Thread: Why does the infill "panel plane" seem to be unique to Britain?

The explanation I have heard is that they were a function of the desire for a more durable base and sides, compared to the all wooden plane which is prone to wear and degradation; the relatively high expense of quality metal components in the 1700s and 1800s; and the visual appeal of the combination of premium timber and polished steel, bronze or brass as a sales feature of what was a very high end expensive tool.

I did once have an oak coffin plane with a steel base - kind of infill light. I very much regret not keeping it.

As for the Englishness of it? I would guess that timing is the key. The USA moved to steel planes in the mid to late 1800s? which changed the woody world, Prior to that time the go to source for quality tools would still have been the old country.

I suspect it was because the industrial revolution started in the UK and most forms of work got a modern makeover. Sort of done because they could. They were still too expensive for most carpenters and were the domain of the high end cabinet makers. When The US began the catch up they took mass production to another level. Then the Bailey design and Stanley came along. Something the common carpenter could afford and easier to sharpen and adjust. About the same time in America furniture also began being seriously mass produced in factories so less cabinet makers running small one man and family shops there. Market forces at work and as goodvibes said timing. Thats just my take so eager to hear what others think.
Regards
John

Thanks for the replies, Gv & John. Your points apply to infill planes generally, which certainly kicked off at a time & place where conditions favoured them. However, my question was aimed specifically at the "panel plane", i.e., a rather muscular thing which is sort of an overgrown jack plane, not infills as a breed.

I personally wouldn't use a panel plane like I would a typical jack plane, to me a jack plane is the one to use after a scrub plane, where you still want a convex blade to remove lots of wood, but not as aggressively as with the scrub. A plane with a bit more length, but still not too heavy to push around is the one I reach for, & I reckon a #5 is just right for the job. I see the role of a panel plane as a bit further down the track, acting more like a giant smoother, but I don't know how or why they were used back in the day.

There seems to be a lot of them around, or at least they form a high proportion of surviving infills. That could have two possible explanations, a) they were a plane that got little use & so sat for long periods on shelves, or b) they were perceived as very useful & a lot were made & purchased. Given their high cost, I lean towards the latter suggestion, though given human nature and current examples, when it comes to consumer items perceived to confer high status, utility is a secondary consideration.....

Cheers,

I had lusted after an infill for years as they just look so darn nice. Well a few years back I snagged a Norris panel plane. As you say like a large smoother but a real heavy lump of a smoother. Gets a nice surface and less tareout than a 5&1/2 with a strait blade would but I am left with the feeling I really am not using it to it's full potential. At my skill level I am not yet ready for it. I have also got my hands on an old infill smoother that I think is a Matheson and while it smooths nicely I tend to prefer an old wooden coffin smoother due to its lightness.
As to the original question and in addition to what I said before tradition would have played a part as well. After infills came along and I dont think this applies only to panel planes, then the craftsmen who used them would have passed on to the apprentices the need to have them.
Regards
John

This is just kind of a shot in the dark, but aren't infill planes really heavy? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that a full sized trying plane was considered harder to push and just generally heavier and more unwieldy? And also possibly prohibitively expensive due to the inclusion of large amounts of, typically, Rosewood and Ebony?

I have no idea, really. I don't own any infills and have never used one save the coffin style plane in your cabinet, Ian. Just throwing in some ideas to the brainstorming session.

Cheers,
Luke

perhaps it's an Anglo thing.

Immigrants to the US came from all over Europe, and tended to settle in communities with similar cultures.

Without a tradition of using infill planes, the Scandinavians, to pick one group, might be expected to retain a preference for the wooden bodied planes found in Scandinavia. Likewise other immigrant communities.

Then if I have the history correct, infill planes reached the peak of their development after the New World started producing Bailey pattern cast iron "contraptions"

Perhaps, Anglo speaking craftsmen in the US saw infill planes as an "Old world" tool, with little application in the "New World".
This view may have been amplified by the different working characteristics of US Cherry (and Walnut?) and Caribbean and South American Mahogany compared to the woods typically available in England.

The different craft traditions between the new and old worlds may also have had an influence.

Maybe a clue is in the name. Like a Rolls Royce of smoothing planes for large panels, bench and table tops etc.

I watched a TED Talk with Roy Underhill a while back where he talked about the different ways in which British immigrants and American born pioneers built homes using timber framing. The Americans were content to use logs, but the British felt the need to use a broad axe to square them or, as Roy calls it, to "inflict culture upon them".

Perhaps the panel plane could be a similar situation... Maybe the early American styles, like those of the Shakers, was content to have a somewhat more rustic surface on the sides of, for example, a dresser or chest, but the British felt the need to have their panels flattened and thicknessed to within a couple of thousandths. Enter a straight-bladed, tight mouthed, long but not lengthy plane that could me used either with or across the grain to do it.

Again, just brainstorming.

Cheers,
Luke

Originally Posted by Luke Maddux

I watched a TED Talk with Roy Underhill a while back where he talked about the different ways in which British immigrants and American born pioneers built homes using timber framing. The Americans were content to use logs, but the British felt the need to use a broad axe to square them or, as Roy calls it, to "inflict culture upon them".

Perhaps the panel plane could be a similar situation... Maybe the early American styles, like those of the Shakers, was content to have a somewhat more rustic surface on the sides of, for example, a dresser or chest, but the British felt the need to have their panels flattened and thicknessed to within a couple of thousandths. Enter a straight-bladed, tight mouthed, long but not lengthy plane that could me used either with or across the grain to do it.

Again, just brainstorming.

Cheers,
Luke

I think Luke may have just brought up a very good point.
Historically the British at that time and I'm trying to be diplomatic.
Did have a air of superiority about them king and county no flag no country kind of stuff.
Spoken purely from a convict past[emoji12].

Cheers Matt

All good ideas, Luke. I was mostly wondering if there was something about the way the Brit cabinetmakers worked, or the stuff they made, that the panel plane was eminently suited to? Or was it simply an accident of history? There was obviously a wealthy upper class in New England by the late 18th C, and a coterie of now revered cabinetmakers who catered to it. They were taking British & Europan designs as their starting points (though soon adding their own unique flavours), but the woods favoured for the high-end stuff was the same (Cuban Mahogany), so it would be reasonable to assume they used much the same techniques for preparing & working on their stock (particularly as so many of the known names were emigres themselves). Stewart Speirs even sold some of his early planes to American buyers in the 1840s, according to a Wikipedia article.

I'm leaning to the view, as already suggested, that by the time metal planes were beginning to get real attention in the mid 1850s, the industrial revolution had well & truly hit north-eastern America. Good 'ol Yankee ingenuity & practicality led to a plethora of ideas for making metal planes more efficiently than the tedious method of dovetailing sides to base. Then Mr. Bailey came up with his idea, and the die was irrevocably cast (and even though I've got a weakness for infill planes, I have to agree that Bailey's plane design is functional & practical & most of my bench planes are descendants of his genius).

But I'm still left wondering why there was no Bailey or other equivalent to the very hefty "panel plane". These are clearly not meant for the same sort of task as a 'jack' plane. They have fine mouths, which is quite unsuited to heavy stock removal, and the weight of he darn things would test the fittest worker on a long workout. The nearest equivalent for length & width in the Bailey-type range is the 5 1/2, but my old Stanley 5 1/2 weighs in at a paltry 2.5Kg (or 5 1/2 lb, which is most appropriate!) whereas the behemoth I'm currently working on is going to tip the scales at something a shade north of 3.75 Kg (8 1/4 lb!!). I'm pretty sure I won't have to push down on it too hard to get it to cut.

Perhaps (even likely?) the reason British style panel-planes never spread across the Atlantic in significant numbers was purely cultural. British tradition & conservatism just didn't stack up against Yankee ingenuity & practicality.....??

Cheers,

Cheers,

I think you're on the right track. The Bailey planes fed a market demand for enormous growth in housing and furniture with a low cost, low maintenance, reasonable quality product.
The market in the UK was different - partly because their lower classes were leaving en mass. Rather than enormous factories, work was still largely piece work executed by sub-contractors. Maybe this created enough of a difference n working environment to allow infill planes to briefly shine.
Interestingly, Patrick Leach writes about the 4 1/2:
I have this half-baked, semi-baked, even fully-baked theory that Stanley offered this plane as competition for the heavier infill planes, being produced in England. Problem is, this one isn't even a 'contendah' with those products from the eastern shores of the Atlantic. Certainly their extra mass is a step in the right direction, but other than that, these planes are left taxiing on the tarmac, while the infills are soaring to new heights. Think it sounds whacked? Read on, and then look at the entry for the #4 1/2H for more proof.

Originally Posted by IanW

Perhaps (even likely?) the reason British style panel-planes never spread across the Atlantic in significant numbers was purely cultural. British tradition & conservatism just didn't stack up against Yankee ingenuity & practicality.....??

Might be too that the traditional English craftsman of whom you speak were still supplying the top end of the US market anyway, independence be damned, and a local lad doing things the hard way might struggle to compete.

Then and now our American cousins champion progress and efficiency; but when progress and efficiency has put enough cashola in their pockets a lot of them get seriously import oriented.

As a generalisation I like the upper middle Yank quite a lot, but there's a cultural cringe hundreds of years old bubbling along beneath the surface.

This isn't addressing Ian's question but I'll put it in anyway to further the discussion.
My Uncle was a joiner and took over his fathers business, he had a workshop on the Pacific Highway at Chatswood. He would have been born in England about 1900 and came to Oz before 1910.
My grandfather had been a master builder in England and had built churches etc.
My uncle fitted out banks here and built houses on the north shore.
At my bros wedding in 1983 he gave me a 444 and a couple of Stanley cabinetmakers planes.
I asked him wether he'd ever had a Norris and he said that my father who was a fitter and turner had made him a replica during the war. ( My cousin a flight engineer with Quantas had been given it along with most of his other tools). He also told me that he had burnt all his moulding planes as they had worm in them.
His son has recently been in contact and offered me his #7 Stanley which I will probably chase up when back in Oz.
I have also been given a Spiers smoother by an old family friend of my mothers who lived across the road from her as a child. It had come from the big hardware shop in Victoria Ave Chatswood.
From memory an award for top apprentice?
My mother didn't get on that well with her sibling so although my dad met her thru her motorcycling bros we didn't have much interaction with our family as kids.
Point I'm trying to make I guess is that out here the infill planes were valued even to the extent of fabricating them here when they were unable to be imported.
All my uncles knew the value of good tools, another mentioned the carving tools that had come out from England as having been from Grinling Gibbons, where these are now I have no idea.
H.

the following is drawing on my memory of stuff I've read over the past 15-20 years.


the infill mitre plane (including the design that gave rise to the Stanley #9 cabinet makers Block plane) was unknown in England prior to the French revolution.
the author who reported this -- it may have been Chris Schwarz, but I really don't recall -- speculated that the infill plane originated in France or Germany as a specialised tool for use with really high end cabinet work that employed a lot of marquetry and inlays -- the work of David Roentgen is perhaps one of the better examples.


Following the bankruptcy of the French state and the subsequent fall of the French monarchy, some of these cabinet makers and their tools appear in Britain.

(whilst we might look at the #9 as a specialised shuting board plane, it's original use was for a much wider range of tasks, and even today the long toe on a #9 is useful when the plane is used to level rail and style frames.)

Now if you compare Roentgen's work with the Federal style -- which was very high end in the US at the time



the craftsmanship is comparable, but the details of inlays and marquetry is no where near as extensive or ornate. There is a lot more carving than was common in France, and I'd hazard that most of the final smoothing could readily be done with a card scraper.

Now, I've not seen any US made pieces that come close to the detail in the work of Roentgen et al, but I believe there are some UK pieces from the 19th and early 20th century that approach that standard. Perhaps until the rise of the rail road barons in the 1890s there was just not the wealth in the US to support craftsmanship of the standard that required an infill plane. While in the UK there was.

I don't think it was a case of Yankee laisae fair vs British "imposed culture" more one that there were too few people in the US with the disposable wealth necessary to support the highest levels of embellishment.

Couple this with the Bailey patent and Stanley's mass manufacturing and I can readily see that infill planes imported into the US would have faced very stiff competition, competition perhaps so stiff that the import on any reasonable scale wasn't worth the effort.


If you look at Stanley's production (and that of other makers like Millers Falls) there are some planes that come close in mass and performance to an infill -- I've already mentioned the #9, but there were also "heavy" versions of other planes, eg #4-1/2H and #5-1/2H both of which were in production from 1902 to 1924.


I'll opine that the reason the infill plane persisted in Britain up to around WW2 was a combination of inertia and (especially prior to WW1) a clientele willing to afford the craftsmanship the infill planes excelled at.

Whilst no doubt there were some extremely wealthy people in the US, US wealth was, in the first instance, invested in housing (a mansion in New York and another in Rode Island, etc.) rather than furniture.
Compare that to the UK, where the extremely wealthy inherited the family estate and therefore had little need to embellish the building, but commissioning something special for inside was another matter.


in conclusion, I don't think the difference in infill plane numbers between the US and England primarily lies in differences in the woods or methods of work, but more in the way the extremely wealthy displayed their wealth.