Did I Mention I Made Woodworking Tools?
Some of the things I make – spurred on primarily from doing the book Woodlore – are handplanes and other woodworking tools. I started doing them about 17 years ago when I wanted some small violinmakers planes for making the musical instruments I made. The antique planes cost too much to buy from the collectors and antique stores and the newer ones that you could buy from some specialized stores also cost quite a bit – and generally weren’t up to the standard of the older ones anyway! In the end I decided to make a set of four violinmakers planes from cocobolo – a type of rosewood. I also figured that since I had plenty of exotic wood offcuts from making the musical instruments it was better to use them up rather than throw them away or burn them.
I had fun making them and the little buggers looked really cool so from then on I started making more of them – as well as some other types of woodworking tools such as marking gauges, squares and sliding bevels. I mostly stayed with smaller sized planes but I did make some larger wooden ones as well. What I didn’t keep myself I sold to collectors or friends of mine. Occasionally I would even give a plane away here or there.
I’d always wanted to make metal planes using dovetails but I was too apprehensive about starting them because I didn’t exactly know what it entailed. I looked around for information but I couldn’t really find that much. What I did find I just couldn’t understand.
It wasn’t until I was working on my children’s book, Woodlore, that I decided I was going to just give it a try and see if I could get anywhere. I needed some small specialty planes to do some very specific jobs because the larger planes I had were just too big to get into the nooks and crannies that I needed them to get into. I also figured that if I started small with metal planes under three inches long then it wouldn’t really cost me anything and I wouldn’t waste that much material. Besides there’d be less work in a smaller plane anyhow, I thought?
Dovetailing is not that difficult to do as it turns out. It does involve a bit of precision though and a whole lot of patience – especially if you’re starting out. How it works is that dovetail “pins” are cut out of the base, or sole, of the plane and tails are cut out of the sides. The tails are also partially relieved along each side so that they work as “double dovetails” when they’re joined to the base. The three pieces then lock and mesh together and the dovetails are then hammered down to spread the excess metals out so that they lock hard and strong. They’re not welded at all, but cold forged. Original dovetailed bench planes first became popular around the mid 1800′s and are considered very collectable nowadays.
After a bit of a stop-start beginning, the first successful dovetailed metal plane I ended up making was a two inch long thumb plane made from brass sides and a steel sole and with an African blackwood infill. The blade – originally made from an old spokeshave blade – was held in place by a simple blackwood wedge, which did the job quite nicely. I was pretty happy with the result and the contrasting metals looked good together. Unfortunately the mouth on it (where the blade comes through the bottom of the plane to shave the wood) was a little too wide so I turned it into a small scrub plane for “roughing out” work. It wasn’t bad for a first plane though, I thought. My first plane is the smaller of the two planes shown here – the one with two pictures of it, front and rear.
I gave my first plane a traditional “bun” at the front just like it’s bigger cousins have. On the bigger planes the bun acts as a knob to hold down the plane as you’re using it. On my small plane though the bun is purely decorative. I chamfered the top sides of the plane so that it felt comfortable in my hand and that there were no sharp edges anywhere. I also relieved the back infill and gave the plane a couple of coats of shellac to protect the wood and make it look good.
My second successful plane was made from three pieces of brass. Because it was all the same metal there’s no contrast with the dovetails and, therefore, they’re very hard to spot. Many planes that are done in this way end up looking like they’re made from one piece of metal, not three. My second plane was three inches long with a very, very tiny mouth and a lower set blade. I made this one specifically for planing the end grain on one of the pages of the book. The infill is Indian rosewood.
I also made several other planes for the book – a chisel edge plane for getting right to the inside corners of each frame, an ebony chamfer plane for taking the edges off some of the outside frames and a decorative ogee style plane for one of the outside frames, also made of ebony. This last one had a side fence so that it was easier to guide the plane along the edge and over the woodwork. They all worked well and did their specific jobs admirably – making it a lot easier for me to finish the book on time!
When we were promoting the book I took my little planes along with me as props. I got such a good response from them that I ended up giving demonstrations on planemaking at various woodworking shows. I also made more than a few sales so I ended up making more planes to fill the orders – even making large planes to sell.
I soon got a catalog together of all the different styles of planes I made – from the smallest violinmakers plane, only 3/4″ long, right up to a 36 inch jointer plane. Dominique Falla created the engravings of the main planes I offered in the same style of the tool catalogs of old. Over the years I’ve had several catalogs and my range keeps growing. Basically though I’ll try to make any pattern of plane that a buyer wants – for a price of course.
I still occasionally make planes today – not many as they’re quite expensive and not your usual high demand product. I have been fortunate to make several hundred planes over the years though and I still enjoy doing them.
A cool website to read about and learn more about woodworking planes is Handplane Central.
