Just thought I would ask the rec what they suggest for the next plane purchase I should consider. I am interested in one or more of the Veritas planes, but thought I would ask without trying to taint the discussion with my leanings.
I have a Millers Falls 714 jack plane Old Stanley Block plane Stanley #6 fore plane Stanley Defiance smoother Craftsman 107.37034 smoother Veritas medium shoulder Veritas scraper plane Veritas cabinet scraper
All of them are tuned up and work pretty well. I really like the Millers Falls Buck Rogers jack plane and the Craftsman is not too bad either. The shoulder plane is a real gem. Could not do without it. I have not gotten adept with the scraper plane yet, but the cabinet scraper has been a REAL nice addition.
Well, they make better boomerangs than spokeshaves, and if you throw one away, not coming back is an advantage.
Stanley 151s are rubbish, and the Record and other clones are usually worse. If you want a spokshave that's easy to use, look for an old wooden one, or else the Veritas low-angle one. The first iron-bodied spokeshave I found that worked was the smaller Stanley #63 / #64 model. The adjustable mouth #50somethings are good too, but rare.
There's plenty of ways you can go, depending upon what you want to do. There have already been some good examples listed, here are some more:
-Side rabbet planes. I have the LN 98/99 set. I don't use them everyday or even every week, but they are extremely handy when I do use them. -Router plane like a Stanley 71.
-Jointer plane. I use my No.6 for jointing boards up to 2', but for longer boards the No.7 and No. 8 are nice.
-Scrub plane, either old Stanley or LN. When you need to remove a lot of wood quickly...
-I have a Veritas 4 1/2 wide smoother that I really like.
-As Andy mentioned, any of the Veritas spokeshaves will serve you well.
There's also molding planes, plow planes, fillesters, rabbet planes, combination planes, hollows and rounds...
Oh BTW, nice drive by on the MF Buck Rogers plane. I want one of those to go with my BR brace and hack saw.
I forgot to say that I would like to have a plane that is best for working on drawers. I built a shooting board and am using the Sears smoother with it. Probably not the best choice. Interesting responses, but I probably want to stay with a plane rather than a spoke shave. Router plane? Hmmm. Guess I would need to have some use examples for the unusual examples.
Side rabbets are used to take shavings from the side of a groove or dado. For example, if the groove for the drawer bottom is a little tight, a few passes with the side rabbet will take care of it.
A router plane is used to create an inset flat surface. They're useful for things like halflap joints and inlays.
Scrub planes remove a lot of wood quickly, and leave a semi rough surface that is then cleaned up with the jack, jointer and/or smoother. I own an electric planer but not a joiner. I use a scrub plane to remove any twist or bow from one side of a piece of wood before I send it through the planer. Using the flat side as the refference side allows me to get the other side flat. Then I can flip it over to plane out the scrub marks on the original flat side.
What are you wanting to plane on the drawers? Lots of people use jacks or smoothers with shooting boards. If you're shooting the endgrain, consider a low angle plane. A low angle block plane will work for light shooting and many other functions. LN makes a miter plane, which is designed specifically for use with a shooting board. Nice, low angle and very heavy, but very pricy.
I guess what I am really looking for is a plane that takes shavings off (for fine tuning) with the same adeptness that my Veritas shoulder plane does. I think it has the most satisfying "tuning" ability of any of my planes. Oh, the others take off nice shavings, but the Veritas shoulder plane adjusts so finely and the shavings look about 3 or 4 thousandths thick. It is real hard to get the others tuned to that level. I wish I could find a bench plane that would work like that. I would be using it for general purpose, but also for shooting and drawer tune-ups.
Given that and the fact that you don't have any low-angle planes yet, I'd say that you are due for a low-angle block or a longer low-angle smoother. The low-angle block is an indispensable tool in my shop, as it has many uses, and performs quite well on endgrain. The low-angle smoother has become my go-to plane for general smoothing, with a couple of specialty planes reserved for extremely tricky grain.
If you do not work with highly-figured wood, you might not need another smoother, and the block would be your best choice. If you do work with tricky wood, then a low-angle smoother or a #4-1/2 might be a good choice. Others will disagree, but I have had excellent results using the low-angle plane on tricky grain. It has a thick iron, solid bedding, adjustable mouth and very precise depth-adjustment, so all the critical elements for dealing with tricky woods are there, IMHO. It is also easy to change the angle of attack by simply raising the angle of the bevel of the iron. I have also used mine in a shooting board with good success.
The #4-1/2 has extra mass which can be useful. It has a higher effective angle than the low-angle plane out of the box, and that angle can be increased further for tricky woods by putting a back-bevel on the iron. This makes the plane harder to push but also imparts more of a scraping action which can be helpful with gnarly grain.
I use my router planes (#71 and #271) several times a year, but that's because I do 99%+ Neander work in my shop. They are handy for flattening the bottoms of stopped grooves or dadoes when cutting them by hand. But, if you tend to use a routah for cutting grooves, you can probably get by without them.
Most of the specialty planes are just that; planes that have very specific uses, and if you do handwork exclusively, you will need them. If not, there are plenty of other ways to get the task done. As for choosing between a specialty plane and a spokeshave -- the way I work, I would take a shave over my routah planes, my rabbet planes, my shoulder planes, and my side-rabbet planes. I can find alternative ways to do all of the tasks these planes are made for, but for curved work, nothing beats a shave.
snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (Eric Anderson) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:
Having read the other responses, I agree with Andy & Chuck that a low-angle block plane seems to be something useful that's missing from your list. I have an L-N #102 that is far and away the most used plane in my shop - I doubt there's a day I don't pick it up at least once. Andy will point out that the Stanley #102 is a totally different plane (and is crap).
David's suggestion of the #98/99 pair is also a good one, IMO. I have the L-N set, and have found them on occasion to be extremely handy for adjusting a dado which was just a tad tight.
You might also consider a rabbet plane, like the #78. I generally use the power router to cut rabbets, but occasionally it's fun to do some by hand.
Someone suggested the low-angle jack, the L-N #62. I'd reccommend against that, I have one but rarely find myself using it. If your other smoothers work well, then it would be redundant.
A full size jointer, a #7 or #8 might be worthwhile. It would be partly redundant on the #6, but on the other hand there's something satisfying about using a really big long plane to prepare an edge.
Speaking of edges, it's surprising how nice a result you can get with a #66 hand beader; so there's another tool to consider.
Maybe - what did you spend your two hours working on ? Did you have anything resembling a sharp edge under the cap iron, or was it hugely rounded like most are now ?
There was a hilarious article in FWW awhile back, where Brian Boggs (who surely knows his spokeshaves) showed how to tune a #151 by throwing most of it away and making new parts.
Andy Dingley wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
The, um #79? I think that's the number... Anyway, yes, we see those. I am told that not only are they a pain to adjust, but that you have to retract the wrong-way-facing blade when using it, which means you're perpetually readusting it, you can't just leave it set. I haven't used one myself.
I don't recall seeing anyone making those on this side of the pond. It seems that the #79 or the matching set #98 and #99 are the side-rabbets made here.
Oh sure ... that's a breeze. ;-) My problem with the #79 (at least the recent model one I won) is that the way the thing came, once it's set to take an even shaving, the tip of the iron extends so that it will score the work past the bottom of the groove/rabbet/whatever you are widening. To fix it, you have to round off the tip of the iron. (Good luck getting that exactly the same on both irons. :-)
Also, on mine, the casting was horribly uneven where the blades bed.
My #79 basically sits in my tool cabinet, waiting for those times when I get so desperate that I actually resort to trying to use the d*mn*d thing. :-}
Chuck Vance Just say (tmPL) Now that's what I call a "specialty" plane.
My LN Large Shoulder Plane (93) takes a very fine shaving, to be sure. The key, of course, is the mouth. The adjustable mouth block planes are about as easy to take a fine shaving because of the simplicity of setting a very narrow mouth. With bench planes, it takes a bit more work. The first thing you have to realize, if dealing with a new LN (and probably Veritas as well), is they come from the factory set for general use. To take a very fine shaving, you will want to close the mouth down to support it. To do this with a LN, you have to look under the blade. There are three screws. The outside screws loosen the frog and the center screw adjusts the frog in a forward or backward manner. Of course, as soon as you move the frog, the blade depth is wrong, so then you have to adjust the depth. When you adjust the depth, the mouth opening is wrong, so you adjust that. And so on... It's not hard, and once you get a feel for it, you won't have to fish for the correct setting so much.
Get the blade sharp (and I mean really sharp), get the mouth set very small, get the blade set for a very fine cut, and set the chipbreaker very close to the edge of the blade, tune the chipbreaker so it fits the blade properly, and you should be able to take a very fine shaving with a bench plane. In fact, those 3-4 thou shavings will look like planks compared to what you can take off with a finely tuned bench plane.
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