Laminated planes

[Matthew N. Masail]

I was planing on making my planes this way, however there seems to be a wide spread agreement against it. and I like to know if this is more traditional or actual.

some of the problems that rose are:

1. glue creep - but the plane can be pinned with dowel, also guitar heads are often connected to the neck using only a scraf joint, and they will last as long as the guitar goes even with a constant 80-90lb pull. so why not a plane.

2. different movements in various parts - if I built the plane by ripping a piece and gluing in back?

3. they don't last long.... why?

a point also came up that laminated planes can be make out of many hardwoods to good effect because there isn't much demand on the wood, is that referring to the wedge? and isn't that a good thing?

what advantage is there to a soild body plane? I'll consider it but it needs to be worth buying floats and stuff. I'm also concerned about wood movement with 1 soild piece, am I wrong?

I think this should be an interesting discussion - if there aren’t tomatoes thrown at me.... :o

[Stuart Tierney]

I can throw together a nice, working plane in under and hour by laminating and with scraps. I can't chop and hack one out of a block in that time.

I don't care if it falls apart (never happened yet), if the glue creeps (taken out when adjusting for season) or twists due to odd grain/pieces (taken out during adjustment).

I also don't care if my planes are not traditional, nor do I particularly care what anyone else thinks of them. I make them for me, I use them myself and I'm the only person who's opinion matters.

And if anyone doesn't like the way I see it, I don't care! ;)

Besides which, the wood doesn't care what's used, so long as the thing is sharp. :D

Stu.

[Bruce Haugen]

It seems to me that at least some of James Krenov's planes were laminated, and so were Steve Knight's planes. No one seemed to complain about them.

[Mark Baldwin III]

I have several laminated planes. Outside of seasonal adjustments they are just fine. My sizes are from 5 1/2" to 22". They can be made quickly and for little money, and you don't need a lot of specialized tools.

[Matthew N. Masail]

great(-: Stu, I like your attitude, does it matter if the pin is wood or brass?

[Casey Gooding]

I have built many laminated planes over the years and have never had a problem with them. They do have to be adjusted with weather and season changes, but so do all wooden planes. You shouldn't have any issues with delamination as long as you use dry wood and good glue.

[Stuart Tierney]

great(-: Stu, I like your attitude, does it matter if the pin is wood or brass?

I've done large brass, large steel, small steel and small brass with a plate.

Of all of them, I like the brass with a small brass plate soldered on to the side. It spreads out the load better and does less damage to the wedge. If however, I have the chance, I also like using a steel wedge similar to how the chip breaker is made in a Japanese plane. Adds a lot of weight to the iron, and if you do it right, it'll play as a nice chip breaker/wedge combination.

I'm not a fan of big pins, unless you can slip something between the wedge and the pin so the wedge doesn't get chewed up.

Or use a screw lever. Used that on my big jointer, and it worked very well and was very much worth the time and trouble to do it.

Stu.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Thanks Stu, you can make your own screw lever? can you post a picture or something so I can see what you mean? could you expand a little more on the Japanese chip breaker, what I was thinking origenly was to make a wooden wedge and hollow the middle a little with a scraper so that the front edge would have solid contact and then shape the front edge of the wedge like a chip breaker. but I guess I could get something made for me in brass, that would be cool.

[Metod Alif]

Stu,
Great post. Thinking and tradition are are not always the best of friends.
I understand (please correct me, if wrong) that a dai (Japanese plane body) is made to a particular iron. Also, an iron can go through three dais in its 'lifetime'. So, all this (if true) adds to respectability of laminated plane bodies.
Of course, if one is selling non-laminated planes, one would not highlight the goodness of the laminated ones or the usefulness of different woods.
Best wishes,
Metod

[David Weaver]

I'm not sure a dai and a laminated plane are a good comparison, unless the laminations have abutments cut to hold an iron like a dai. The wedged fit in a dai i superior to a laminated plane with a bar and a wedge, but it takes miles more skill to execute properly, so it is out of bounds for someone who wants to make their own tools, but who doesn't want to take several tries doing it. Laminated planes should work well - there should be no surprise to that, but such planes could've been easily made 200 years ago, and it's unlikely that it's by accident that craftsmen paid a significant sum of money for one-piece planes and plane bodies when they could've just made their own laminated planes quickly.

[Stuart Tierney]

Matthew,

I used a piece of mild steel, a hacksaw and some files to cut out the shape, then a piece of threaded rod glued into a piece of wood, turned to a nice shape. Nothing fancy, but it works well. I've also put threaded inserts in a wooden lever before, and that works too.

You can hollow the wedge back, but it's really not essential I don't think. So long as the blade is reasonable, sharp and has good contact to the bed area, the wedge only needs to hold the blade in place with a modicum of pressure, and not that much, for the plane to work well. I've only made a half dozen or so planes, and when I keep it simple, they work well. When I start getting all fancy, I run into trouble. For a first, keep it simple, fast and cheap. There's no need to keep it if you upgrade the plane later, but having a working plane will teach you a lot in what's really important and what is not.

Metod,

A kanna can go through a lot more than 3 dai in it's lifetime. Plane bodies are matched to the blade, but you can have an many bodies matched to that blade as you want. Whereas you might have a few different blades for a LA plane for different situations, with a kanna you might have several different dai to yield the same effect.

(Although I don't know how you make a plane longer/shorter with a blade change...)

I'm not inclined to make my own dai from a piece of wood for myself. Too much like hard work, and I only need to send an email/make a phone call to have one in my hands within 48 hours. And they're cheap, already cut to rough size. A little adjustment, and off I go.

I can tell you that having 2 dai matched to the blade while they're being made is a time saver, although despite the best intentions, some planes still need a little tweaking when they arrive in another country.

Interesting stuff, and I do have some idea of how fortunate I am that I'm able to call folks who know the answer to any question I might have. I'm also sensible enough to not put every question I might have to them either, especially since I do like to work things out for myself. ;)

Stu.

[Ron Hock]

I've never heard any "wide spread agreement against it" at all. In fact, when this came up a while ago, I asked David Welter at the CR shop (Krenov's school) if he had heard of any failures in the thousands of planes made there and he hadn't. At all. If we stop trusting glue joints we'll not be making much furniture.

Laminated plane are quick, easy and very satisfying to build and use. After the first one or two it takes longer for the glue to dry than it does to make the body. And if I may offer one small efficiency, forget the pivoting cross-pin in favor of a glued-in 1/2" dowel. Making that little cross-pin is more difficult and fussy than making the rest of the plane. And it offers no advantage in actual use. Another instance of over-thinking a design without any real-world testing. We've made and sold thousands of Krenov-style plane kits with dowels for cross-pins and haven't seen a problem yet. Go for it!

[David Weaver]

I can't say I've heard any agreement against it at all, widespread or not. Usually the disagreement goes without agreement among the disagreeing types. It can certainly be done on the quick, faster than anything else I can think of, and with quite good results for the amount of time involved.

[Matthew N. Masail]

Hi, the "agreement against it" was what it seemed like from my other post about wood choice, I guess I jumped too fast to a conclusion.

Ron, I bought one of your wide kervon blades, I'm hoping to make a nice jointer out of it (-:

[James Carmichael]

What Ron said.

And by the way, your Krenov irons ROCK! I can build a woody for less time and money than buying and restoring an old Bailey, and have a far better performing plane.

It's getting time to dispose of all that ol arn, it just takes up space.

[Steve knight]

I have built thousands of planes. but I have had some failures. but I did not cut the planes out a single block of wood with everything in order. sometimes it was wood not fully acclimated or most of the failures were on oily woods. almost always it was the sides or side pulling away from the main body. but my planes were shipped all over the world so humidity could change drastically in a day.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Honestly, unless you're building a beautiful perfect heirloom tool, the laminated plane idea appeals to me. The iron is the only real expense out of the thing, and even if the wood self-destructs, you still have the iron. The time outlay isn't really so bad, and if it only lasts six months, I kind of got my moneys worth. And it's not like I can't re-use the wood for something else later on, even if it's something small like a pull or a shim. (Wood has to get pretty damn small before it leaves my bin, it seems) One of the things Finck talks about in his book on making these planes is how nice it is, once you have the process down, to hack one out in an afternoon to get yourself something like a compass plane with a particular radius or whatever for making a coopered door. Yes, it's nice to make things that last a hundred years; and if I had the tools, I certainly would make a more traditional style plane, at least for my main three users (Jack, smooth, jointer) if I was going to use wooden planes for those. But sometimes you want to spend more time building furniture, and less time making tools.

[Metod Alif]

Stu,
Thanks for your response.
I do chuckle about your 'free-spiritness' while you are living in a land of strong traditions.:)
Best wishes,
Metod