Thread: Another wierd looking plane

I expect everyone who has ever edge-jointed a board has thought of this idea. A plane with a built in fence, which runs against the board and keeps the cutter at 90degrees. I've been meaning to make one for ages but have been putting it off as I thought the fence would be unlikely to travel true along the board. I made this one recently out of mahogany with beech wear surfaces (poor choices, I just liked the colour) and a Mujinfang blade.

In practice the fence is easily controllable, and it is no problem to put a perfect 90deg edge on a very long board. This plane is also very smooth, which I think is because it is held very low – with only the two thumbs across the top of the plane and the rest of each hand draped down across the plane body. This gives a very low centre of thrust, at roughly the same level as the cutting edge. The tendency to rock when the plane starts a cut or ends a cut (and much of the plane body is not supported) is eliminated.

I think we loose sight of the fact that conventional planes are utility tools – designed to do a passable job of a range of tasks such as chamfering, edge jointing and flat board smoothing – rather then to excel at any one job. It is not surprising therefore that a utility plane like the Stanley #4-7 range will be outperformed by a specialised plane, even a home-made plane like this one which I admit is not really very carefully made.

Arron