Wood Hand Plane

[Prashun Patel]

I got lucky. The American Beech I had taken down in my back yard yielded about 500bf usable wood. Stains and some spalt notwithstanding, it has been pretty stable for me. I made mirror frame that warped, but most of the rest has made very fine drawers and cabinets and stools.

[Steve Voigt]

This was the most obnoxious wood I have ever tried to use!!! As far as I am concerned,despite all the write up by Old Street,I think it was just used because it was plentiful,and still is.

Larry's article is full of excellent information, but perhaps this is the most relevant 'graph:

This property of beech also creates problems. It is difficult to dry without degrade because the tangential surfaces give off moisture so easily. This is so prevalent that it is nearly impossible to locate a source of thick beech today. We can't help but think early plane makers also had problems drying beech. If there was another wood that offered as good a combination of characteristics, wouldn't plane makers have gladly made a change? There are similar woods that don't have these problems in drying and they can make some good planes. These include maple, cherry, persimmon, yellow birch and pear or apple. Some are plentiful and were often used for craftsman-made planes as well as some commercially made planes but they don't equal beech for common commercial plane making use.

I've worked with several sawmills as well as drying beech myself, and can attest to the difficulties. It's an enormous pain in the arse. As Larry says, why would anyone go to all the trouble if there weren't some other payoff for using this material? (Note also that these problems pertain only to drying green lumber; once the material is fully dried, stability really isn't an issue any more.)

It amuses me when people say that beech must've been used only because it was cheap, plentiful, and easy to work. One thing I've learned from studying old planes is that the makers went to almost insane lengths to get every detail right, to make the planes work as well as possible. Below is my Routledge (mid-19th c.) fillister. Note the double-dovetailed boxing. Consider all the fine details on a plane like this: the skew, tapered iron and tapered knicker, elaborate hardware, etc. Does it really seem plausible that makers would lavish such attention on the making, and then use a throwaway, inferior species just because it was cheap?

(just to be clear, I also agree with Larry that plenty of other species will make excellent planes. For a craftsman-made plane, there is no necessity to use beech. My purpose here is to push back against the idea that beech is junk, which is a pretty clear insult--intended or not--to me and all the other people who are making traditional planes out of traditional materials)

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[george wilson]

Glad I amuse you,Steve! We need to get entertainment where we can.

I'll have to disagree that beech is not a problem AFTER it is dry. Did you read my story about making the cooper's jointer? And,that beech had definitely been dried for many years longer than was necessary.

I made my planes out of beech,too. If you have seen the pictures. Had to. It was the traditional material. No insult was intended to you.

[John Vernier]

I have some beech which was felled and split into billets 3 years ago. This spring I milled some of it into rough rectangular blanks, and I'm watching it carefully for further twist and degrade. So far so good, although it wasn't probably the finest grade beech to begin with. I wonder how much the stability varies tree to tree? With any luck I'll try my hand at plane making over the winter.

I have often wondered why the first American commercial plane makers used birch in the mid-eighteenth century, and then switched largely to beech by the next generation. My guess is that Beech didn't grow in coastal New England, and that beech became available when Western Pennsylvania and the eastern Ohio River Valley became more heavily settled. Does that make sense?

Incidentally, I understand beech was a common choice for the covered portions of upholstered furniture - couches, wing chairs, etc, which would of course have the visible wooden bits in mahogany, walnut or cherry depending on cost. It certainly had its place but I don't think it was considered very pretty, except perhaps by tool makers who, let's face it, look at things differently from everybody else.

[george wilson]

O.K.,I'm going to confess: I enjoy a nice slab of beech as much as anyone else. It can have a beautiful pink color that I really enjoy. I have some European beech that has that beautiful pinkness. Unfortunately,it is only 2" thick. Most of the American beech we made our planes out of are nice and pink,too.

And,I also enjoy the fine flecking you see on perfectly quartered beech,like on the sides of planes.

I really don't think a wooden plane looks quite right unless it is made of beech. I guess I'm too traditional in my thinking. But,I also think that maple makes an excellent choice.

But,you have to understand,I HAVE to have SOME means of getting back at that twisting beech we dried!! Unfortunately,I have only a small amount of 16/4 beech. I may HAVE to resort to maple if I make my Norris adjuster wooden plane. Actually,I have boxwood more than large enough to make any plane I wish. I just can't bring myself to saw up my 10" logs. Someone will end up getting hold of them after I die,and make book ends out of those logs I have.

[Pat Barry]

Larry's article is full of excellent information, but perhaps this is the most relevant 'graph:



I've worked with several sawmills as well as drying beech myself, and can attest to the difficulties. It's an enormous pain in the arse. As Larry says, why would anyone go to all the trouble if there weren't some other payoff for using this material? (Note also that these problems pertain only to drying green lumber; once the material is fully dried, stability really isn't an issue any more.)

It amuses me when people say that beech must've been used only because it was cheap, plentiful, and easy to work. One thing I've learned from studying old planes is that the makers went to almost insane lengths to get every detail right, to make the planes work as well as possible. Below is my Routledge (mid-19th c.) fillister. Note the double-dovetailed boxing. Consider all the fine details on a plane like this: the skew, tapered iron and tapered knicker, elaborate hardware, etc. Does it really seem plausible that makers would lavish such attention on the making, and then use a throwaway, inferior species just because it was cheap?

(just to be clear, I also agree with Larry that plenty of other species will make excellent planes. For a craftsman-made plane, there is no necessity to use beech. My purpose here is to push back against the idea that beech is junk, which is a pretty clear insult--intended or not--to me and all the other people who are making traditional planes out of traditional materials)

So, with all that in mind, why do you use beech? For you own amusement? You are a craftsman. Why wouldn't you invest your efforts into another species for your craftsman made planes? There must be a reason. Is it what your customers expect? Do you get more of a feeling of accomplishment using a difficult to manage material?

[Steve Voigt]

So, with all that in mind, why do you use beech? For you own amusement? You are a craftsman. Why wouldn't you invest your efforts into another species for your craftsman made planes? There must be a reason. Is it what your customers expect? Do you get more of a feeling of accomplishment using a difficult to manage material?

Pat,

"Craftsman made" is a term for planes made by woodworkers for their own use, in contrast to commercially-made planes. Typically, craftsman-made planes have been built out whatever was available, while commercially-made planes are normally made of beech, with a few exceptions. That was the point of Larry's (and my) reference to craftsman-made.

As for why I use beech, I posted a link in reply to you earlier. All the major reasons for using beech are outlined in that article by Larry Williams. Secondary reasons include aesthetics (as George mentioned in his last post), workability (beech is very nice to work), feel in use (very different from maple, for example), tradition, and yes, customer expectations. But "a feeling of accomplishment using a difficult material" is not one of the reasons. If you want to make something right, you surmount the difficulties, be they logistical, technical, or whatever else.

[Kees Heiden]

I sure can report troubles with beech billets too! The stuff really likes to crack. My longer planes are all about an inch shorter then I wanted them to be, because that was the absolute maximum length I could wring from those billets. Beech also like to rot, and seems to be delicious for all kinds of creepy worms. My wood came from a guy who was so stupid to store his wood outside! Most of his stock was rotting away, only after digging deep in his stacks of wood I was able to find some usable stuff.

Beech dries very quickly and that is its problem. So slowing down the drying rate as much as possible, without introducing spalting, molding or worm damage is the key. Maybe (just an ide from me), it was too warm and too dry on your attic, George?

The old time planemakers would dry their wood for many years. That probably wasn't neccessary to get the wood down to a low moisture content in the first place, but it was probably neccessary to get the wood to cycle a couple of times from wet to dry to slightly wet to dry again etc, so you get some hysteresis effect in the wood. When wood tends to get through a couple of these cycles it tends to become a bit more stable. And as soon as the plane is made and finished with a good oil finish, it seems to be a lot more stable too. David Weaver reports something like this too. He was making a nice tryplane one day and then, when he wasn't finished yet, he had a very dry weather spell and imediatelyy he got some surface cracking. Oiling the plane helps to prevent that.

But beech is not the only commercially used wood in the world. The Japanese use some kind of white oak. The Germans and Austrians like hornbeam, until they ran out of suitable supplies. The French like to use cormier, or service tree in English, a mediterranean kind of fruitwood that is very hard and dense. The Chinese seem to favour some kinds of rosewood. All these countries have plenty supply of beech too.

[Stewie Simpson]

Quite right Kees.



VRAI CORMIER (TRUE CORMIER)

[george wilson]

I LOVE the looks of that cormier!! Looks like boxwood!!

Notice the completely off kilter grain orientation!

[Pat Barry]

Pat,

"Craftsman made" is a term for planes made by woodworkers for their own use, in contrast to commercially-made planes. Typically, craftsman-made planes have been built out whatever was available, while commercially-made planes are normally made of beech, with a few exceptions. That was the point of Larry's (and my) reference to craftsman-made.

As for why I use beech, I posted a link in reply to you earlier. All the major reasons for using beech are outlined in that article by Larry Williams. Secondary reasons include aesthetics (as George mentioned in his last post), workability (beech is very nice to work), feel in use (very different from maple, for example), tradition, and yes, customer expectations. But "a feeling of accomplishment using a difficult material" is not one of the reasons. If you want to make something right, you surmount the difficulties, be they logistical, technical, or whatever else.

Thanks for the responses Steve. Do you have issues with cracking like George and Kees describe? What precautions do you take to minimize the damage? Do you know of other plane makers using woods other than beech for their work?

[Steve Voigt]

Thanks for the responses Steve. Do you have issues with cracking like George and Kees describe? What precautions do you take to minimize the damage? Do you know of other plane makers using woods other than beech for their work?

Pat,

I've never had any issues with checking once a plane was finished. Plenty of pieces get rejected for checking during the drying process, but if if a piece has dried without developing any checks, it should be ok. Someone mentioned earlier that many old planes have checks in them. That's true, but it would be true of any wood that was left in an unheated barn for 150 years. It's unrealistic to look at old planes that have been discarded or treated like trash, and then make judgments about their durability. A metal plane doesn't look so great either if its been sitting in a leaky shed for a century.

Regarding other woods, planemakers have always used other species...rosewood in particular, also box, pear, and others. Caleb James uses native pear, rosewood and persimmon on occasion. Oliver Sparks uses rosewood and box quite a bit. Phil Edwards uses box and he used to use goncalo alves. You can see lots of examples from these three guys if you check out their instagram feeds. And, as someone mentioned, the earliest New England colonists liked yellow birch. So beech has never been the only wood, but it's been the mainstay that was used 90% of the time.

[Pat Barry]

Thanks Steve

[Blake M Williams]

Thanks for all the input, I should measure and post a pic of the iron I have. I have been waiting on a small shipment of misc wood pieces, I wasn't really sure what to buy but the ppl at the hardwood place seemed nice enough, I'm kinda getting a sample shipment I guess you could say. Waiting since Tuesday. I'm not sure if anyone is familiar with the Odessa, Tx area but I do not have any real lumber yards aside from the big box stores. I have even called several cabinet shops in the area and they all have to order in. I've been talking to Brazos Forest Products, what do yall suggest?