LV and Wood Planes

[Zachary Bulacan]

Hi
guys I just got plans to build a woodie and found this on lv website

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=60009&cat=51&ap=2

Cant wait to get me one for my smoother I am going to make what would be a good domestic wood for it? Mesquite? Maple? This will be my first try at a wood plane

Thanks

[Jack Camillo]

great, thanks for the tip on the free shipping. wonder why email notifications don't go out to people registered on the lv website for such, and who are actively buying lv products.

[Graham Hughes (CA)]

Cant wait to get me one for my smoother I am going to make what would be a good domestic wood for it? Mesquite? Maple? This will be my first try at a wood plane
Maple's pretty good. Beech is traditional. The most important thing is the sole, for which you want a close-grained hardwood, ideally nice & stable, but also wears well (which suggests against, say, cherry). The rest of the plane isn't particularly wear sensitive or demanding; you can probably make it out of whatever you feel like. James Krenov has made all kinds of planes out of all kinds of weird woods. I know Ron Hock sells kits that use Jarrah, which is some weird Aussie hardwood I'm not familiar with--IMHO this is overkill considering the rest of the kit is made of rock maple, but whatever.

[Rob Lee]

Hi Jack -

The balance of the email are being sent today... we started yesterday, but a number of people missed the effective dates, and went ahead and ordered.... so, we held off on the rest of the mailing. You should get the email later this morning...

Cheers -


Rob

[David Keller NC]

Zachary: I've built planes out of a fair number of different woods. The problem, of course, is getting a decently dense, hard, close-grained wood in quartersawn form that's at least 3" thick (16/4 is better). It's not that you can't find beech sawn this way, but it's a lot tougher than other domestic species.

With that in mind, I'd suggest black walnut for a first plane if you're in the eastern US. It's reasonably hard (about as hard as beech) so it will wear well, but it's also a lot easier to sink mortises in (if you're going to use traditional construction) than exotics like purpleheart, bubinga, or ebony. It's also really easy to get in 16/4, and is often available as (accidental) quarter-sawn material.

If you're going to use the Krenov method (re-sawing and laminating), then I'd choose something really hard like one of the African or Asian rosewoods. They're relatively inexpensive and commonly available from exotic lumber dealers.

[Casey Gooding]

I've made planes from hard maple, red oak and white oak. I have a plane James Krenov made for me out of Mesquite and have some more mesquite and Jatoba waiting to be made.
All are good choices. If you can find them, Apple and Osage Orange work nicely as well.
Good luck!!