Category: Handplanes

Whenever I’m working a booth at a woodworking show, there’s a fair chance that some power-tool-only woodworkers will come down from the mountain to give me some grief. Usually it starts with a few taunts during my handplaning demonstration (“Hey buddy where do you plug that thing in?”).

But I always relish the moments when they start to ask real questions. Here is my favorite question (slightly edited to make it saucier):

“So Mr. Handplane guy,” they’d say. “Let’s say you have a hickory board that’s 8’ long from a tree that grew on a hill. The board’s in wind, and it’s got a good crook in it as well. How would you deal with that board with your hand tools?”

“Oh that’s easy,” I’d reply. “I’d start with my broad axe.”

“Axe?” they’d say, confusion spreading across their brow.

“Yup, I’d chop the board into 12” lengths and feed them into the wood-burning stove.”

I know that all this sounds like Southern hyperbole (to which I am prone), but I am serious when I say that the best way to reduce your tear-out problems (with both hand and machine tools) is through careful stock selection.

About seven years ago I had the privilege of working with Sam Sherrill and Michael Romano on a project to encourage woodworkers to use lumber in their projects that woodworkers harvested from downed or doomed urban trees.

The two guys got the attention of The New Yankee Workshop, and Norm Abram came to town to see (and film) the projects these two University of Cincinnati professors had built using reclaimed lumber.

One of these projects I was quite familiar with. It was a large dining table that Sherrill had built for a family using a large pin oak on the family’s property. The table was fairly nice, but the story behind it was not.

The lumber for the table had come from the enormous, Jurassic-scale branches of the pin oak. The boards were wide (like those from a bole) but they were still reaction wood. Branch wood. Junk wood.

When Sherrill and Romano went to dry the wood and surface it, the wood self-destructed. It warped, split, you name it. They told these wild tales of how it would explode (yes, explode) in the planer. They lost about 90 percent of what they had cut, according to Sherrill.

That story sticks with me to this day. When I pick my boards for any project, I stay completely tuned to the grain of the boards at hand. If the grain reverses on itself through the plank a good deal, then I am going to skip the board (to the fire with you!) or saw it into short lengths, which might not give me as much trouble.

That sounds wasteful in this day and age. But the most precious commodity in woodworking is not the wood, but the time we spend working (or butchering) it. You can make your work faster and easier just by being a lot more choosy with your wood selection.

Coming next week: The second best way to reduce tear-out.

— Christopher Schwarz

One of my favorite old tools to fix up and use are small patternmaker’s router planes. Each one of these little tools is unique, usually inexpensive and easy to get functioning.

They also can be gorgeous examples of craftsmanship, or as ugly as an Allan wrench jammed into a plate of rusted steel.

The tools are fairly common because they were made by pattermakers for their own use, according to tool collectors I’ve talked to. Sometimes the patternmaker would use a common Stanley tool as the pattern for the craftsman-made tool. And that’s why you sometimes see router planes that look like slightly shrunken Stanley router planes in bronze.

The coolest one I’ve ever seen is owned by Carl Bilderback, a retired carpenter and tool collector who lives outside Chicago. He writes for Popular Woodworking on occasion and whenever I’m up there to take photos of his work I always catch myself looking at his router plane with lustful thoughts.

It’s fancy. It has a bronze base, a beautifully knurled adjustment mechanism and tiny little turned handles. You’ll be able to see a photo of it in our February 2008 issue. Carl is using it during an article on repairing mistakes.

The router shown here is a more typical example. I bought it for $15 at a tool swap. It was sitting on a blanket with a bunch of other little bits of rusted metal.

Fixing one up is easy. I started working on this one at 4:10 p.m. and was trimming tenons before 4:30 p.m. rolled around. The irons on these are almost always soft steel, which means they are easy to hone up, but that you’ll be sharpening them often.

I polished the flat face of the tool on my waterstones during two songs on the radio (man how I love Little Steven’s Underground Garage). Then I trued up the bevel on a diamond stone and honed a micro-bevel on the waterstones. You can’t use honing guides to sharpen the L-shaped iron, but it’s easy work by hand.

The only other thing to do is to clean up the sole a bit. The oxidation on the broze base will leave nasty marks on your work at first. I clean up the base on some sandpaper stuck to a piece of granite.

If you’d like one of these tools for yourself, the best way is to join Mid-West Tool Collector’s Association and attend one of their local or national meets. You will have 20 or 30 to choose from. I’ve found a few on eBay using this search, but I like buying them in person because you can make sure that the iron can be tightened up well. There’s nothing worse than an iron that shifts around in use.

— Christopher Schwarz