Japanese planes

[Casey Gooding]

Quick question for you Japanese Plane users. Since the area behind the iron doesn't touch the material on a Japanese plane, what do you do when you reach the end of the board?? Since there's nothing to support the plane anymore, they always want to tip back and cut deeper. What's one to do??

[Brent Smith]

Hi Casey,

Since you're pulling on a Japanese plane, the hand placement and downward force in front of the blade prevents snipe at the end of the board.

[Casey Gooding]

So....how do you keep the tip of the plane from tipping off the board and keep it level as you reach the end of the board??

[Raney Nelson]

It's essentially through the stroke mechanics. You're right in that the plane mechanics doesn't automatically maintain flatness the same way a western plane does, but your stroke will develop to keep the plane in the same 'plane' at the end of the board. In general, japanese planes require a bit more finesse than western planes, but the tradeoff is that there is a bit of flexibility in the results as well. the degree of downpressure, for instance, can be used to vary the depth of cut - and the degree of wood compression just prior to the cut. Like most things, it's a tradeoff.

Because the iron is the last thing touching the surface of the wood, there is zero 'burnishing' from the rear of the plane sole. In softwoods particularly the effects of this can be really spectacular. The suface quality of a fine piece of PO or alaskan yellow cedar, for instance, can be quite incredible... there's almost a shimmer to the surface; I have never seen a western plane that could achieve this effect to the same degree. In harder woods, including the vast majority of what most of us build furniture from, the effective differences are much less apparent.

[Pam Niedermayer]

Japanese jointer planes typically have flat soles, which addresses your question. For smoothers, which do have stepped soles, the best technique requires very fast pulling, so the planing action is over before it has a chance to produce unflatness.

Pam

[george wilson]

I believe japanese planes were sometimes set upside down in a cut out in the workbench top. Then,the surface of the bench served as a very long jointer for trying edges. A fitted "plug" of wood could be put into the plane recess when the plane was used in the normal way.

[Wilbur Pan]

Just like swinging a baseball bat, or your golf swing -- it's all follow through.

I don't have much else to add here except that in theory this is an issue, but in practice, not so much.

[Sam Takeuchi]

Quite a few carpenters I know here don't have "behind blade not touching the piece" setup for their smoothers. However, they do have scooped soled planes with toe, mouth and heel touching the work piece. When I was getting my feet wet with Japanese planes, I did the same. But a marquery craftman I have met in Hakone used toe-mouth plane.

Anyway I don't think extra point on sole touching the wood cause anything detrimental. Japanese planes are sold incomplete, it's up to users to give final setup of his own preference. I don't think the Japanese carpenters and craftman will look at you funny if you got toe-mouth plane or toe-mouth-heel plane. I think it mostly depends on the planing technique they are accustomed to. Some manages without heel, some feels having heel achieves satisfactory result. If you tend to dip at the end, add heel. That's all.

P.S. What works for you is the most important thing. Not what it's supposed to be and not getting the result.