hundreds of different types of cast metal planes, some for general planing and many others for more specific functions. The plane section of hand tools has more variations than any other category and though Stanley effectively produced such a large variety, hand plane making companies who, prior to the advances in industrial metal-cast planes, produced the original planes from wood, made many more types of planes than even the industrious Stanley Rule and Level Company did. Woodworkers now use only a fraction of the planes

Whether your hand plane is made by Craftsman, Stanley, Record or Lie Nielsen, all Bailey pattern hand planes are set and adjusted the same way. The difference in quality between the planes will definitely vary, but within an hour you should have a plane that will work well and produce the finest shavings possible.

The most popular hand planes are of course those made to Leonard Bailey’s design back in the mid to late 1800’s. of all these planes is the plane we still recognize today as

the #4 or the #4 1/2. The difference between these two planes is the width of the plane. The lengths are the same. A #4 has a 2” wide cutting iron while the #4 1/2 has a 2 3/8” wide cutting iron. Both planes will work well but I find the wider #4 1/2 is easier to work with because the extra weight and width give greater balance to the plane. Wherever you buy these planes from they are most likely mass-produced planes manufactured either here in the USA or Britain. Of all the planes mass-manufactured, these two planes remain the workhorse of the hand plane family.

Most woodworkers today do not use or even own a hand plane and consider them a thing of the past. Because they believe that they don’t work they do not consider them as viable part of their workshop life. But a well-sharpened hand plane can eliminate eighty percent of sanding, particularly in the early stages of surfacing stock and leveling uneven joints, tabletops and so on. For those of us raised using hand tools, leveling drawer sides and framed doors using a belt sander would be a very unsatisfactory method. Woodworking planes come in all shapes and sizes, many look familiar while others leave us bemusedly scratching our heads. The original Stanley Rule and Level Company once produced

once commonly available. Machines rip large balks of wood to dimensioned lumber sizes and surface the stock foursquare (all four sides), eliminating the need for most of the long ‘fore and jointer hand planes once essential for preparing wood. Today the most commonly used hand plane is the plane we use not so much for straightening boards but for surface planing the faces to make them smooth and even and to remove planer marks left by the machines.

Most woodworkers use a plane for the first time not knowing about the nature of wood, how to use the plane and how to adjust it. A badly adjusted plane simply will not remove thin evenly thick shavings and will more likely cut into the surface of the wood, irreparably tearing the surface fibers of the grain. They then feel that either the tool doesn’t work or they can’t use it. In reality, it takes several hours of practice to begin to understand how to adjust the hand plane well enough to confidently use it. Most beginning woodworkers experience difficulty when they use a hand plane for the first time. They expect to effortlessly whisk off transparent shavings thousandth’s of an inch thick with their new hand plane only to find disappointedly that it just doesn’t do what they thought it would. The purpose of this article is destroy the myth that a well-sharpened hand plane will readily deal with any kind of

 

Tuning Your Bailey Hand Planes