proper traditional wooden planes can't possibly be made out of anything laminated because they'll warp all to hell from uneven wood movement."

The point of lamination is arrange pieces with grain in opposition to eliminate warping. Gary Knox Bennett of Oakland, CA uses lamination extensively in his furniture and his results are excellent.
I'm not a fan of his design sense, but this method has freed my designs from heavy mortise cutting - if you laminate, you can leave a space for the mortise, no chopping required.

http://www.finewoodworking.com/woodw...tle-table.aspx

Watch the embedded video, some of the techniques are eye openers.
Search through for the long spar construction that runs the length of the table.

I use that, often. Rip along the length of a long board, and "fold" it along the freshly cut edge to form an opposed grain laminate.
It's amazingly strong.

[Kees Heiden]

I have a thick piece of padouk somewhere burried in my woodstack. Anyone ever made a plane with that kind of wood? I have no idea how it works with handtools. If I ever get around to do it, it would be a traditional style, not a Krenov.

[Lloyd Robins]

I have a thick piece of padouk somewhere burried in my woodstack. Anyone ever made a plane with that kind of wood? I have no idea how it works with handtools. If I ever get around to do it, it would be a traditional style, not a Krenov.

As I remember, Steve Knight used padouk in his planes, so I would guess it to be a serviceable wood.

[Jeff Wittrock]

I have a thick piece of padouk somewhere burried in my woodstack. Anyone ever made a plane with that kind of wood? I have no idea how it works with handtools. If I ever get around to do it, it would be a traditional style, not a Krenov.

I've used this plane made from padouk for a few years. I can't really comment on stability since it is a pretty short plane and it is laminated. The sole has worn O.K. but not great, but then I've used it on some other woods that were pretty hard so I can't complain. I think a lot has to do with what you use the plane for. If I'm putting a chamfer on an edge, I sometimes just grab what is handy. Presenting the sole of a plane with a hard sharp edge will eventually cause some scoring as compared to just using a plane as a smoother on what is already a pretty clean, flat surface.

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-Jeff

[Kees Heiden]

That's a nice plane Jeff, I like it. I've made a Krenov some time ago from some mystery wood with an Ipe sole. That's a well wearing one! But when I took it up again after a hiatus of several months, the plane had warped considerably. No idea what caused this though. It was easilly corrected with some sandpaper on a flat table.

I have plenty of beech (living in Europe has its advantages). But beech can be a bit boring.

[Roy Lindberry]

What do you all think of hickory? I haven't worked it by hand much, but I did a couple of kitchens out of it with power tools about 10 years ago. It is certainly hard, and your tools need to be sharp. But it is fairly readily available and can be gorgeous.

But what about wear resistance? Does anybody know? I used three pieces of laminated hickory to make the head of my joinery mallet, and it is holding up very well. I'm extremely happy. But I don't know how it would work for planes and saw handles, etc.