plane wood

[john brenton]

I've got to make a coffin plane body for a toothing iron I just picked up....anyone ever make a plane out of box-elder? I love the old boxwood planes, but we all know that boxwood is $$$.

[David Weaver]

Nope. A good dense dried cherry table leg blank is the only thing I've used thus far worked fairly well for cutting the plane body, but I haven't fitted an iron yet.

The Boxelder wiki entry doesn't make it sound very promising for planes.

Do you have a piece that's dry and quartersawn (or at least that you could get a quartersawn blank out of it?).

Looks miles different than boxwood, which is dense and hard.

[george wilson]

The boxwood you can get these days is not going to be large enough to make a solid plane anyway. Maple would be o.k. if you can't find beech.

[David Weaver]

The boxwood you can get these days is not going to be large enough to make a solid plane anyway. Maple would be o.k. if you can't find beech.

I saw a stick at hearne when I was on the other side of the state this year. I don't remember exactly how big it was, but i would have to say off the top of my head it was a cracked up stick about 3" in diameter and two or three feet long. I didn't ask the price (it wasn't marked), but they did remark it's "a large piece of boxwood compared to most of what's out there"

I didn't see a lot there that you could make bench planes out of without buying a whole 16/4 board.

I've gotten two 4x4" cherry table leg blanks from rockler that are of reasonable quality, when they had coupons (but still paid a dear price for them), and a nice cherry table leg blank from a WN user a while ago.

I haven't seen beech. Experience as a piker tells me that if I'm in the OPs shoes, if the boxelder is cheap, I might make a test plane out of it because it shouldn't be too hard, and then buy something more suitable, as the first two coffin planes I cut had fatal errors because I didn't know what I was doing and figured I'd find out from mistakes instead. Even after that, I think it's easier to make a nice looking infill plane than it is a coffin smoother.

This is also a job that will be made much easier by having an edge float and a bed float, though the bed float isn't absolutely necessary if you're good with chisels and don't mind squaring one off to use as a push scraper.

George - do you have any wisdom to share in making the planes? I have a short tutoring from the WPINCA volume 2 that probably would've made my first one a success, but got sidetracked with infills, which are, in my opinion, easier to get right, even if they do take a lot longer.

[Alan Schwabacher]

Box elder is soft and does not resemble box. Maple, oak, and beech all would work fine. Harder is better, except that if you are chopping a traditional plane out of one piece, it's a lot of work. A laminated plane as described by Krenov is much easier to make, particularly if you have very hard stock to work with. Krenov planes work well.

According to Larry Williams of Clark and Williams, there are some real advantages to beech single-piece plane bodies, particularly with regard to rapid adjustment to humidity changes. If you were allowed to make only one plane and wanted the best possible, I would say to study the Clark and Williams planes. However, if you are a beginner at plane making, I'd say you could make, tune, and use several Krenov planes rather quickly, and learn an awful lot in the process. These planes will work very well. You can then make and compare other styles. The David Finck book "Making and mastering wood planes" is excellent, and of particular value if you are new to woodworking as well as to wooden planes.

[george wilson]

A plane made of too soft a wood is liable to crack somewhere in the escapement where the wedge bears against the wedge mortise on the wedge's upper side. Poor wording,I know. Too sleepy. Cherry is a bit soft,though some cherry is harder than usual,but it would be a reasonable wood to make a plane from,more so than box elder,I suppose. I made a few planes out of cherry in the 60's. Still have one. It is made as a convex sole plane for carving cellos. I made it like a Krenov type plane,because I needed a quick plane at the time. Just glued the sides on,with Roman style cross pin. It has made several spruce tops in its time,and isn't worn out at all. But,spruce is pretty soft wood.

If there is an old orchard near you,apple makes a great plane.

[john brenton]

I figured box-elder wouldn't be the best, but I haven't had any luck finding good sized pieces of boxwood on the net, and Savannah GA is surprisingly lame when it comes to wood. I moved here a few years ago and have called boat builders and woodworkers and noble wood is extremely hard to find. Columbia SC and Atlanta are just about the only places I know of that have any variety.

I've made a handful of planes and luckily have never needed to do any more than a little tuning to get them dialed in....but I'm sure the moment I spring for the boxwood I would do something horrible wrong.

I guess I'll go for the beech again. boring.

Thanks again!

[David Weaver]

If there is an old orchard near you,apple makes a great plane.

I grew up in gettysburg. I remember seeing trees tipped over to resow new ones in northern adams (PA) when I was a kid - rows and rows of apple trees.

It's probably not something people think about with gettysburg, but north of there a few miles are tons and tons of commercial orchards. Don't live there now, though. I would imagine most of those trees get burned.

Seems like there should be some opportunity for people to pick up some good sized trunks there, though.

[george wilson]

I think any of the citrus trees would also make good plane wood. Lemon was used to make bows,and is a nice,yellow,featureless hard wood.

[James Carmichael]

Box elder is a soft maple and probably won't be very durable unless you give it a harder sole.

[James Taglienti]

God, I can't begin to imagine mortising a chunk of boxwood for a plane body... it'd be like making a plane out of a huge pine knot, maybe worse! Yet there are examples out there of ebony, boxwood, etc...

[george wilson]

I've made planes out of boxwood. I have no pictures,though. It wasn't so bad.

[David Keller NC]

I've made a handful of planes and luckily have never needed to do any more than a little tuning to get them dialed in....but I'm sure the moment I spring for the boxwood I would do something horrible wrong.

I guess I'll go for the beech again. boring.

Thanks again!

If you want boxwood big enough to make a plane out of, I know of 2 places that you can get it, but it's going to cost. The first is Tropical Exotic Hardwoods of Latin America (http://www.anexotichardwood.com/index.html). They have english boxwood, turkish boxwood, and south american boxwood (not a true boxwood, but close in properties) on a regular basis.

The second that I know if is getting it shipped from Octopus Wood Works in Turkey (http://www.octopus.com.tr/store/).

Surprisingly, ebony and boxwood are pretty easy to hand-plane if you've a sharp iron and have the plane set for light shavings. I've made a number of tools out of Gabon Ebony (the really hard, black stuff traditionally used to make piano keys), and you can process it with hand tools much as you would with a hard domestic wood like maple. Boxwood's similar, so long as it's reasonably straight-grained.

What is beyond difficult with hand tools, in my opinion, is cocobolo and honduran rosewood - they don't plane well at all.

[James Taglienti]

George-
was it ok on the cutters?
I'd imagine you'd have to take a light cut, or use an obscene bevel angle...

[Nick Laeder]

I have an obscene amount of Brazilian Redwood (macaranduba) shorts in my shop. Anyone have any ideas if this stuff would be good for a plane?