Roman wood planes

[Aaron Kline]

I've read that Romans used highly sophisticated metal bodied planes long before Stanley, Bailey and such came along. Does anyone have a picture of one? Also, why were they not used in England and the US after the fall of the Empire?

[Lloyd Robins]

Hi! I looked for a picture of a Roman plane, and got a lot of information, but not much in the way of pictures. My wife, a Latin teacher, says that the tool was called a runcina. I did find a picture of one (in very poor shape that even our neaders wouldn't want to try to fix) that was found on a boat. It is shown on this site ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2969638.stm ) that I am posting. As to why they were not used, maybe people were just scrambling to live and some of the tools that added refinements were not as important. Plumbing got lost for many years also.