Help with Hand Planes

[Jeff Mead]

Been reading the forum here quite a bit as I get started into woodworking for advice / tips on almost everything I get into. I've used primarily power tools for everything I've done, but find myself in a spot where I think a hand plane would be my best option. I have some red oak and cherry I got from a place that cut veneers and left the center of the log. The pieces are only ~ 7/8ths thick but most are 20''+ wide. The only 2 options I could come up with are making a jig for the router or using a hand plane. I've put off buying/using hand planes in the past, but this seems like a perfect time to get started. Having no knowledge and hardly any experience with hand planes I'm hoping for some help and advice.


Am I better off buying a cheap borg plane and using that to get accustomed to hand planing, or would I be better served finding an old stanley on ebay, and spending some time getting to know more about planes as I clean/fix it up?
What size would be best to start with, and what size would be best for flattening / cleaning up the 20+" boards I'm looking to do?


I don't mind putting in the time to clean one up, but I wouldn't make it to see another day if I spent the $ to get a nice or already restored plane. If a $25 or so plane from ebay can be made into a serviceable plane that will outlast the cheap borg planes, I'd prefer to go that route. I'm not sure what to look for buying a plane on ebay. Outside of looking for bad pitting, or noticeable chips / cracks I'm not sure what would make a plane worth restoring or not.

If anyone has some helpful knowledge in regards to getting a first plane, things to look for, or even seen a good add/listing for an old plane I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

[Lloyd McKinlay]

Head over to the Sawmill Creek classified forum. Planes are frequently listed, from top of the line to fully restored to rehab candidates. Generally the seller will be able to provide excellent advice and guidance for your needs.

[Jim Neeley]

Jeff,

IF you ask this you'll get a hundred recommendations and NONE of them will involve a BORG plane.

I recommend spending some time reading threads on the Neander forum and asking a few questions. You'll get some really good info on what to look for in an old stanley (ebay or other), what things really matter when choosing one and, if you tell people where you live there's a good chance someone living nearby will offer to let you come to their shop to try out a properly tuned plane, so you know what it's supposed to perform like.

It's tough to tune up something to really good performance if you've never seen / used one that is truly tuned. Then you have a goal.

They can also help you decide which planes you need.

If you lived in Anchorage, PM me and I'll help you get started.

Jim

[Bill Orbine]

Older USA made planes such as Stanley and Sargeant can be had reasonably and far better quality than the BORG stuff. If you're not too thrifty (ready to spend $$$) and want new stuff , you could go the Lie Nielsen or Lee Valley route. You will need to learn sharpening and tuning. It's a learned skill and may take time to develop.

[Shawn Pixley]

As others have said, the neander forum loves to talk planes. You may want to take your question there. Getting a plane that works from the start will help a lot. A good worker #5 Stanley Bailey Pattern is a great place to start. You may want to post that you are looking for a good working plane in the classified section, but you'll need to become a contributor for 6$. The advice and help you'll get will more than offset the 6$. But, you'll need to learn how to sharpen the plane blade. Not overly difficult, but necessary.

[Jeff Mead]

Thanks for the responses guys. When I get time tomorrow after work I'll post it over there and see where it gets me. Right now doing bathroom tile has me run down.

[David Eisenhauer]

The other guys have you lined up on the plane. Good stuff. Let me also repeat what Bill said above. After about an hour or so of owning the new-to-you plane, you may need to sharpen it. Hand tools and sharpening are co-joined at the hip and you will need to address the sharpening issue very soon after getting started. If you try to continue to use a less-than sharp plane (or chisel), chances are that you could become discouraged and drop the hand plane work idea.

While you are reading up on planes in the Neanderthal forum, continue reading up on sharpening. Do not let the Neanderthal forum semi-fierce innerwebs arguments concerning "which plane, which sharpening stone" turn you off. As in most things, there are a couple-three ways to do most things and you can read through the sometimes-extremely-technical/esoteric arguments/discussions concerning "blade up-blade down", "bevel-micro bevel-hollow-flat", "diamond-synthetic-natural-water stone-oilstone" and the ever popular "Lee Valley vs Lie Nielsen" subjects to pick up some good ideas.

As for planes, there appears to be two schools: 1) Buy one that needs refurbishing so you become intimate with how it is made and works after taking it apart and re building it back up 2) Buy something (either brand new or fully refurbished) that is set up to work correctly so that you know what a good setup plane feels like when you first start out. Sharpening can start out with wet/dry sandpaper stuck to piece of glass method and range on out to a three or four Japanese stone method that costs more. The main thing about sharpening is to pick a method, set up correctly to follow that method and do not put off sharpening when it is time to do so. As experience is gained, many folks end up trying a different method or stone type to see if they like it better, but, by that time, they know more so what they are doing and can form opinions a little easier.

[Judson Green]

Those are pretty big boards to be tackling on your first attempt. You might feel better about your end result if you dipped your toe in something a bit smaller, and more be more confident about doing this again; not deterred from the process. And wondering if you might not be better off ripping those boards down the middle to remove any pith, I'd think they would be more stable in the long run.

But how I'd do this is to first check how flat/unflat the broad is, use a straight edge and winding sticks. Place the face that I can stabilize best down on the bench and go to it on the face that's up with a Stanley 5 (with a curved cutting edge to the iron; rank) in places I might use a scrub plane. Generally I rough flatten in X, that's to say planing about 45° to the grain. Go down the board this way \\\\\\\\ and back up this way //////. Checking every so often with your winding stick and straight edge to see where your at.

Once you've got that pretty good you can get out the jointer plane, like a Stanley 6, 7, or 8 size and make it really flat, going more or less with the grain. Again checking with your winding sticks and straight edges. Once you've got that, time to get out the smoothing plane,Stanley 4, and make it smooth.

Peaches n cake! Really its not that hard and once you've learned how to do flatten and surfacing you'll be able to do things that won't fit though your planer. And I'm not knocking power tools, I use em.

Regarding what to look for in a quality used plane: personal I'd stick with Stanley or Miller Falls and try to get to a flea market or the like, I think by handling them you'll get a better idea of what's a good plane and what's not. The classified here too are a great place.

Have ya got sharping stones?

Also, are the boards dried? We're they outside? Have you a moisture meter?

And lastly, you might want to add your location to your profile, chances are someone in your area could help ya out.

[Jim Matthews]

If the boards include the center of the log, you'll have nice
quartersawn pieces on either side of the center.

Pictures of the boards, please.

I'm not convinced that something so wide is an entry level project.

I'm primarily a hand tool builder of my own furniture and it's rare for me
to plane a board wider than 9", unless I'm making up panels.

*******

I would start with a modern #4 1/2 unless you have large hands.
I like a plane that is about 1.5 times the size of my open hand.

Larger than that, and it can be heavy.
Smaller than that, and it can lead to uneven surfaces (if I'm not on my game).

I would repeat the admonition to avoid the modern Borg products.
They're plane shaped objects and prone to frustrate beginners.

[Harold Burrell]

I would repeat the admonition to avoid the modern Borg products.
They're plane shaped objects and prone to frustrate beginners.

Yep.......

[Prashun Patel]

Do you have a decent sharpening set up?

[Jeff Mead]

Thanks all for the responses. As far as sharpening goes I am starting with wet/dry sandpaper method, using a honing guide, as it was the most easily available and cheapest starting point for me.

As far as the board widths I won't be using 20+" pieces right away. Re-reading my post I see I didn't clarify. The boards I'm cutting from are 20+" wide by 8-12'. I found them fairly local at a great price. What I want out of them are some face frames, front panels for drawers and a few raised panel doors. They were air dried for over a year before I got them and they have been stored inside for the last few months. I can get pictures next time I'm out there.

Added location to my profile. I'm sure no one knows where Pleasant Mt. is, but its in the NE corner of PA, nearest Honesdale, or Scranton.

[Simon MacGowen]

This is what I'd recommend (as I always do to my students):

1) Tight budget - Get a WoodRiver V3, not the earlier version you may find on eBay, etc. LAJ or #4
2) With a reward-yourself budget - Veritas from Lee Valley (now or wait till the free shipping event)

#1 may need some work, but #2 is out-of-the-box approach. Some would argue that Veritas' blades that come with the planes aren't sharp enough...Definitions of sharpness are different and there is no point of debating on that. After all we go after the wood not how fine the shavings are...unless the shavings are made for a reason. Anyway, many people don't have the skills to sharpen their blades as sharp as or sharper than the new blades that Veritas supplies and they build things. Veritas planes are best values in my definition (some reviewers put WR in that category...but they are not really comparing apples to apples...that is a story for another day).

If you prefer the Stanley type of planes, then you have to go with Lie Nielsen's which are the most expensive of the three options.

For someone going into handplanes for the first time, I wouldn't suggest eBay purchases as you may be lucky or not, unless you have someone to turn to for help -- in person, not over the cyberspace. Elsewhere, Lee Valley is reported to be releasing a new 400 page catalog soon but no one knows what new tools are there. If you decide to go with Veritas for your hand tools, it may be worth the wait (till Sept?).

Don't start with too many new planes, just in case you find handplanes not for you. You will very likely incur a loss when you resell them even if they are just a month old...unless you are lucky. Most buyers expect to get a 15% to 30% discount from you, unless they are ignorant or don't do their homework (or couldn't care).

Simon

[Jim Koepke]

Jeff,

Welcome to the Creek.

My response is with consideration toward something you mentioned in your first post.



I don't mind putting in the time to clean one up, but I wouldn't make it to see another day if I spent the $ to get a nice or already restored plane. If a $25 or so plane from ebay can be made into a serviceable plane that will outlast the cheap borg planes, I'd prefer to go that route. I'm not sure what to look for buying a plane on ebay. Outside of looking for bad pitting, or noticeable chips / cracks I'm not sure what would make a plane worth restoring or not.


As you may have gathered, some of us are very enthusiastic when it comes to spending other's money.

In my opinion the #5 might be your best choice. It is a very versatile plane. A new blade can be bought at Home Depot for $3 last time I checked. Then one blade could be sharpened with a bit of a camber for scrub work and the other could be set up more for smoothing and jointing.

Take a look at this page:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?103805-Neanderthal-wisdom-FAQs

Section 7 has some information on planes and section 9 has some rehab threads.

There are some good planes available for not a lot of money.

jtk

[Shawn Pixley]

Jeff,

This is unsolicited advice, feel free to ignore it. I wouldn't cut down a 20" wide board for face frames and such. Wide boards are becoming exceedingly scarce. I would save the wide stock for a use suitable to the width. I've become very reverant of wood. I hate to see it wasted in my shop.

[Shannon Brantley]

I've only been fooling around with planes for 3 or 4 years so I'm far from an expert like most of the guys on here. But I've been avidly playing guitar for over 25 years and I've seen a lot of people that wanted to learn get frustrated and quickly put it down because they tried to learn on really cheap guitars. Most are hard to play and don't stay in tune which means the player gets poor results. From what I've seen, the same goes with hand planes. Quality is essential.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

I almost asked what kind of plane you thought that you wanted. More specifically, a #4, #5, etc. What I suppose that I should ask instead, is, "what do you want to do with the plane?" are you looking to smooth a board (probably a #4 or #5), generally make it thinner (a scrub plane or maybe a #5), flatten (a #8), etc.

At this point, I assume that you really just want to get your feet wet to see if you really want to go the hand plane route. If you had the opportunity to simply borrow a hand plane, would that work better for you?

[Keith Parker]

Hello Jeff,

Lots of good advice here. My recommendation leans toward perhaps a Stanley #5 and a second blade that can be sharpened with a camber to assist in cross grain planing. Adding some scrub plane capabilities to help with thicknessing stock.

Something I haven't seen mentioned was a way to hold your work. You're gonna need a bench my man. A place, and ways to hold your work to plane against.

I'm kinda tight with my money, and built my bench. I think having a place that's flat and that can firmly hold you work is at least as important as which plane to start with.

Good luck !

Keep us posted with your progress too !

kp

[Robert Hazelwood]

This is kind of a big job to start with on hand planes. Given the size of the wood, most people would probably attack it with multiple planes. So, I'd echo the other posters who recommend a #5 (or 5-1/2) for you over the typical 4. I think the extra mass and length make it a bit easier to use for a beginner, and will make it a bit easier to dimension your wide boards. You mentioned a budget of $25...you can find an e-bay Stanley for that, but usually in a bit rougher condition. Still usable but will need more effort to bring to usable condition (rust removal, possible tote repair/replacement, etc.). I am not the most patient ebay-er, but I would usually end up paying north of $50 for a plane that looked in decent shape. On these, most of my restoration time was spent on the iron and chipbreaker (which will be an hour or two of work, minimum, for pretty much any vintage plane you buy).