Light Talk - Weights of Different Planes

[David Weaver]

David, wrap it up for me, do you think heavier or lighter is better, probably depends on the plane? Like Adam brought up, I'd think the mass of the driver matters too?

In good wood, I like a light plane more, but there seems to be a lower limit for me with smoothers, except of the continental design. That's all just my opinion.

I'd call good wood something like clean straight soft maple, cherry, walnut, or - if one is lucky enough, mahogany. Beech sort of fits in there, too, especially the face of quartered boards.

I work cherry more than anything else, just because of where I am, i can get it any time FAS rough for 5 bucks a board foot and sometimes half or third of that. For working from rough, I like either the stanley or a woody jointer (I seem to be more accurate with a metal jointer if I'm trying to hit a tight mark, but you have to remember to wax it while you're working because it's easy to get tired and start to lean on it).

this answer's going nowhere fast. I guess it depends. If I could only have three planes, I'd have a japanese jack, a stanley 7 sized metal vintage plane and a stanley 4. But I'd rather at least have the option of having a wooden jointer or try plane at least 22" long and a vintage wooden jack - double iron both of them. Something in the 7 pound range for a long plane seems to be ideal for medium hardwoods, smoothers in the range of 3 1/2 to 4, and something around 5 for a jack.

I have noticed in the past that when I'm getting tired, the jtbrown plane will start to seem heavy when I pick it up off of an edge, but part of that's probably because it's long. It can remove wood fast.

If the wood is not so great, which is what I'd consider hard maple or stuff with lots of runout that comes right back into you on the opposite end of the board, it's nice to have heavier metal planes for everything but the coarsest work (the modern planes do have a little more accurate cap irons, too - a stanley 7 and 4 are definitely easier to set dead on where you want them). The infill kit/panel plane is like magic on really hard wood, but my experience is dampened with it a little because shepherd did a crap job with a capital C on making the cap iron and the iron - they are inaccurately made AND the iron is poor quality, delivering unexpected chipout at the edge often.

I tend to think after using all of them that the stanley 4 sold gobs for a reason, that the stanley 7 sold gobs for a reason, and the woody jointers were carefully made to the weights they are (They wouldn't have needed to keep all of that weight in front of and behind the iron in the non-razee planes if they didn't want to).

If you have a sore shoulder or back, a plane that doesn't get jarred in the cut seems all the more important. Sometimes I have mild arthritis, and the more ideal the plane, the less I notice it. I don't really like the idea of stopping physical work when woodworking is about all the physical work I get these days.

[Tony Shea]

I was just in the shop smoothing up some boards that I finished fitting in a desk I'm making and was thinking about this post as I was planing. I was using my LN #4 bronze for the purpose and decided to switch over to my well tuned Stanley #4 to see again how I liked the feel. And again the LN won out hands down 90% of the reason being the weight. Something about smoothing and some jointing tasks I just prefer the extra weight. I certainly agree that the lighter weight jack plane is a blessing in pretty much all instances I just can't get around the fact that I like my smoothers to be heavy, hence the reason I chose the bronze over iron. By the time I am at the jointing and smoothing stage I am taking really light cuts, somewhere between .002" to .005" so the weight is a non issue as far as fatigue and jarring are concerned. Most of my work is not done in batches and are one piece fit to the next so again fatigue is a non issue when the jointing and smoothing stages are reached.

But this is all just a preference to the way I work wood with the tools I have at my disposal. I think this is a great thread and can get really involved if others argue their preferences. I do appreciate you taking the time to weigh up all your examples and posting this data for us to think about.

[Chris Griggs]

I was just down in the shop planing away on some walnut trying to figure out which of my 6s I want to keep and which I want to sell. My WR is 8lbs, and the the LV 6 I just won on ebay is 6 3/4. It was interesting to see what I liked as I started to fatigue (I was trying to tire myself out). I had assumed I would like the lighter LV more and more over the 8lb WR as ai fatigued but what I realized was that it depended on the cut I was taking. For the most part I did like the lighter weight of the LV better, but when I was a) starting to get tired and b) taking about as heavy of a cut as I would with a trying plane..I did appreciate the weight of the WR in powering through the stroke.

So I'm realizing that while I do usually prefer something lighter than the modern bedrock reproductions (at least in 6s or 7s), there are situations where that weight would be advantageous. For how I work and what wood I work,I think I will probably end keeping the lighter LV (which is superbly balanced btw), but for the first time I do see why someone might want a really heavy plane.

Smoothers, for me its a toss up. I still lean towards lighter weight because like feedback. I CAN feel tearout with a lighter plane and even when comparing the LN iron to the LN bronze I liked that I could better feel what was happening with the iron plane (bronze absorbs all the virbration...which is really really good, but can also be a downfall depending on what you like). There is also something nice about just blowing throw the cut effortlessly with something like a bronze LN, but again, I tend to plump down for something nimble feeling that gives me a physical sense of what is happening with the wood. The vintage No.4 are too me the perfect balance of this. They have enough weight that you don't need to force them through the cut, but they are they are light enough and made of a stiff enough material that I can feel what the wood is doing. For this reason if one of these day I decide I want an LN 4, I'll probably go with iron (err...probably...maybe..both are nice)

This is a really interesting thread...but its a very difficult thing to judge...really REALLY depends on the situation.

[Adam Cruea]

OK, adam, you're going to need a nickname.

* Thor
* HD (heavy duty)
* John Henry
* Paul Bunyan
* Richard Kiel
* D11 (like the bulldozer)

Or any other one you could think of

My friends usually refer to me either as Mountain Man or Hoss/Haus. I'm about 5'8" and 250lbs. The sleeves of my XXL shirts tend to be fairly snug around my arms and shoulders.

I put my drill press together on my own and moved it on my own down to my basement. Delta 18-900L. It wasn't until I read the directions a second time to make sure I put the head on it correctly that I saw it was supposed to be a 2 person effort.

One of these days I'm hoping to get up to Hearne Hardwoods for the LN event and maybe seeing you and Mr. Griggs there.

[Chris Griggs]

One of these days I'm hoping to get up to Hearne Hardwoods for the LN event and maybe seeing you and Mr. Griggs there.

Yeah buddy. I plan to be there again next fall. Hop on your hog and ride out there. Always fun to play with the full line of LN tools.

[David Weaver]

My friends usually refer to me either as Mountain Man or Hoss/Haus. I'm about 5'8" and 250lbs. The sleeves of my XXL shirts tend to be fairly snug around my arms and shoulders.

I put my drill press together on my own and moved it on my own down to my basement. Delta 18-900L. It wasn't until I read the directions a second time to make sure I put the head on it correctly that I saw it was supposed to be a 2 person effort.

One of these days I'm hoping to get up to Hearne Hardwoods for the LN event and maybe seeing you and Mr. Griggs there.

Mountain man transfers to Grizzly Adam quite well. That's a good name for 5'8" 250

(some of the younger guys on here might not remember the Grizzly Adams tv show that was named for a real guy from the 1800s. I have to admit that I only know who he is because of a hair club for men commercial or some other such thing where he complained that he couldn't be grizzly adams and be losing hair.)

[David Weaver]

I noticed something today, re the weights of tropical planes. I've never seen a lignum or rosewood full size jointer. They're always a little thinner and shorter, and usually razeed, too. I'd bet at their size, they're probably about 8 pounds.

[george wilson]

David,you are one of the most abject plane hogs I have met!!!!!

I suppose larger planes were not offered in boxwood due to it being so scarce in big sizes.

[Kees Heiden]

An old trick to increase the weight of a beech plane was bathing in linseed oil. That easilly added a pound or two.

[george wilson]

I have posted before that I have filled the wood of planes by removing the iron and wedge,clamping the plane tightly to a board,and filling the bottom of the mouth with sticky window putty. Then I pour the escapement clear full of RAW linseed oil. It can take 3 or 4 throats full of raw oil,which,especially on old,dried out planes,will bleed all the way through jointer planes to both ends.

Window putty has been about as good a guard against leaking as I have found(haven't experimented much,though). It will still leak a little.

[David Weaver]

David,you are one of the most abject plane hogs I have met!!!!!

I suppose larger planes were not offered in boxwood due to it being so scarce in big sizes.

Hey, I sold off a lot of my stuff to get to this point!! I have a bad curiosity problem, and it wasn't really satisfied until I mostly scrapped working with power tools. I guess this isn't going to help my cause when I'm trying to mooch that huge maple jointer off of you, huh?

[David Weaver]

An old trick to increase the weight of a beech plane was bathing in linseed oil. That easilly added a pound or two.

That's what I suspect was done with the try plane with the dykem all over the front. It gives the false impression that there's a steel bar in it. It's got a wide open mouth and can do damage quickly if it's not set properly.

[Kees Heiden]

It used to be very common. I read an account where new planes were brought to the oil man, who would hang the new plane for a few days with a string in a barrel of linseed oil, and then charge for the difference in weight. But somewhere early 20th century this habbit was rejected. No idea why. Some people think that too much linseed oil atracts worms.

[David Weaver]

Sounds like a good reason to not place a linseed oiled plane onto a pile of worms!

I'd imagine if someone was making a new plane, a little bit of boric acid mixed with the oil (not much, just a little) would keep just about anything out of the wood forever.

[Warren Mickley]

An old trick to increase the weight of a beech plane was bathing in linseed oil. That easilly added a pound or two.

I would be interested if you have read a text from before 1850 that suggests this.

In 2009 I won a beech mallet that had been soaked in linseed oil for "at least 30 days" It stank so much that I could not keep it in the shop for a whole year. Even today I can smell it if near my nose, and on damp days I can smell it from across the room. Little beads of gelled oil have collected in spots on the end grain.