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  1. #16
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    Mar 2004
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    Default A teeny bit wiser...

    I started this thread hoping to get some insights on why infill panel planes were uniquely British (or so it seems) & just what they are considered to be best at. Well, after using my newly-minted panel plane for a few hours, I at least have an inkling of what it can do, & how it might fit into my pantheon of planes.

    I was making some panel-sized pieces starting with rough-ish wood, and thought I’d give the panel-plane a run. So I used my ‘heavy-duty’ #5 jack to clean the boards up & roughly level any glue-lines, etc. Then the #7 to flatten them.

    As soon as the jointer was cutting end to end on the boards, I switched to the PP, set for about 2 thou shavings. It was really delightful to use, the weight didn't make it hard to push (I waxed its bottom regularly), but it makes the plane sit very firmly on the board. Being so wide, it has no tendency to rock like a narrow #4 (my usual choice of smoother), and the length/weight combination makes it easier to maintain flatness on short-ish boards. Don’t know about you blokes out there, but I find I have to watch it if I plane short boards with a smoother sized plane, or I tend to make it convex. The PP didn't seem to want to do that, with it's long toe, it easily sat flat on the board throughout each stroke. And the surface it left required no further plane work for what I was making, it was as good as my regular smoother delivers.

    So today, for a bit of R&R, I hauled out three planes, the PP, my user-made coffin infill, & the Clifton #4 which is my finish-smoother for not-too-severely wild woods, & sharpened all 3 freshly. I selected a piece of New-Guinea Rosewood with well-sloped & rowed grain (the sort of piece any sane person would avoid like the plague for panel material!), & levelled & flattened it with a #7, deliberately planing against the grain. I was taking fairly light cuts with a reasonably sharp blade, but got pretty obvious tear-out over most of the board, which is precisely what I wanted: 1 jointed board.jpg

    I used the PP first, reasoning it would be better used straight after the jointer, when the board was flat end to end: 2 pp.jpg

    I planed until there were continuous shavings coming out across the board. There is still some residual tear-out from the #7, but the surface is coming along nicely with no further tear-out at all: 3 pp surface.jpg

    Then I used my 55* coffin-smoother: 4 HAS.jpg

    No tear-out either (as expected, this is my go-to plane for wild wood, but you could really notice the extra effort required to push that high-angle blade): 5 HAS board.jpg

    Finally, the Clifton: 6 Clifton.jpg
    Despite its 'standard' blade angle, it also gave me a tear-free & perfectly acceptable surface: 7 Clifton board.jpg

    I do find that in 'softer' woods, a really sharp blade in a 45* plane does a very good job, even on recalcitrant grain.

    It seemed to me that the PP was the best tool for that exercise. I thought the heaviness would be a bit of a killer after a while, but it was less noticeable than I expected In fact the weight was more help than hindrance, and kept the tool very firmly planted on the work. So I've found one use for it - it does a great job of planing panels. Isn't that strange...!?

    I want to use it for a few months before I make my final evaluation, but initial impressions are certainly very favourable!

    Cheers,
    IW

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  3. #17
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
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    Millmerran,QLD
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    Default

    Was it just as simple as the US was going down a different developmental path? I am going to show my ignorance here as I have not done the research, but it seems that the US was going down the transition path with the hybrid wood and metal offerings. I am not sure that the British followed that. So there is another fundamental divergence.

    Regards
    Paul
    Bushmiller;

    "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely!"

  4. #18
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    Mar 2004
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Bushmiller View Post
    .... I am going to show my ignorance here as I have not done the research, .....
    "Research" doesn't seem to help much, Paul. I did what research I could do, but I remain as ignorant as I was before.

    I think any answer will be conjectural; you would have to understand the attitudes as well as the practices of manufacturers & users of the time. To some extent you can reconstruct these from various sorts of written material, but workaday tradesmen in those days were not prolific writers (after putting in 10-12 hours at the bench for 6 straight days, I doubt I'd be sitting down on my one day off to reveal my deep thoughts on tools & tasks!). So we don't know what discussions went on in the workshops over the merits of the various plane types, but I'd bet they did, & that there were plenty of of "Ford vs. Holden" type debates (or Rolls-Royce vs Morris might be a more appropriate metaphor here ) .

    I think I'll go with the hypothesis that conservatism in the Old Dart and Yankee innovation & enthusiasm to embrace the new order had much to do with why the panel plane didn't make it across the Atlantic in significant numbers.

    I'm sure of one thing though, now that I've had a good play with my new toy. Once you've got your hands on one of these things, it would be hard to give it up. I'm usually a practical sort of bloke when it comes to the tools that help me get the job done, it's function that counts for me, but whether it's because I made it, or I'm getting a bit sentimental in my dotage, or who-knows-what, this is one tool I could wax lyrical about. I've heard/read folks say they find a particular plane so nice to use, they sometimes just take it out & make shavings for the sheer pleasure of it. I always thought that was just literary exaggeration, and no-one would waste time (or good wood) in such pointless foolery, but what I did yesterday is mighty close to just that. I can't deny it, the proof is right there, in the post above yours.........

    Cheers,
    IW

  5. #19
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
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    back in Alberta for a while
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    Hi Ian

    I'll let you go with your hypothesis of conservatism vs innovation -- but will remain with my view that the type of work performed in the Old Dart and the woods used was more suited to the performance specs of an infill compared to the cast iron Bailey.

    As your own testing has confirmed a panel plane excels in 'ornery wood -- while a "normal" Bailey is more than up to the task in easily worked woods. In this I'm recognising that the yanks had easy access to lots of well behaved Cherry and even today consider Maple (!) a tough to work species.
    regards from Alberta, Canada

    ian

  6. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by ian View Post
    -- but will remain with my view that the type of work performed in the Old Dart and the woods used was more suited to the performance specs of an infill compared to the cast iron Bailey.
    Ian, I guess I remain to be convinced they were doing things very differently in cabinet shops in the two places. Fashion travels; "The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director" was first published in 1754, and there's plenty of evidence it was mined for inspiration in the larger cities of the north-eastern seaboard. Even the woods used were essentially the same; the 'age of Mahogany' occurred on both sides of the Atlantic. True, they were a bit out of synch, but not all that much. For high-end cabinetry, only 'provincials' used Cherry & native Walnut (which is why genuine examples of American Chippendale in these woods fetch pretty impressive prices on the antique market!).

    OK, the fashions did take a decade or so to make the full crossing, but we're still talking a good 40 years before Leonard Baily was applying for patents. According to what I've read, Speirs did sell some of his infill planes in Nth. America, possibly in the mid 1840s, but it seems they didn't clamor for boatloads, neither did some local entrepreneur start fabricating infills in any meaningful way, which sort of indicates to me there just wasn't a demand. Bailey didn't file his patent until 1855, and Stanley didn't start flooding the plane market with his design til 1869, quite a ways down the track. So there were quite a few years when infills might have gotten a toe-hold if the audience had been receptive.

    Oh, & don't be too dismissive of Maple. Granted, the 'soft' Maples are pretty tame, but 'Rock' Maple doesn't get its name for naught. It isn't much harder than say, most examples of Blackwood (though some of that can be very tough going), but it can be a real edge-duller. I don't take re-surfacing my bench lightly, I can tell you.
    Wild-grained Cherry can try your planes out, too, but Black Walnut is a magnificent wood to play with....

    Cheers,
    IW

  7. #21
    Join Date
    Jun 2014
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    Seattle, Washington, USA
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    Default

    One of the guys with whom I share a shop is a big antique tool enthusiast. He has a fairly significant collection, I believe, that he doesn't keep in the shop. I think he has turned more to the electrons in recent years, as he has some joint issues that prevent him from doing serious hand work.

    Nonetheless, after the recent panel plane build thread by Ian, we started talking about "English style" (meaning infill) planes, and I asked him if he would bring one in. Today he brought in a Matheison panel plane which he said could have been made by Norris, just the same as some of the Norris planes of the same era (he thinks 1880s) could have been made by Matheison. I'm not sure about any of that, but he made it sound reasonable enough.

    Nonetheless, I asked him the question of why this plane appears more in England and, not surprisingly, he had an answer.

    His take on it, or at least what he understood to be the reason, is that around this time in England, which would have been in the decades following the American Civil War when we kind of had a lot on our plates, exotic woods and veneers of exotic woods were beginning to become vogue in larger scale applications than furniture, namely in the shipbuilding and rail car industries. He believes that the panel plane would have played a role in the process of smoothing and flattening the large panels and thin veneers that would have covered large sections of wall, etc inside luxury travel accommodations on trains and boats.

    Anyway, just throwing it out there... I doubt anyone actually expects this thread to end in a definitive "Eureka", but there's another idea.

    Cheers,
    Luke

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