I'd seen a picture of this plane a while back and I was looking forward to seeing if she'd be taken along to the European Woodworking Show last weekend - I was in luck! The old and unassuming little plane has been named Rosie (there's a story behind that) and it's one of the latest wooden planes … [Read more...]
How To Use A Fillister Plane
Anyone used to using machines or power tools can be surprised at just how quickly a joint can be banged out by hand. There might not be any motors, but there are many tasks which can be completed well before you would have had time to find the bits and set up a router. In addition to the benefits … [Read more...]
Learning To Set Wooden Planes
When I decided to start woodworking I chose do it with wooden planes. Perhaps this was heavily influenced by what Richard felt would be a good route to take, but also because I've always felt a great attraction towards them. Setting up a wooden hand plane is not intuitive. Not for me … [Read more...]
Real World Hand Prepping
For someone who hand planes everything when building furniture, I find that I traverse (or plane across the grain) very little. I avoid it deliberately as I find the action suits neither our workbenches nor our bodies particularly well. The reason that I thickness by hand is not because I'm … [Read more...]
The Right Plane For The Job
My favourite plane until now has been a very cute and tiny wooden smoother. It was small enough for me to manage the restoration, nice in the hand and just sweet. Time seems to get the better of me so I'm still very much at that stage of enjoying making shavings rather than much else, but with a … [Read more...]
Setting The Cap Iron / Chip Breaker – VIDEO
This is the last (for now) of three videos about cap irons / chip breakers. If you haven't seen the others then you can find them here: Cap Irons & Tear Out Preparing The Cap Iron / Chip Breaker I find a well set up cap iron to be vital for preventing tear out. It allows me to … [Read more...]
Preparing The Cap Iron / Chip Breaker – VIDEO
Following from the last video, we're looking at setting up a cap iron. This one's in two parts and the second video can be found here. … [Read more...]
Cap Irons & Tear Out – VIDEO
Stubborn tear out can be a huge frustration. Particularly when you're just getting everything smoothed off and it shows it's ugly face. I'm not one for faffing about with my tools, and whilst I expect my hand planes to give a perfect result, most of them look dog rough. But getting to know … [Read more...]
Why Small & Sweet
Small Planes Are The Best For Smoothing When writing these articles I hope to provide an insight in to my ways of working. This is never to dictate, and if you read it as though what I do is the right, or the only way to go about things then you could end up confused. But through reading … [Read more...]
Smoothing Plane – Buying A Dedicated Plane
In one of the recent videos I was whining on about the jack plane, and how feel that the No 5 is the best all round, multi use bench plane. In another video I've also mentioned my love for a nice small smoothing plane, so I thought it'd be worth going through some of my … [Read more...]