Antique plane - best way to use it?

[Bill Brush]

Several years ago my grandmother moved out of her home and my father claimed my grandfather's wood planes for me. My grandfather wasn't what you'd call a "fine craftsman," he was more of the baling wire and duct tape "make it work" sort of guy, but he had one plane in particular that I was very happy to get.

It's a No. 8 Bailey with a corrugated sole. The blade was in, pretty poor shape, so after about 20 minutes trying to true it up I gave up and took it to the sharpening shop. I'm not sure what the heck kind of steel they used for that blade, but the guy at the sharpening shop said it was some hard stuff. He had to use a boron wheel to work it.

Now this thread http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=99237 shed some light on planes, so I thought I'd ask what the proper application of a No. 8 is. Previously the biggest plane I've had access to would be about a No. 4 or a No. 5.

[Bob Easton]

A #8 is a very long plane and is used for jointing and flattening. They are most often described as jointers.

The very long sole makes it take off high spots over relatively long distances, producing long flat spots, just what you want for edge joining two pieces of wood. That same characteristic makes it good for flattening large panels.

The typical work flow for dimensioning lumber is to use a "try" plane (#6) or "jack" (#5) to bring the wood roughly to size. Then use either a #7 or #8 jointer to flatten the rough work, and finish up with a #4 smoother to remove previous tool marks.

Plane lengths increase as the numbers get larger. The #4 smoother is about 9 inches, while the #8 is 24 inches.

Learn more at Patrick Leach's site about Stanley planes: http://supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan1.htm

[Roger Bell]

The last time I used mine, I was making some stairway skirts for my basement stairway. The skirts were to be 16' long and consisted (each) of two boards that needed to be glued together. Each of the boards needed to be jointed so that the glue line was tight and not gapped. All I had at the time was a very small antique power jointer....and it was cumbersome to even try to joint using the power tool with 16 footers.

The #8 and a machinist square got the job done.

I have also used it (and a straightedge and chalk) to flatten very large panels, such as a workbench top.