Plane Confusion

Shoulder, rabbet, jointer, smoother, jack, plow, the list goes on and on. No wonder folks beginning to slip into the Neanderthal world of hand planes get confused. We throw terminology around with the best of the high tech folks out there, and then wonder that folks get confused. So, what does all this stuff mean? Well, mostly it means just what it says. A shoulder plane is a plane with tall shoulders, a plow does what a farmer's plow does, except in wood instead of dirt. Jointers joint, smoothers smooth and rabbets rabbet. Actually, though a shoulder plane generally does have tall shoulders, the shoulders a shoulder plane does are those found on certain joints. But a shoulder could also be called a face or cheek plane because it also does a fine job of triming the faces or cheeks of a tenon. And while a Dovetail plane does make dovetails, it doesn't make the common ones found on the corners of drawers. Instead, it makes the tail of a sliding dovetail, and does that quite well. So even when we know the terms, it can sometimes be confusing. And even if we know that a smoother is used for smoothing, what does one look like, how does one make a smoother create a smooth surface? That is what I hope to address here.

The Bench Planes

I'll start off with the Bench Planes. What, you ask, another term? No, bench planes do not make benches, though having several on hand when making a bench can surely help you in your endeavor at constructing the perfect bench. Bench plane is the name given to a set of general purpose planes, the planes one would surely keep handy at the workbench. These are the ones used most often in the planing, flattening, jointing, and smoothing of stock one is to use in a project. For smoothing and squaring of stock, you probably need a minimum of three of these; simply put, a short one, a medium one and a long one.

Bench planes are the equivalents of the Stanley numbering sytsems 1 through 8,including some fractional ones. As a rule, these are bevel down planes; that is, the cutting angle is determined by the angle of the bed onto which the iron rests. Stanley and their counterparts decided that 45 degrees was a good angle for cutting though it is a compromise between ease of pushing the plane and efficiency of cutting. Numbers 1 through 4 1/2 are the Smoothers. Why do we need five of these? Well, the #1 is so that more well to do collectors can accumulate these to hang on their walls in the offices or dens. The #2, being somewhat rare, but not quite so as the #1, is for collectors with not quite so much money to throw away on non-utilitarian peices of antiquity. These planes are much too small to be found useful, even by sissy-men and those of the fairer sex, so were apparently made andsold by Stanley as a joke or something. Apparently back in the old days folks felt pretty much this same way as had they been truelly useful, more folks would have bought them, and there would be a lot more of them around today, and even those with no will to fill their shops with useless momentos could buy them, and since they would be both useless and plentiful, you could buy a bucket of them for a song.

This picture depicts the different parts of the Stanley benchplane. Other makers bench planes will have similar parts.

The Smoother

Now we get into the numbers that have use. The #3, #4, and #4 1/2 are all smoothers of some repute. The #3 is a rather smallish smoother coming in at 8" long by 1 3/4" wide. This is the sissy men and ladies version of the real smoother, the #4. At a full 1" longer and 1/4" wider, the #4 is a full man sized smoother. It also came, for a brief period in a sissy man version made of aluminum, but that didn't work out too well, so those, again, are more for folks with too much money to spend on non-utiltarian antiquities. Then there is the #4 1/2, the manly man's smoother. These are more the more advanced of the neanderthals, those whose knuckles have begun to drag the ground. A full inch longer and 3/8 inch wider than the regular #4, these give you a better workout than their smaller bretherin. Each of these came in various configurations, from the aluminum one to one made of steel, as well as flat bottomed and corrugated bottom versions. As with most everything else in woodworking, there is variation as to set-up and useage of tools. Basically though, a smoother is set up to make a really thin shaving, in the neighborhood of .002" or less. The cap iron is placed in ver close proximity to the cutting edge of the blade, as little as 1/32". The cutting edge is honed either straight across its width or with a very slight camber, ~.002" from the center to each edge. If straight, one normally will round over the corners ever so slightly so as not to leave obvious planing marks on the board. Likewise, the mouth of the plane is set ever so small so as to just allow the miniscule shaveings to pass through. An extremely sharp iron is a requirement, and the most important aspect, of a good smoother.

The Jack

Next up in size is the Jack Plane, so called probably because it was seen as a Jack of all trades, but, like the mechanic of that title, it really masters none of them. This is another compromise, I think, on Stanley's part. It isreally too long to be an effective smoother, and too short for most jointing. It is, however, a plane that can be handy as something to use between the scrub and the jointer. It is set for a medium thickness shaving, basically the thickest that can be taken from a particular wood given the limits of a man's (or lady's) physical strength. The scrub plane used prior to this is equipped with a heavily cambered cutting edge, nearly semicircular, so as to remove large amounts of wood quickly. The scrub is used diagonally and/or even perpendicular to the length of the piece and leaves some pretty deep gouges in the surface. The purpose of the Jack, in this instance, is to take off the high points between the gouges by being moved along the length of the workpiece with the grain. This plane is set with a less cambered cutting edge, a wider mouth, and a cap iron set back a bit from the edge, maybe 3/16".

In the Stanley numbering system, the Jack is the #5. It is 14" long and 2" wide. The sissy man version of the Jack, the 5 1/4, or Junior Jack is 11 1/2" X 1 3/4". And, of course, since they made a sissy man version, they also had to make a manly man version, the 5 1/2, which is 15" X 2 1/4". These were also available in smooth soled and corrugated soles. The Jack is a relative newcomer to the handplane arena. It had no equivalent as late as the 16th Century.

Some today will set up a Jack sized plane as a scrub, this being much closer to the traditional scrub plane. While the added weight might cause one to tire sooner than with a smaller plane, its extra heft and cutting width makes quicker work of removeing lots of wood.

The Try or Fore

Now we begin to get into the big iron. The Try or Fore Plane, Stanley's #6 and it variations. In the 16th Century this was known only as a Fore Plane, that because it was used before the jointer and the smoother. During that time it seems to have been set up in the fashion of a scrub plane. Wide mouth, very cambered blade and a deep cut. Its use was described just as that of the modern scrub, diagonally across the width of the board to remove high spots and begin removeing saw marks. In its early days it would be used as well to bring the workpiece near to its final thickness as it would be followed by the jointer to bring its surface true and to ever so little proud of its final thickness. There are still some who advocate the use of a #6 as a scrub.

Somewhere along the line, this size plane (by the way the Stanley #6 is 18" X 2 3/8") began to be used as a try plane to true up shorter boards and as an intermediate plane before the jointer would be put to the wood. This is one plane that many find to be extraneous, and so do without. Apparently, giving it two different names and uses was insufficient to increase its saleability even in the more recent past, so Stanley couldn't see fit to market several near sized versions as with the #4 and #5. No sissy version other than one of aluminum and the more manly were stuck with the flat soled version instead of the corrugated one. An apparent failure on the part of the marketing geniouses at Stanley.

The Jointer

Next in size are the Jointers. The main aircraft carriers of the plane fleet. Again Stanley managed to push two different sizes of these onto an unsuspecting market, the #7 at 22" X 2 3/8" and the #8 coming in at 24" X 2 5/8". For the edges of boards that are to be glued together to make 2 or more narrow boards into one wide one, the jointer would generally be the last plane to touch the edges. Its length assists the mechanic in getting a straight and square edge on the boards so that they can be glued together nearly seamlessly. They would also be used to bring the face of boards to flatness and would normally only need a bit of smoothing done prior to finishing. The jointer is for removing moderately thin shaving, shavings thick enough to get the job done in an economically speedy time, but thin enough so as to minimize tearout and facilitate being pushed in a controlled manner. Again there are a couple of competing schools of thought concerning the shape of the cutting edge of the jointer. Some push for a perfectly straight cutting edge, again with slight rounding over of the corners, while other recommend a slight camber. The straight shooters opt for controlled sideways pressure, or a slight skewing of the blade to take a bit more or less from one or the other side of an edge a bit out of square to the faces of the the board. The cambered edge group looks toward running the plane off center on the edge to assist in getting the edge square to the face as needed. While the straight edged group wants an edge straight and flat across its width for a perfect wood to wood match, the cambered group wants the edge to be ever so slightly hollowed across its width and then to use clamping pressure to crush the wood fibers along the edges together, creating a seamless finished joint.

One other "bench" plane ought to be mentioned here, the Jack Rabbet. Stanley made this plane in a full Jack size as well as a smaller version and even a third one with a tote that could be tilted to the side. The smaller model was sometimes known as a Carriage Makers plane. This series ( Stanley #10, 10 1/4 and 10 1/2) add versatility to the bench plane. While the "normal" bench plane's sole extend out to each side of the mouth opening, leaving a bit of metal between the edge of the mouth and the shoulder which comes in handy when using the plane on a shooting board, the Jack Rabbet and its little siblings continued the mouth opening to the edge of the sole and up the shoulders. The cutting iron for these was sized so that it actually extended outside of the shoulders a fraction of an inch on either side. This allowed the plane to cut rabbets. These planes had a bad habit of breaking in two when dropped due to the weakness brought on by the configuration of the mouth extending onto the shoulders, so the vintage models of these are not as plentiful as the normal, nearly indestructable bench planes.

Such are the bench planes. I've used the Stanley sized metal bodied planes as examples. Before their introduction there were wood bodied planes of similar lengths which served these same purposes. The lengths of different types of woodies varied greatly from these standard sizes derived by Stanley. Much shorter smooth planes and much longer jointers, 3 feet and longer in some instances, were very much in use. And after their introduction, many continued, and continue to this day, to use wooden planes.

The Block Planes

Block planes are defined by some as any plane with a bevel (bezel) up configuration. Though I may be wrong, I think only of the small one handed variety of plane when I think block. Even with this limiting definition, these must have been some really popular planes because Stanley alone made and sold a staggering number of different ones. They are an extremely handy little bugger to have, and even a total tailed machine shop can benefit greatly from having one. And one is all I have. Mine is a low angle model with an adjustable mouth, though I don't recall ever having adjusted the mouth on mine. I fitted the blade in with the mouth set where it was when I got it and have yet to find a reason to move it. The low angle works great for cleaning up the endgrain on a workpiece and for freehanding a bevel onto the edge of a piece of wood, whether to just soften that edge, or to give it a pronounced bevel. In a pinch, and if I really pay attention to the grain direction, I can even use it to remove a bit of wood from the face of a board.

The Others

There is an entire world of "Other" or specialty planes out there, from shoulders to plows to molding planes and more. Suffice to say that molding planes are used to make decorative molding, either alone or in combination with other planes. These have cutters shaped as the inverse of what ever shape a molding maker could want. 'Nuff said about those as they are the ultra specialty plane as far as I'm concerned. For brevity, I'll try to stick to the more useful (in my opinion and since I'm writing this my opinion is basically the only one that counts, if you think otherwise, go buy yourself some web space and put up what ever you want) planes.

The Router Plane

This is the forerunner, to some extent, anyway, of the tailed version currently being sold by the thousands. I say to some extent since it does not have the capacity of using hundreds of differently shaped bits to cut thousands of different shaped profiles. This is another plane that the machine head shop might well benefit from unless they can afford one of those high dollar dado sets for their table saw. The ones that dubiously warrant that they will give your perfectly smooth floor in your dados. For the rest of us, we are stuck with using a tailed router or one of these tailless models. Before Stanley introduced theirs, these were handy enough for many woodworking gentleman to go to the trouble of doing up a shop made one. Simply a plate through which an "L" shaped cutter was placed, it was used for cleaning up the floor of a groove, dado, or rabbet which had been roughed out using chisels. While there are plows and rabbet planes which worked without this added cleanout in grooves and with the grain rabbets, when one took is shop on location by carrying it in one manner or another as would have been the case for some cabinet work as well as window and door work and finish trim, one would want to travel as lightly as one could. A multiple use tool such as this would be quite and handy thing to have and would allow one to leave some of his more specialized stuff back at the farm.

The Plow and Rabbet

The plow plane is one which allows you to cut a groove across the interior area of a board. Available in either a single specified width configuration or as a multi-plane these would be guided by a straightedge clamped to the workpiece and/or an adjustable fence. The common multi-plane versions of these are the Stanley 45 and 55 and maybe a couple other numbers in there. Some were equiped with a skewed blade and a slitter which sliced the cross grain when cutting a dado, while others were set up to cut with the grain creating a groove. Modern day dado heads and straight router bits, while accomplishing either a groove or dado, have somewhat eliminated the terminolgy distinction between the two.

I guess that some would classify the rabbet plane also as a plow since its work is similar to some extent to the plow so I'll go into that here also. The rabbet plane, as typified by the Stanley #78, has an adjustable fence as well as an adjustable depth stop and is used for cutting rabbets. Though not a true fillister plane (again terminology is lost since we no longer differentiate between a notch in a board going with or against the grain) the number 78 is equipped with a slitter to slice the cross grain in that application. A true fillister plane would have a skewed blade which works better in cross grain applications.

The Shoulder Plane

The shoulder plane is configured similarly to the rabbet plane in that its blade extends slightly passed the edges of the shoulders of the plane, but the shoulders are somewhat taller and machined perfectly square to the sole. It stated purpose is to trim the shoulders of a tenon or similar construct, the tall shoulders giving a larger bearing surface to help guide it in its duty. It also works quite well for trimming the cheeks of a tenon.

The Bullnose

The bullnose is more a version than a plane on its own accord. Some shoulder planes have bullnose capability as do some rabbet planes, to include the #78 mentioned above. Bullnose simply means that it has the ability, either as a normal function or can be set up as such, to cut closely to the end of a stopped joint such as a stopped rabbet or dado. A stopped joint is one that does not continue from one edge or end of the board to the other, but instead ends generall so as to hide its existence. The #78 has two locations at which the blade can be attached, one near the center of the plane, and one near the front. Some bullnose capable planes have a removeable nose piece which generally places the blade to the very front of the plane. The bullnose capability is most often a secondary feature (except the Stanley 75) since set up without support in front of the blade makes the plane difficult to use effectively.

There are, of course, planes in all of the aforementioned types other than the Stanleys and their counterparts made by their competition. There are wooden planes, both of antique heritage and modern vintage as well as the ever popular transitional versions that Stanley and others sold to capture the part of the plane market who preferred wood against wood rather than metal against wood. These planes gave the benefit of wood to wood contact with the workpiece as well as the more easily adjustable mechanical works of the all metal planes. Then there are the new premium versions of Stanley's workhorses, made with modern metals and surgically precise machining. There are also modern planes bearing very little resemblance to the old Stanleys. Made with modern materials and easier-to-use, more accurate controls as well as more versatile configurations. One of these configurations is a low angle bevel up design allowing multiple uses of a plane by simply switching out the cutting iron with one having a different cutting bezel. This gives you a plane with a low cutting angle for end grain work, and one with a variety of higher angles for dealing with precoscious woods.