To All,
I am no hand plane expert but cutting a thin shaving with a well tuned one is indeed a pleasure and enjoyable for most woodworkers. I have an assortment of planes which I try to use, none of which are high-end custom tools. While I appreciate the artistry of a finely crafted tool, I could never justify the expense of a small hand tool which cost as much as a shaper and power feeder, or until my personal economy improves.
Hand planing is mostly an elective operation, done by choice or preference not by necessity. I use them because I enjoy doing so but hand planes are not indispensable. I could still produce most everything from my shop without the use of hand planes.
The other day I hand planed the surface of an eight foot long rough sawn 1 x 12 piece of sugar pine. I used winding sticks and got it nice and flat, an enjoyable process. When I was done I ran it through the planer to get it to a uniform thickness thus rendering my hand planing totally unnecessary.
So, what is this desire to use hand planes? Why are we drawn to these tools even though they are not mandatory in a production workshop?
Just random musing on my part,
Bret
Replies
Bret is off to a good start towards better results
Bret, there are two things you can take away with you to build upon your recent hand plane experience:
You did the right thing by carefully planing that board and eliminating any wind in the board. Right there is an important function that your power planer cannot do; remove wind. A power planer can only mirror what is on the opposite side of the board being planed. If the board is warped in length than you will have a thinner board that is warped in length. Planers can remove cupping if it is not too serious.
The second major benefit of hand planing vs. a power planer is that a hand planed board can be finished without further work. A power planed board will need to be hand planed (preferred) or sanded before finishing.
The bottom line is that a hand planed board (or a glued up panel) will be flatter and more uniform appearing after finishing because all of the surfaces will have been flushed up during the final passes with the smoothing plane.
Handrubbed,
I fully understand crooked in, crooked out with a planer. Having once built custom entry and passage doors for a living, I discovered early on that milling your stock flat was the key to a good door.
I would typically flatten a board up to 8" wide using my jointer or flatten as many boards as needed to glue up the size needed. You are correct that to flatten boards wider than 8" I would typically at least take off the high spots with a hand plane unless I really need to remove a lot of material, in which case I might use my hand held power planer. But I can get things flatter with a hand plane vs a power plane.
I may not have my sharpening skills or maybe good enough planes to produce a finish without sanding although I do a lot of hand chamfering with a block plane of a spokeshave. I don't care for most routed edge treatments
Again, I've been caught needing my hand planes.
Bret
"When I was done I ran it
"When I was done I ran it through the planer to get it to a uniform thickness thus rendering my hand planing totally unnecessary"
Not really Bret. As handrubbed pointed out a thicknesser only machines a piece of wood to a specified thickness-- without all sorts of timewasting and expensive fiddling and guddling a thickness planer doesn't get wood flat and true. There's an old saying related to warped boards and thicknessers: Banana in, thinner banana out.
Using a powered overhand surface plane (jointer) to get your wood flat in the first place would have rendered your careful hand planing redundant (on that occasion) but not necessarily in other circumstances, eg, some final fitting of tongue and housing joints, prepping for polishing, etc. Slainte.
Scale
Bret,
I can't afford and don't have room for a machine to surface a 4' wide slab. I can afford and have room for a few planes, however. I do most of the work with my handheld Makita 6-3/4" power planer though.
Chris,
My method for wide surfaces is to glue up 15" wide sections which fit through my planer, then I glue those three or four sections together. That way I only have two or three seams to deal with by hand. If the wood and the grain are cooperative I'll use a hand plane at that point.
You caught me! I do need my hand planes occasionally.
Bret
The key words
Are production shop. For those of us who do one piece at the time and limit the use of plywood or veneers hand planes are unbeateable. There are operations that are far easier to correct/do with hand planes instead of power tools like a router. For example try and widen a dado or groove by 1/64 of an inch with a router.
There is some debate about the finish, regardless in my case I do see a difference between a sanded surface and a planed surface when it is finished. Maybe it is slight, maybe there is no difference, but I rather plane a surface than put up with the noise of a sander, specially if you have a large surface that requires a lot of time to sand and you don't have one of those large sanders.
IMO the idea is to use the strengths of each piece instead of trying to "force" them to do something. I see no reason for spending 2 hours flattening a board when a jointer does it in a few seconds, but I would not put the sides of a drawer made with hand cut dovetails on the jointer to make the sides even.
Another possible reason to use hand planes is speed. My Powermatic jointer and Jet planer are very good, but even with sharp knives the surface is not ready for finish. If one has to get from the cabinet a ROS and papers, connect to a vac, and run through 2 or 3 grits, a few passes with a hand plane will save time unless the blade needs to be re-ground. Even touchup honing shouldn't make hand planing slower in this scenario. Just my two cents.
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