Workshop Tools Hand Planes

by Derek Cohen - I have made several lever caps and lever cap screws to date, all reasonably presentable and quite serviceable, and all without any specialist metalwork tools just the ones that woodworkers are likely to have in their workshops.

By Bob Smalser - As in most of my articles, I will purposely use only tools readily accessible to beginners, foregoing milling machines and the like...and all the work done in a crude, temporary 12 ft by 12 ft shop. My intent is to provide a model for you newcomers to the craft who will benefit greatly from acquiring older but high-quality tools in need of a hug for very little money...and putting them back into service without a lot of machines and fancy gizmos you do not have yet.

This is Chris Swingley is version of the chamfer plane that appears in John M. Whelans Making Traditional Wooden Planes. Rather than stick with tradition, he decided to make a two piece laminated body. This makes cutting the mortise for the stop, wedge and iron much easier, and it allowed him to make the V sole by planing an angle on each half of the plane body. The iron is made from a piece of O1 tool steel, hand shaped, hardened in the wood stove and tempered in the oven. NOTE: You must have the Adobe Acrobat Reader program on your computer to view this plan.

These are plans based on the spill plane Roy Underhill made on The Woodwright is Shop (2002 season, episode 2205). Before matches were a commonly available item people would run a scrap of wood over a spill plane to generate long, tightly curled shavings of wood (called spills). These were typically in a jar above the fireplace so that when you needed to light a candle or your pipe, you could grab a spill, light it in the fireplace and take the flame with you.

This wooden hand plane consists of only three pieces: the body, the plane iron, and a wedge.

This is a copy of a 073-type shoulder plane.

By Peter L Berglund - My plane is basically a Krenov style plane, in which the cheeks are glued to the body after the throat has been cut.

By Norman Pirollo - The following is a short discussion and description of the shooting board in its various configurations. As much as we work towards getting the perfectly square joint, it is often difficult to achieve with the tools and machinery we have at our disposal.

If you have already made the jack plane featured on page 32 of ShopNotes issue No. 79, this block plane will be a piece of cake. The construction is very similar to the jack plane, only simpler.

This fine tool is beautiful to look at and a joy to use. But the greatest satisfaction comes from knowing that you built it yourself. The patterns are available to download in this Online Extra.

This 2 page document provides the templates for making the block plane that appears in the Australian Woodsmith magazine Issue 62. Go to this link and open up Issue 62 Block Plane CD.

If you have already made the jack plane featured on page 44 of Australian Woodsmith Issue 62, this block plane will be a piece of cake. Go to this link and open up Issue 62 Block Plane.

There is a less expensive way to a high-quality end, and that is converting old flea-market woodies. Auburn, Ohio Tool, Fulton, and dozens of other 19th-Century manufacturers competed hard with each other in quality and value. These planes are generally beech with thick, tempered cast-steel irons some of them laminated like today is Japanese blades and mild steel cap irons.

Our rosewood front knob is pretty much the standard turned shape. A sculpted T-shaped handle would better match the shape of your hand, but it would be difficult to mass produce economically in wood, so we have settled for a nicely shaped version of the ordinary round knob.