Wax for bottom of wood plane?

[Peter Pedisich]

Hi, I have a few wood planes; smooth, jack and jointers.
Some of them I've trued the botooms of, and now I wish to wax or finish it.
What would you advise?

I have a beeswax/oil mixture, and I have butcher's paste wax.

Thanks!

[Angela micinski]

I use Johnsons paste wax on my cast iron tools and I would think it would work well on wood planes to.

[Zach Dillinger]

Angela is right, past waste works great. No need to get too fancy with it. I also use paraffin wax on the sole to ease friction while planing, so I'm sure there is a micro-layer of that on my planes as well.

[george wilson]

I just rub a little paraffin on mine. I don't want any sticky or oily wax getting onto the wood that I'll be finishing later.

[harry strasil]

I'm with George on this one, get some paraffin sealing was in the canning supplies dept of your grocery store, it comes in about 2 inch by 4 inch by about 1/2 inch thick pieces.

Back in time aways, when woodies were the planes of use, the old timers would cut off the bottom of a small glass jar and set it in a hole drilled in a piece of wood that sat on the bench and roll up some felt and stick in the jar so it was proud of the top then soak it with linseed oil and drag their planes back across it when it started to grab to lube the bottom. FWIW

[Pam Niedermayer]

As a user of Japanese quartersawn kashi (J white oak), I don't use any finish whatsoever, just body oil applied via handling; but as a user of most other tools, I followed Harry's/Kingshott's advice, works great.

Pam

[Andrew Arndts]

I use Renaissance Wax personally. I never had it bind up but I don't have to re apply until the next time I use it.
When Planes were made of wood as I understand from a Roy Underhill, they used Mutton Tallow....

[Matthew Dworman]

Candlestick

[Zahid Naqvi]

I've used Johnson's paste wax and Bee's wax both are equally good.

[Mike Konobeck]

Renaissance Wax is pretty amazing stuff. The beauty of it versus other waxes is how hard it gets. I use it on everything and it is scary how slick stuff gets.

[Terry Beadle]

Crisco also works.

[john brenton]

Terry...that's awesome. I had been thinking about adding a grease cup to the bench and using Crisco for a while now but had never put it to the test. I guess I had made the assumption that it would be a good replacement for tallow, which I don't use, but know it has been used traditionally. It's great to hear that it works (by works, I'm assuming that you mean it slides well and doesn't muck up the surface.)


Crisco also works.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I just rub a little paraffin on mine. I don't want any sticky or oily wax getting onto the wood that I'll be finishing later.

Where does the paraffin go? I mean, you put it on your plane, then you put your plane on the wood, and a bit latter, you need to add more paraffin. I assume, that at the end of the day you have paraffin on the wood. I recently spoke with a local who said that this may cause problems later when applying finish (assuming you go directly from using the plane to finishing).

[george wilson]

An alternative is to stop off the mouth of your pane with window putty with the plane clamped down to a flat board. Fill up the empty escapement of the plane with RAW linseed oil,and let it bleed out through both ends of the plane. This will go through quite a long plane,and after several refillings,will appear at both ends of the plane,completely impregnating the plane with linseed oil.

I have done this to several of my planes,and it works fine. I stated doing this in the early 70's,when I learned about it from an old cabinetmaker,Mr. Simms,who at that time was THE whole furniture restoration department at Wmsbg. Some have said the oil never dries,but I never have had any problem with it. If it doesn't dry in the heart of the wood,it certainly dries in the outer surfaces. So,what does it matter if it never dries in the heart of the wood? It has never leaked out anywhere in my several planes. I'm not so certain it never dries,myself. It gets nothing on what I'm planing.

It was Mr. Simm's toolbox that Roy Underhill featured on one of his shows.