Wooden Handplane Soles

[Tyler Payne]

Are there any significant reasons to not make a plane with an end grain sole? I think it might be more wear resistant than a sole with downward-facing face grain, which is the only type I've ever seen. The method by which a thin section of wood with downward-facing endgrain is attached to a standard body of wood must be chosen carefully, for the sake of stability and longevity, but I think it might work, and I'd like to try it. Do you think it would move too much, throwing it out of flat?

[Jim Matthews]

Endgrain joints don't hold glue well.

My suggestion would be for something Quartersawn.
Riftsawn would be an effective compromise.

[Tyler Payne]

Could you expand on that a little? I'm having trouble visualizing what you mean.

I'm thinking that an end grain sole could be dovetailed into the body. Epoxy could be used as a more pliant alternative to wood glue.

[Jim Koepke]

Are there any significant reasons to not make a plane with an end grain sole? I think it might be more wear resistant than a sole with downward-facing face grain, which is the only type I've ever seen. The method by which a thin section of wood with downward-facing endgrain is attached to a standard body of wood must be chosen carefully, for the sake of stability and longevity, but I think it might work, and I'd like to try it. Do you think it would move too much, throwing it out of flat?

There is likely a very good reason why you haven't seen planes with end grain soles.

Have you made many planes?

jtk

[Andrew Seemann]

Making the whole body with the grain going up and down would make it weak around where the blade goes in. If you tried to laminate end grain to the long grain of a regular wood plane, you would end up with a loooong cross grain joint, that likely would crack due to differential expansion/contraction or delaminate, as end grain tends not to glue well as noted above.

Some wood planes have a more durable wood laminated to the bottom to increase wear resistance. Although it seems a lot easier to make the whole thing out of beech or hornbeam or something else durable and easy to machine (like grey iron ). Unless you are going to plane wood all day, every day, wear resistance for most of us likely isn't that big of an issue.

That said, if you want to try it, go for it, although I'd not do it on a particularly valuable plane. It will be an interesting learning experience whether it works or not. I'd be interested in the results if you do try it.

[Mike Henderson]

I would put something like lignum vitae on the bottom of the plane. It's a good wear resistant wood.

Mike

[chris carter]

I think an end grain sole would be considerably more prone to wear than a regular sole. The end grain will just create greater friction causing more wear. It will also tend to snag on the wood you are planing, particularly any gnarly spots, causing even more wear of the very bad variety. And the edges would be insanely fragile, chipping off constantly.

Bear in mind that it’s really difficult to wear out a sole to the point of the old ones you see on the bay or at flea markets. These were typically planes that were used 10 hours a day, six days a week; considerably more use than what most of us hobbyists engage in. I built a wooden jack plane which is my heaviest user and it took two years before I had to reflatten the sole. I took off maybe 1/128^th, maybe.

Two ways to avoid widening a mouth: First, wax the sole of the plane. You don’t need to do it constantly like a metal plane, but I still do it maybe once a week – just a two second scribble with a wax stick; a wooden sole holds the wax so it stays for a long time. Friction is what wears a sole so reducing friction will obviously reduce wear. It will also make a slippery plane even slipperier! Second, if you are making your own plane, add a bevel on the escapement side. Here’s a pic of the mouth of my jack and you can see in front of the blade a little over 1/8^th inch that is beveled. The bed is 45 and this bevel is a little shallower – maybe 50 or 55 (to make clearance easier). So basically I would have to take off more than 1/8^th of the sole before I even really start widening the mouth. I’m 47 right now and I’ll be too old to hand plane anymore by the time I get through all that! I did the same on my jointer plane. I can’t take credit for this idea, I’ve seen lots of other people do this to their planes.
jack mouth.jpg