At any idle moment, I dive into editing our massive Charles H. Hayward project. Unfortunately, I am the bottleneck in this project. Megan Fitzpatrick has edited the entire thing and entered most of her changes, but I am far behind her.
Perhaps I’m getting slow because I’m not on the front lines of editing a magazine any more.
In any case, I am deep in the book’s section on planes and enjoying the heck out of it. Maybe that’s the problem.
One of the articles sent me scurrying to my library to check a few sources on the history of the handplane, including a suggestion that the plane evolved from the router. That’s odd. Many other sources have suggested the adze was the stepping stone between the chisel and plane. So I had to look at some early routers (maybe this is what is slowing me down?).
Take a look at the entire article (minus final edits) and get a preview of the nice vintage look we’re using for this massive project, which is weighing in at 891 pages.
And now I’ll stop blogging tonight, which is surely slowing me down.
You might have heard that Karl Holtey will cease making planes soon. If you have ever wanted one, now is the time to buy as they will only go up in value.
I got to fondle two of them at the New English Workshop. They are such jewels I found myself trying to figure out how to raise the 2,000 pounds to purchase one in ebony.
The New English Workshop still has them for sale on its site here. Snag one if you can. During last week two (two!) were sold immediately.
The last plane Holtey is making is the No. 984 panel plane. According to his site, he is still accepting deposits for these.
While most people will remember Holtey’s planemaking enterprise as a quest for perfection (which is correct, in my opinion), I think Holtey should also be remembered for how he single-handedly changed the woodworking world.
It was Holtey who first explained how bevel-up planes could be used to create high-angle tools. It sounds obvious now, but it wasn’t then.
He created a smoothing plane in 1998 (the No. 98) that basically was transformed into Veritas’s line of bevel-up bench planes, which took the woodworking by storm and have been a boon for beginners.
Holtey was the first – as far as I know – to experiment with different steel alloys for cutting irons for handplanes and spread the idea worldwide. The first A2 plane blade I saw was made by Holtey.
Holtey also developed a unique bedding system for plane irons that negates wood movement in wooden-bodied planes and even simplifies the bedding in metallic planes.
Beading planes are the crack of the wooden moulding plane world. If you’ve had trouble finding a good beader, consider buying a new one from Caleb James or one of the other great makers.
Caleb has just opened orders for his next batch of beading planes in 3/16” and 1/4” sizes.
Stanley Works used to publish a brilliant booklet called the “Tool Guide” that contained miniature posters that offered instruction on setup, care and use of hand tools.
These booklets weren’t just for woodworkers – you can learn to rivet and create a lock edge on sheet metal with these posters. The 38 pages were bound together, perforated so you could remove them and were pre-punched with holes for a three-ring binder.
Last weekend a student in a class handed me a mint copy of the “Tool Guide” from 1968. He was a retired shop teacher and had used them in his classes. What a treasure. I’ve always wanted one, but they can be hard to come by, especially in this condition.
This morning I read the pages that dealt with handplanes. Stanley packs a bunch of good, no-nonsense information into just seven pages. I scanned them so you could check them out for yourself.
While researching some crazy bit of something, I stumbled on this description and drawing of Silcock and Lowe’s Patent Planes from the 1844 edition of Mechanics’ Magazine in England.
I read it. Then I read it again. Indeed. They are describing a laminated plane with an adjustable mouth. You adjust the mouth by loosening some screws and moving the rear part of the plane’s body, which rides in grooves in the sidewalls.
I can’t think of another reference to this sort of laminated bench plane that is this early. Check it out.
— Christopher Schwarz
The fourth instrument is a trying plane, suitable for both rough and fine work, and constructed in manner following:—
“Figure 17 is a side elevation of this plane, and figure 18 an end view. Instead of being formed of one piece of wood, as usual, it is composed of four or more separate pieces peculiarly combined together. The part A, which forms the centre, or heart of the plane (lengthwise), is made out of a piece of beech with the grain of the wood running crosswise, as usual. The proper place for the bed and mouth of the plane having been determined, these are cut out, and the two pieces into which the piece of wood is thus separated, are connected together by two side pieces, B B, also of beech, or of any other suitable sort of wood, placed with the fibre running longitudinally and tennoned to the central part A, by means of the tongues and grooves, a b. The tongues and grooves should fit closely the one into the other, particularly at top and bottom. The side pieces, B B, are attached permanently to the forepart of A, either by means of screws, as represented in the engravings, or by glueing, or by both screws and glue. At the back part the sides are secured by screws, c c, to the inside piece A in such manner that they may be shifted occasionally. W W, are two oblong metal washers, with oblong slots, w to, in them, which are let into the side pieces, B B, to such a depth, that when the screws, c e, are passed through the slots into the wood, their heads shall be below the surface of the wood. As the sole of the plane becomes worn down by use, and the mouth becomes consequently wider, by slackening or undoing the screws, the back part of the body A can be pushed forward and readjusted, so as to keep the mouth of the plane always of the best working width. The plane iron and its cover are united to each other by means of a nut and screw D, the nut being inserted in a bevelled-sided slot, so as to be nearly flush with the back of the iron; and thus united they are secured to the body of the plane by means of a screw, E (instead of by wedges, as usual), which is passed through the irons into a metal seat F, let into the back part of the centre piece A. C is the handle, which is made like the other handles before described with the grain of the wood at right angles to the length of the plane, and let into and secured in the wood in the manner represented by the dotted lines in figure 17. At the front it is cut away, so as to leave a shoulder, d, which rests upon the top of the centre piece A, and at the back there is a sufficient space left to allow of the insertion of a wedge e, by driving in which, the handle is firmly secured in its place.
