This week I’m deep into reading Joseph Moxon’s “Mechnick Exercises” – the first English-language treatise on the craft of joinery. Published in 1678, the “Exercises” cataloged the tools and practices of the blacksmith, joiner, house carpenter, turner, bricklayer and those who make sundials.
For the modern reader, the book can be a horrible slog. The printed English word of the 17th century seems convoluted. Sentences run on for far longer than we are accustomed to, and the sentences are interrupted by asides that wander a bit. Then they’ll insert a reminder of the original point of the sentence and swoop in on the end of the phrase.
Truth be told, you get used to it after a few pages. Then the hardest thing becomes the occasional unfamiliar word – for example, “dawks” means “hollows” – and the odd tool. My favorite example: the pricker. The pricker is a marking tool that perhaps resembles a square-shanked awl. But in Moxon’s glossary he says the vulgar term is “awl” and instead the proper word is “pricker.”
So as of today, the filthy word “awl” has been banished from our shop in favor of the much more polite “pricker.”
Every time I read Moxon I learn something interesting and useful. But what is most fascinating is how little has changed in 330 years. The tools and the methods are familiar – once you strip away the “shall yets.” Except for one important difference.
What strikes me during this reading of Moxon is his affection for the fore plane – a tool that is typically 16” long, which is shorter than jointer plane and longer than a jack plane. The fore plane has a blade with an obvious curve and is used to quickly remove material.
Moxon spills more ink on the fore plane and its use than he does on any other single plane. He discusses how it is used with its iron set both rank and fine. How it is moved across the board. How it trues faces and edges. The jointer plane gets some discussion, but not nearly as much as the fore.
And then there’s the discussion of the smoothing plane. Here is the entire entry on the smoothing plane (cleaned up a tad):
“The smoothing plane marked B 4. must have its iron set very fine, because its office is to smooth the work from those irregularities the fore plane made.”
That’s really about it. There’s no protracted discussion of the smoother and wispy shavings or strategies to reduce tear-out (though Moxon suggests that high planing angles are important in one part of the book).
Our obsession with smoothing planes might be thoroughly modern. Or perhaps there’s another way to look at this (bear with me, I know this is getting long).
Recently we had Matt Grisley from Leigh Industries in our shop to demonstrate his company’s new dovetail jigs. During our day together, he made an astute observation about hand work. I wrote it down after he said it. And it went something like this:
“What’s interesting to me is how woodworkers who love hand tools also love the heavy machinery – the big planers, jointers and table saws. And they don’t seem to have much affection for the power hand tools, like the router and biscuit joiner.”
And he’s right. I am deeply indebted to my planer and jointer. I would get rid of five of my smoothing planes before I got rid of my jointer and planer (don’t worry I’d still have at least five smoothers left).
I am obsessed with my heavy machinery like Moxon’s workmen were attached to their fore planes. For these are the tools that get the brute work done, that make woodworking possible. The finesse work stands on the shoulders of the fore plane and machinery. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to the shop to fiddle with my square, saw and pricker.
— Christopher Schwarz
Neat posting! I, too, love heavy machinery and hand work.
If I’d just heard the following description of a plane: "has a blade with an obvious curve and is used to quickly remove material" without hearing the name "fore plane", I’d have thought you were describing a scrub plane. It’s shorter than your fore plane description, but it has a rounded blade and is used to quickly remove material. Are they the same?
“The smoothing plane marked B 4. must have its iron set very fine, because its office is to smooth the work from those irregularities the fore plane made.”
Great! THIS is exactly what I shoot for, as I am not an expert with the planes, as so many of you are. NOW I can relax a little, albeit only for a short while.
Why? Because I AM trying to learn to use hand tools to a much larger extent, and this is exactly what I needed. No more seeking for the gossamer shavings. And then do a final clean-up with the scrapers – yup, THAT will do it!!!
Thanks for making my day, Chis!
I’m curious, too, about the fore plane now. It sounds a lot like a scrub plane. Or even like a jack plane.
Is the main difference between a fore plane and a try plane a question of blade camber?
I too am interested in the utility of the fore plane. I had it pretty much sitting around until I read your recommendation to put a significant camber on it–boy does it make it one of my favorite planes for quickly removing wind from a board.
That observation by Matt Grisley is right on the money. The big machinery eliminates what would be tedious work with planes & handsaws and helps us reach the point more quickly where we can work with handtools on the "fun" parts.
Bottom line, we like to work with handtools; we just don’t want to sweat while using them. ;o)
James,
On the matter of fore planes and try planes: Different historical sources offer different names for planes. I really should do a blog entry on this some day. There’s a chart I have that makes it fairly clear.
The short answer is that a try plane is (in general terms) what we moderns would call a jointer plane. It has a 22"-long sole and an iron that can be straight or slightly curved. It is used for making boards flat.
The fore plane is what we moderns would probably call a jack plane. It’s 14" to 16" (sometimes 18") long. It has a noticeably curved blade. It is used to rapidly make rough stock fairly flat.
Chris
Jeffrey,
Ah, the difference between a fore and a scrub. Always a good question.
The short answer: they both do similar jobs. The metal scrub is an American adaptation of a traditional European tool for flattening rough-sawn work. The American scrub was popular with carpenters in particular.
The fore plane is the British equivalent of the scrub plane. The British preferred a longer plane for this operation. I happen to prefer a longer plane as well because it makes it easier for me to achieve a flat surface.
With the scrub, I occasionally overshoot my mark and remove too much because of the short sole. Though I have seen scrub plane maestros do the job easily.
Chris
I’m not a scrub plane maestro by any stretch, but I do use the scrub quite a bit. Since my jointer is only 6", I use it to roughly flatten boards wider than that, which I then run through the planer. A true fore plane would get the board along further, since the chamber on the iron is gentler.
I imagine they could be used in conjunction quite effectively.
Moxon discusses the Fore, Strike, Jointer and Smooth planes. We have added the Block and Jack planes to the mix of bench planes. I have a suspicion that the needs of the time period dictated the use of the Fore plane and the lack of a Jack plane. With a lack of machinery to perform any preliminary surfacing, it was up to the worker to surface the stock… which must have been incredibly rough due to the pit saws in use. That gave us the Fore plane with a cambered blade.
I wonder when the Jack plane came into prominence and in what country? Perhaps the need for more transportable planes created the design? Or the increase in the use of pre-surfaced stock? I’m shooting in the dark on this one, but it would be interesting to know when Jack planes first made their appearance.
Gary
Hmmm…I continue to be somewhat confused about the uses of these various planes. Perhaps I could ask the question in a different way.
If you had a 3 foot long, 11 inch wide board of relatively straight grained wood (say cherry) that was very rough and slightly cupped, what minimal sequence of planes would you use to achieve a flat board ready for finish? Would this be jointer plane to smoothing plane or a more complex sequence of Scrub to jointer to smoother? How do the fore and jack fit into this sequence? Bottom line: what is the shortest, rational sequence from A to B? How would that sequence change if this was highly figured tiger maple instead?
Thanks!
Rick