Thread: The plane that made me nearly fly to Sweden

Originally Posted by IanW

I like Howell's solution - neat, a full socket for the horn and should be as comfortable as the others....

Cheers,

Hi Ian, scrap what I said before. I went through my selection and tried to see which ones are most comfortable.

This Howal multiplane is surprisingly comfortable. And is close to your suggestion before. It just does not look as traditional. With this one they designed it this way, because the horn is also the screw to hold the movable mouth piece.

Originally Posted by The Spin Doctor

Have you looked into whether a lose horn is common in Europe? I wonder if the Aussie hardwoods are a contributor in that you need to push so hard to get through them. Whereas Douglas Fir, Pine, Spruce... common woods of Europe wouldn't require near the effort...


Also, having known a few German furniture makers, the level of skill they acquire, and how they work, I wonder if the technique used by the more untrained (brute forcers for lack of a better word, but appropriate when you watch a German working) contributes to the loosening. I'd suspect a European furniture maker would put a great deal more emphasis on pushing the heel rather than the equal pressure on the heel and horn.

One thing's for sure though. You don't have a lot of competition when looking for them, compared to British and American woodies. I've had a couple donated and seen lots for sale and no one would take them other than for free.

I am not sure if you can link this to specific hard woods. I watched quite a few German restoration videos. I checked quite a few sites on what to look our for on an old German plane. Loose horns seem to be fairly common there as well.

But what I can imagine is not to nice for these planes is our huge humidity fluctuations in some parts of Australia. They are definitely stronger than back home.

You might be right, that there is not much competition here. However, most German planes here are single iron and scrubs. You don't find many good double iron smoother or even premium smoother like the so-called "reform hobel". They never made it here.

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You are amassing quite a collection of these planes CK!

That's a nifty little rebate, double-iron & an adjustable mouth as well. Is the nicker missing, or have you just removed it while you refurbish?

If it's missing, I know a bloke with lots of scrap bits of 1084 that may be just about the right size to make a replacement.....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

You are amassing quite a collection of these planes CK!

That's a nifty little rebate, double-iron & an adjustable mouth as well. Is the nicker missing, or have you just removed it while you refurbish?

If it's missing, I know a bloke with lots of scrap bits of 1084 that may be just about the right size to make a replacement.....

Cheers,

I think we know the same guy [emoji6]

But no, the plane is complete. I actually discussed this plane in detail here German Planes - Show and Tell

The current configuration is just from when I used it last. I think I used it to trim some tenon cheeks for my workbench. The other parts are safely in the box.

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I am currently reading a German book on planes (Holzwerker Hobel; Kurt Günter Heid) and found these aluminium planes some German companies tried.





Same as the Stanley aluminium planes, these were no success either. On the other hand, I think their horns would have been very sturdy [emoji3]

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Originally Posted by Cklett

I am currently reading a German book on planes (Holzwerker Hobel; Kurt Günter Heid) and found these aluminium planes some German companies tried.





Same as the Stanley aluminium planes, these were no success either. On the other hand, I think their horns would have been very sturdy [emoji3]

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It would take a “Very” special student too break that Horn loose, assuming the Aluminium ones were decent for schools maybe??.

Cheers Matt.

Originally Posted by NeilS

I did the same with a Bleckmann (Solingen), which I use for quickly flattening the face of rough sawn bowl turning blanks before mounting on a faceplate. Bleckmann was the main supplier of swords for the US Civil War and also supplied bayonets for the Germans in WWI. It would be at least that vintage.

Here's the old one I use as a scrub plane... it now has a HSS blade.

20240405_152337.jpg

A screw has been added to
help hold the horn in place.
20240405_152422.jpg

The sole is made from the same wood and
has worn down considerably towards
the front from years of use.
20240405_152542.jpg

Even with its shiny new HSS blade it still reminds of the phrase, 'tools that are warm from the men that have used them'.

With 1 1/2" cutting width, it possibly was a scrub plane from the beginning.

With that worn sole, have you checked what the current cutting angle is? That looks like more than 45 degrees.

Originally Posted by Cklett

With 1 1/2" cutting width, it possibly was a scrub plane from the beginning.

With that worn sole, have you checked what the current cutting angle is? That looks like more than 45 degrees.

Yes, it is more like 50 now.

The 1-1/2" wide blade is one of the reasons I use it as a scrub plane. With the curved blade biting in you don't want more than 1-1/2" of blade to be pushing. I also like the feel of the woody in my hand

I also like the 1-1/2" wide blade on the Stanley 78 if I need more momentum than you get with the light woody.

Originally Posted by NeilS

.... With the curved blade biting in you don't want more than 1-1/2" of blade to be pushing.....

Sadly, Neil, it doesn't take much "bite" from any blade to make me grunt these days....

I rarely use the full width of the 1 1/2" blade on my scrub plane (Veritas). I've maintained the radius it came with, more or less ( ~75mm) but I normally have only 1/2 to 2/3 of the width cutting unless it is very rough (& soft-ish!) material I'm tackling. Even with half the blade width exposed, it has a very healthy bite & will gouge out good-sized chips (you couldn't call them shavings). There are times when the extra weight of a metal-bodied scrub feels handy, and times when I wish it weighed far less. I should've hung onto the wooden scrub I had for a while & had the luxury of using whichever was more suited to the task in hand, but decided my plane storage was already over-taxed.

I've got an old, very battered & bruised #5 I use to follow the scrub & get things tidied up a bit. It has about a 150mm radius on its blade, and with the full width of that in the cut it needs a good hard shove to get it through harder woods...

Cheers,

Originally Posted by Cklett

With 1 1/2" cutting width, it possibly was a scrub plane from the beginning.

It didn't have a curved edge on the blade when I acquired it 50yrs ago, so not used up until then as what we would call a scrub plane. However, with the amount wear on its sole the mouth had become very open and ideal for use as a scrub plane.

It came out of the the Barossa Valley, which was settled by German immigrants, and it is possible that the plane body could be even older than the blade that was in it when I first acquired it. I understand that the 1¹/₂" size is the obsolete pre-decimal zoll (1 zoll = 1") which was replaced in 1872, but probably still in use by the trades long after that in the same way that some of us are still using inches here...

Hi All

Happen to have a a European style scrub with 1 1/4 inch blade. Sometimes I feel that I would be better served by a metal scrub, with its additional mass. Fortunately by the time I have arrived at this opinion I have usually removed the offending timber and it's time to move to the foreplane.

The scrub has never ceased to amaze me at how much timber it can remove in a flash for such simple tool,. I imagine if I did it alll day I would loose the moment but I would have disintegrated a tree..

IMG_6389.jpgIMG_6390.jpg

Cheers

Originally Posted by NeilS

It didn't have a curved edge on the blade when I acquired it 50yrs ago, so not used up until then as what we would call a scrub plane. However, with the amount wear on its sole the mouth had become very open and ideal for use as a scrub plane.

It came out of the the Barossa Valley, which was settled by German immigrants, and it is possible that the plane body could be even older than the blade that was in it when I first acquired it. I understand that the 1¹/₂" size is the obsolete pre-decimal zoll (1 zoll = 1") which was replaced in 1872, but probably still in use by the trades long after that in the same way that some of us are still using inches here...

Hi Neil,

I forgot to ask how long your plane is. There is also a theory out there, that a lot scrub planes started as "normal planes" and only when the mouth was opened too far from normal wear they were converted to scrubs.

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Originally Posted by Cklett

Hi Neil,

I forgot to ask how long your plane is. There is also a theory out there, that a lot scrub planes started as "normal planes" and only when the mouth was opened too far from normal wear they were converted to scrubs.

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Interesting Ckett. . Where does that theory come from and what do you mean by normal? Normal as in a smoother? And do you mean in Europe or Germany? Or here?

Here in Au or in the UK this type of plane usually has a single iron and was known as a Bismark or Roughing Plane. As you would know.
I personally had never heard of the word scrub until I was shown the cast iron Stanley version. That was years after using a roughing plane for sometimes dressing down dusty rough sawn boards before machining. Or more likely it was dressing the backs and bottoms of carcase work after machining to size to leave the lovely deep hand planed look you see on the backs of original 17th and 18th century stuff.

edit
I think if it had a single iron then it was intended as a Scrub / Roughing / Bismark and if it had a double iron then it was a smoother when new and that may have been used to do the rough work if the mouth got large enough. Which is what I suppose your mean in your comment above.