Hand plane advice please.....

[Brian Hale]

I'm looking for a plane that i can use for flattening boards wider than my 6" jointer can handle before i send them through the planer. A bit of research tells me i should get something kinda long, 18" or so. Sound right? What features should i look for? I've seen planes from the Anant at about $90 to the Clifton at about $450 which is a pretty broad range.

My current budget is right around $200.

Should i keep saving or is there something out there with a quality build that will work.

Thanks!

Brian :)

BTW,I'mm a real newbie when it come to this hand toolbusinesss :o

[Chris Barton]

Brian,

I would consider looking at the Lee Valley Veritas brand planes. You are right about the length, if we are talking about working with the grain. Some folks use a scrub plane to work across the grain.

[Gary Herrmann]

I've got a LA jointer on order for boards wider than my 6" jointer - if I don't rip and glue them, and I also just want to improve my handtool skills.

[Brian Hale]

Thanks Guys!

There are all kinds of designs out there, what blade angle would be the most versatile?

Brian :)

[Dan Forman]

I would consider both the the Veritas scrub and either the low angle jointer or low angle jack. The scrub will take off a lot of wood with a minimum of effort, but you then need to smooth the rather deep valleys it leaves with a jointer or jack. Without the scrub, you will be spending lots of time and effort removing cup, twist and bow. I have all three of these planes, and they are all fabulous. Get an extra high angle blade (38 degree bevel) and you will be ready for anything. You could also just resharpen one of the 25 degree balades that come standard to 38 degrees, and switch as needed. You don't really need the jack, but the jointer being heavy as it is can be tiring to use after a while, and it is nice to go back and forth between them for a break, using the jack for specific areas then the jointer again to level out.

Rob Cosman has a video about flattening lumber with handplanes, though I haven't seen it, which is available through Lie-Neilson and some of their
dealers.

Taking another look at your post and seeing your budget, I still would go with the Veritas scrub, but you could easily go with a Stanly #7 jointer and/or #5 or 5 1/2 jack. If you will be working with highly figured woods, you may be happier with the Veritas planes. I got all of my Stanley's off eBay, and all are from the early '30's or before. Anything prior to World War 2 are considered better quality than those that came later. Given a chioce, I would pick the Veritas planes in a heartbeat.

Here are a couple of links to sites with much info on planes older planes.

http://www.rexmill.com/

http://www.tooltrip.com/tooltrip8/stanley/stan-bpl/bailey-types.htm

http://www.supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan1.htm

Search this forum to find feedback on the Veriats family of planes.

Have fun.

Dan

[Dan Forman]

For versatility, the Veritas low angle planes can't be beat. The bevel up smoother, low angle jack, and low angle jointer all share the same sized blade, and can be sharpened to whatever angle you need. For most hardwoods, the 38 degree bevel is great, which together with the 12 degree bed gives a combined angle of 50 degrees. For gnarlier grain, you can go up to a 50 degree bevel, but it gets a lot harder to push. These are much thicker blades than the Stanleys too, which is a good thing.

You can, however, apply a back bevel to a Stanley blade to effectively shcange the cutting angle on them as well. There is an article in the 12/05 Woodworkers Journal on this very topic which shows the why and how.

Dan

[Brian Hale]

Lots of good information Dan, thank you!

Checking the Lee Valley website i see the Veritas Bevel-Up jointer plane with a 25 deg blade (37 deg effective cutting angle) and the jointer fence are on sale for $225. If i understand correctly, i can either order the 38 deg blade ($32) or grind a secondary bevel on the 25 deg blade to achieve the 50 deg cutting angle you refer to. I'm guessing I'd try the stock blade as-is and made a decision from there.

I've got 500 bd ft of ash and 500 bd ft of oak (all flat sawn) arriving on Monday so that'll where I'll use initially.

Do you think this is a good choice to make? It fits my budget. ;)

Brian :)

[Doug Shepard]

Brian
The LV BU Jointer is an excellent plane. I got one about 4 weeks ago and couldn't be happier with it (other than with the mouth adjustment screw working loose and causing shavings to jamb up around it). I also picked up LV's scrub plane at the same time. If you've got a lot of serious flattening to do, I think you'll wish you had both even though it's more than your budget goal. While you CAN do it all with the jointer, it's going to take you an awful long time and an awful lot of muscle. Even with the jointer set for an agressive cut, there's just no way you'll be able to remove material as quickly as with the scrub. If you had to pick ONE plane to do your flattening, I think you probably picked the right one. Just be prepared for some serious sweat equity in that wood.;) With Christmas coming up, maybe you could stick the lower cost scrub plane on the top of your wish list.

[Mark Singer]

I agree...the LV bevel up jointer is excellent!

[Dan Forman]

Brian---I agree with Doug that you will probably wish you had the Veritas scrub. If you have to stick to the budget, get the scrub and an older Stanley jointer. You can always upgrade and sell the Stanley for about what you paid for it ($60-80 on eBay). If you can afford to splurge, start a Veritas family, and go for the Jointer as well. If you want to splurge a little bit but not that much, go with the scrub and the low angle jack, which will save you about $35, and is really more versitile than the jointer. You can always add one or the other later.

Keep in mind also that using a hand plane is an acquired skill, so be prepared to spend a little time learning how to use it effectively, don't give up if it doesn't feel good right away. I would see if you can find a video on the subject to rent locally, or try to find someone nearby who can show you the ropes. Once you get a handle on it, it's a very satisfying experience.

About bevel angles, the steeper they are, the more difficult to push the plane. For oak or ash, you problbly wouldn't need more than a combined angle of 45 degrees, so I would start there, and not move up unless you are getting tearout. I'd even start with the blade at the angle it comes (25 degrees) and see how well it works. No point in working any harder than necessary. In fact, I just went down and tried my freshly sharpened low angle blade and it worked just fine in a pice of oak. I used both the Veritas and Stanley jointers, and the Veritas was certainly easier to use.

Speaking of ease of use, The scrub is much easier to push through deep cuts because it takes relatively narrow shavings, say 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch, but they may be 1/64 to 3/64 inches thick. I only know this because I just went down and measured some shavings at different blade settings. The deeper the cut, the more energy is required. Because the blade is curved, only the center, a small portion of the cut, requires maximum energy. To take a shaving as deep with a standard 2" blade would take a much greater amount of energy because nearly the entire width of the blade would be engaged at the deepest part of the cut.

If you then clean up the deeply grooved surface with a jack or jointer, it will be just skimming the high spots, so it will take a number of narrow shavings rather than one wide one, again reducing the energy required to push through a cut. At this stage, you can lower the blade a bit to take thicker shavings without having to use great effort. Each successive cut will take wider shavings, until you reach the point where the entire blade is engaged in one full width shaving. As the width increases, so does the energy required to pash the plane. By retracting the blade a little, you can decrease the energy needed, so you end up with wider but thinner shavings, measure in 1000ths of an inch, rather than 32nds.

So this is why you want two planes. To flatten a bowed board would take much longer and much more effort because your average mortal couldn't muster the strength to take deep full with cuts with the jack or jointer, so would have to take many more thin cuts to equal what could be done with the combination of planes. And each of those cuts would require significanly more energy than would those of the scrub.

Well, I hope I haven't bored you, just got a little carried away. Thought it might be helpful to show the physics behind the process.

One other consideration, will this be for hobby use, or do you have to make a living with it? Even with the best of tools, this is not a fast process. Just creating one reasonably flat surface for the planer will still take a fair amount of time, at least it would for me. So if you need to make a living, your money might be better spent on one of the new 8 inch jointers. But if you're not under that sort of pressure, give it a try. There is a certain satisfaction that comes with doing this by hand.

I confess I'm no expert, just passing on my own impressions. I have consistently found myself stretching my tool budget beyond expectations, haven't been sorry about it yet.

Dan

[Alan Turner]

If I had 1000 b.f. of lumber to flatten, I would not be thinking in terms of a plane, or even a collection of planes (even though I have done it this way). It seems your purpose is to flatten boards wider than your jointer. If that is what you need to do, then my thought would be to use a piece of 3/4" MDF, the width of your planer, and hot glue some wedges to the stock where it sits off the mdf. Plane the opposite side till enough flats appear to register the wood, and then flip it over, knock off the wedges, and plane away. Pretty quick, all in all. Oft called a sled, it is the poor man's wide jointer, and I did this for many years with a delta 12" lunch box planer, to good effect.

[Doug Shepard]

FWIW I also have an Anant Jointer. It's certainly not as nice as the LV Jointer, but well worth the $90 I paid for it. I also needed to flatten some stuff wider than my 6" jointer and the LV jointer wasn't out yet. I got tired of watching old rusty Stanley #8's on eBay get bid up to ridiculous prices so thought I'd give the Anant a try. It's a pretty decent plane if you have to make budget compromises and don't want to invest time cleaning up a used plane.

[Tom Ruflin]

Brian,

I have a bunch of Lie-Nielsen planes including the scrub. I would definetly get a scrub and a joiner. I have tried to flatten boards with just a joiner and it takes a loooong time, the scrub speeds it up. The LV planes look good, I almost bought them but got a good deal on the LN's. I also have the video by Rob Crosman which once you see how its done, flattening a board is not that hard, just takes time. I have also see an adjustable jig, I think in fine woodworking, that is used with a planer to flatten one side of a board. Any way that my 2 cents.

[Mark Singer]

If the wod you are starting with is not in the rough, I would skip the scrub plane...If the quanity of wood is very large...which I didn't read anywhere, I would do it with a planer and a sled as Alan suggested.

[Peter Mc Mahon]

If you are going to power plane both sides of the wood anyways and you are going to get a low angle plane, use it with the low angle blade and don't regrind. A low angle will plane easier but will leave more tear out, and if you are power planing afterwards the tear out won't matter. Peter

[Mike Henderson]

From the fact that you're asking about what planes to use to flatten a board, I expect that you may not have done this before. I would certainly encourage you (and all woodworkers) to do some stock preparation just so that you can appreciate the effort our ancestors had to go through to build the wonderful furniture they made. That said, let me point out that preparing any amount of stock is VERY physical – there’s a good reason that this work was the provenance of the young apprentices.
What I recommend to you is to do some stock preparation with planes you already have, and maybe borrow a scrub plane from a friend. But put your money into to a bigger (power) jointer. Except for a few, most people prepare stock one time and quickly learn why our ancestors rapidly adopted the power (maybe water power) jointer and planer as soon as they were available.

Mike

[Doug Shepard]

If I had 1000 b.f. of lumber to flatten, I would not be thinking in terms of a plane, or even a collection of planes (even though I have done it this way)....

Yikes Brian - 1000 BF with hand planes:eek: I should have read your post more closely. How old did you want to be when you finished?:D I'm with Alan - go with the planer sled method, or there's also a scheme with a router jig riding on rails you could use. You could skip the scrub plane alltogether and use power tools to get things flat. You might still want to go with handplanes though (LA jointer or LA jack) to do the last few 1000ths. You'll get a lot less tearout by hand.

Just to give you an idea of the effort involved - A few weeks ago I used the LV jointer and scrub to flatten and smooth some highly figured myrtle that I was loathe to run through the planer. It was too wide for my 6" jointer which added to my incentive to do it by hand plus the amount was relatively small - roughly 8 BF. The finished results look fantastic. But I figure it took roughly 10 hours over the weekend. That includes time to stop for light rehoning and periodically checking for flat with a straight edge. There's lots of room for improvement in both my technique and speed but if your results (or uneven wood) are anywhere close to mine, with 1000 BF you're looking at roughly 1250 hrs, or 78 full weekends at 8 hours both days. By that time, you'll probably have forgotten what you were going to make out of those boards when you got them flat.:D

[Brian Hale]

You're correct in assuming I've not attempted flattening a board before, at least not to this extent. This wood will be for several projects and should carry me through the next year so I won't need to machine it all at one time.

Alan, your idea of a sled for the planer (15" Bridgewood) is something I've been considering and, depending on the quality of the wood, may be the way to go. I'm getting the wood from O'Shea Lumber and they have a good reputation for delivering quality woods so i'm hopeful that i'll only need to hit a couple high spots with the plane(s) before sending it through the planer.

Dan, thanks so much for all your input! And no, you didn't bore me ;) I've got an old Bailey #5 plane, 2" blade, 14" long and a grooved sole. It wouldn't take too much to get it in working condition again and perhaps that's where i should start and add a scrub plane for the heavy stock removal.

Can i just buy an extra blade and grind it on a radius to use as a scrub plane or is there something i'm not seeing?

Yes, i'm MUCH too old to plane 1,000 bd ft by hand. :eek:

Thanks again for your input and advice! You folks are the best!

Brian :)

[Dan Forman]

Brian---There is an article on building a sled such as Alan mentioned in Fine Woodworking 2/05 on page 58 "Flatten Boards Without a Jointer".

I have heard you can't convert an old jack that would work as well as a dedicated scrub, but can neither document the source nor remember the reason. You might try a searching "scrub plane" in this forum, or PM Derek Cohen, who seems to know alot about this sort of thing.

By all means tune up the Stanley and play with it. Here are a few links for tuning: http://www.cianperez.com/Wood/WoodDocs/Wood_How_To/Smalser_on_RehabbingPlanes.htm

http://www.yesterdaystools.com/tuninga1.htm

Have fun.

Dan

[Mike Henderson]

You can convert an old plane, like a Stanley #4 to a scrub plane but you'll ruin it for anything else. You'll need to open the mouth quite a bit with a file. You take big shavings with a scrub plane and they need the room to exit. Next, sharpen the blade with a significant curve - not just a little, a LOT. Some people suggest narrowing the blade to reduce the amount of wood you take with each swipe but if you put a really strong curve on it you can control how much you take by how deep you set the blade.

But I really think the best investment is to trade in your 6 inch jointer for a bigger one.

Mike