Larry Williams of Old Street Tool has a lot of good jokes about people with “Infill Disease.” This expensive malady plagues woodworkers who become smitten with these curious tools – infill handplanes – and spread the contagion by claiming that they outperform all other tools.
Larry, who recovered from Infill Disease many years ago, now makes beautiful wooden-bodied planes in an Arkansas workshop with Don McConnell. Their wooden handplanes put to rest any notion that wooden-bodied planes are anything but world-class.
Like Larry, I struggled with Infill Disease early in my woodworking career. I was deeply curious about the performance claims that got thrown around about these tools (“They don’t cause tear-out – no matter the grain direction!”). Plus, the tools just looked so damn different from the metallic and wooden-bodied planes I grew up around.
After years of using infills side-by-side with other planes, I concluded that a handplane’s performance is 99.9 percent in the hands of the user. After that, I sold or traded away most of my infill planes to help send my kids to college and improve my workshop (hello, windows!). But I still have a handful of these tools in my shop. Why? Because each one is a story, a relationship or a history that I can hold in my hands.
Wayne Anderson Infill Miter
1-3/4” blade; 2”-wide x 8-5/8”-long body
This was my first infill plane – I bought it in 2004 back when Wayne charged $100 per inch of the finished tool – and I know it as well as my wife’s hands. It also had the craziest journey of any object I’ve owned. You can read the whole tale here. But the short version of the story begins when it was stolen at a woodworking show outside Philadelphia.
Ten years later, the tool resurfaced and was sold privately. It had been caught in a hurricane and became a rusted barnacle of its former self. After some horse trading, I got the plane back. My original goal was to restore the plane to its former perfection. Then I had a change of heart.
I’m not one to hide scars. I have a gash on my left hand that could be easily concealed, but I leave it as a reminder about the wrong way to push a knife. So I decided to fix the miter plane to work the way it used to, but I let the cosmetic flaws remain. Raney Nelson at Daed Toolworks did me a huge favor by refiling the plane’s ebony bed; I took care of the rest of the exterior.
Even with its flaws, I love this tool. I pick it up and remember meeting Wayne for the first time at a farm in Illinois and falling in love with his aesthetic. Every Wayne plane is different – I’ve never seen two that are identical. That idea, which was foreign to me at the time, continues to resonate with my stick chairs: No two are alike.
Daed Toolworks Infill Miter
1-1/2” blade; 1-15/16”-wide x 7-1/2”-long body
When Raney Nelson started selling infill planes (many years after he began making them), I was one of the first people in line to buy one at Woodworking in America. We have similar aesthetics tool-wise (and music-wise). So the steel miter plane with boxwood infills spoke directly to me.
The mouth on the plane is as tight as any I’ve encountered. Of all the infill planes I’ve owned, it comes as close to fulfilling the “superplane” myth that gets thrown around. It remains a fantastic tool that is easy to set and use. Plus, Raney is a good friend, so I always smile when I get to use it. Corny, but true.
Robert ‘Bob’ Baker Infill Miter
1-1/2” blade; 1-13/16”-wide x 7”-long body
This plane, made in 1983, was a pioneer. It was featured in an early issue of Fine Woodworking magazine, and Baker was one of the early American makers of infills.
Bob and I met only once, in 2006, but I was immediately charmed and drawn to him (like others were). And we kept in touch after that meeting, exchanging jokes and emails about tools until he died before his time in 2010.
But that’s not why I own the first infill plane he made.
Tool collector Carl Bilderback had purchased the miter because of its provenance and beauty. And he used it in his shop in LaPorte, Indiana. Carl and I met about 1999 or 2000 when he called to complain about something I had written in Popular Woodworking about Norris-style depth adjusters. After that day, we became good friends and hung out at tool meets and woodworking events for many years. (You might remember Carl singing the National Anthem at the first Handworks event in Amana, Iowa.)
As Carl was losing his battle with cancer, he asked Megan Fitzpatrick and me to visit him in LaPorte for lunch. There, he presented us each with a Bob Baker plane and said there was only one string attached to the gift: I had to use the tool. So now when I pick this tool up I think about two wonderful people I have lost.
If you think this story is getting sadder, don’t worry. It gets worse.
Bristol Design Thumb Plane
1-1/4” blade; 1-1/2”-wide x 5”-long body
While teaching at David Savage’s school in Devon, England, he gave me this small plane as a gift for coming all the way from America. It was a prototype tool made by Bristol Design. David said it was the only plane that worked better than his Lie-Nielsen block plane, and it was one of his favorites.
It was a special gift because David had become a father figure to me. The man was incredibly encouraging about my work – more so than any other person I’ve met. And his encouragement and attention came at a time in my life when I needed it badly. The relationship was, at first, bewildering to me because his woodwork is simply on a different level than most people (and certainly mine).
Aside from that, David was also a bombastic writer, self-deprecating, generous, a snappy dresser and all-in-all a lovely person to spend time with.
I don’t connect with many people, and I’m always circumspect around others. But within a few weeks of meeting David I was telling him things I had told only my wife in the dark.
When David died of cancer in 2019, it was almost one year after I’d lost my father to cancer. I felt the loss of both men acutely, and I don’t think I have yet to recover.
The good news was that we managed to publish David’s book, “The Intelligent Hand,” before his death. It’s a book that Megan and I are quite proud of. David’s furniture and mine look nothing alike on the surface – his is insanely perfect. But the book, his design process and his way of looking at the world are forever stamped on my brain.
Whenever I want to remember that relationship, I have only to reach for this plane. The tool might not be a so-called superplane. It’s just a couple castings, two pieces of wood, a screw and two thin slabs of steel. But like any plane, it’s what the user brings to the tool that makes all the difference.
— Christopher Schwarz
Great stories. I’ll never forget my first experience with an infill plane. Mid-2000’s I reached out to Chris to ask if he’d bring one of his infill smoothers to Jeff Miller’s shop for me to try out. We had never met. There was a Lie-Nielsen hand tool event that weekend at Jeff’s. Chris brought up a small coffin smoother in ebony by Wayne Anderson, handed it off to me and said “have fun.” That was the start of more than one best friendship. Infill Disease has some great side effects.
Thanks for the update, and the nostalgia trip.
I’ve been reading your blog for a while now and I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t know what an infill plane is.
Loss is important to us that have survived. It makes us more acutely aware of our tenuous existence. Also, I have several touchstones for memories of the woodworking friends I have lost. Using them reminds me of our times together, making sawdust or shavings or chips or sipping whiskey and the goofy camaraderie that rose from that mix. In one instance, I was able to introduce two of my favorites to each other and as I imagined, they hit it off. I not only have some of their tools but also an image of them laughing out loud at something one of us said. One glance at that pic and I’m transported back to that shop, Vern, backlit on his shop couch covered in a thin layer of sawdust and Tom sitting on the steps nearby that lead down into that sanctum. Both of them caught in mid guffaw. I miss both of them to tears sometimes. Mostly though, the memories make me smile.
Amen to that.
I miss a number teachers and friends. As long as I continue to work in that mindset, work on similar projects and pass on the skills and joy to others they are never truly gone.
This is one of the better reads on the site. I get it. Also, it’s nice to be able to see out the window. 🙂
Thank you for reminding us again of the people who inhabit our tools.
Leonard Cohen put it this way.
“There ain’t no cure for love…”
People, things, memories, all to be cherished. Thanks for sharing some of yours.
Thank you, Chris, for one more poignant story about life that tugs at my heartstrings. While I haven’t succumbed to infill disease, I did contract a virulent strain of Stanley plane addiction many years ago after finding a beautiful and worn and beloved but ordinary #5 bench plan used by my grandfather and father. I’ve lovingly “restored” it several times, and often pull it out for casual use, as an homage to the great men before me. It will never leave me in this lifetime.
Always wanted to get one of these for myself. I see beautiful infills from time to time that tempt me to kick my budget aside.
I’m stopped by my belief and purse that the one infill I own will have a time, people, place story stamp behind it… like these you described. Today’s word is “vicarious”.
Thanks, Chris.
A beautiful post, and wonderful memories.
Nice Post
I’ve always wanted to try one, since first seeing them on Jim Bode’s site. But they have always been out of my price range, and I don’t know anyone that owns one to try. Maybe someday. I certainly admire their beauty though.
“I got a fever, and the only prescription is more infill!” Like you mention, the truest value is in the friendships made along the way (but it sure doesn’t hurt when the associated tools are also so darn gorgeous)
Other than the obvious reasons such as cost and using them to make a living, I think a great deal of the value of the tools we use is intangible and misunderstood. If understood at all to anyone bar the owner it can be hard to articulate to non tool users. Other tool users might appreciate it and sympathise but generally some of the nuance and meaning is lost on the way. We all have our own stories encapsulated in the tools we use, thanks for sharing some of yours.
I’m no pro when it comes to planes, but I have a fascination with the nearly 100 wood hand planes in my collection that span more than 200 years. Each one has a story only in my imagination (other than the makers’ marks) as I think about their owners and the use they were put to, and the question of how much of their work survives to this day. No answer to any of it, but they are displayed in a lighted marquetry cabinet with my antique tool collection where I can see them every day. Why have a collection if it is stored where it cannot be enjoyed?
I once used an infill plane put out a fire in an eight story building while feeding a thousand people… All of which resulted in absolutely no tear out.
My Wayne Anderson miter plane is definitely one of the most unique planes I own, with a pair of clovers cut out of the brass sidewalls caressing the bog oak stuffed rear infill.
I absolutely love using a tool where I have some skin in the game, whether it’s sending the maker a carefully selected piece of 5,000 year old wood (I may have done that a time or two…) or helping the maker man his booth at Handworks ( even got the first sale for the booth!) and he gifts you an assemblage of aged wood and tool steel.
As a result, I’m almost always surrounded by positive energy and good vibes every time I’m in the shop.