Thread: German Planes - Show and Tell

Hi ,

Wooden planes that long were called try planes
where I live in Jersey.
I do not know why. I have seen English ones that long.

Martin.

I bought this a small group of planes some years ago. Mostly German but mixed with some English moulding planes . They had been stored in a shed that had water getting in and also at some stage a fire . Luckily this one survived untouched .

Its a Dovetail cutting plane from Hamburg. Owner stamp P Strauss . Then over stamped with Ewald Tischer.
German sounding names ?

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This panel gauge was also with them . Made by P Strauss in Oak possibly. The stick and wedge were missing and I made those.
A very handy tool . I didn't have one before this . I reach for it every time its needed.

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This fillister? Or rebate plane .

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And this Plough plane which has been destroyed unfortunately.
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The Dovetail plane next to a roughing plane single iron, a smoother twin iron. And a late model toothing plane on the right.
The three on the right were not part of the lot I got above . The first two are Hornbeam I think . The last is Beech.
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Rob

They are fantastic. I am envious. Hamburg is my hometown. Grew up there. I need to keep my eye out.

On this site (Kleines Werkzeugmuseum (Hamburger Werkzeugmacher)) it says following translated:

"The Hamburg toolmakers play a special role among the German tool manufacturers. dr Günther Heine draws in his dissertation [GH1] the path of this profession. His results show that the toolmaker profession seems to be specific to Hamburg. At the beginning of the 19th century, the attractiveness of the city and the resulting immigration of journeyman carpenters from all over Germany led to an oversupply of carpenters. Since the granting of citizenship depends on the practice of a profession, and the guild only allows a certain number of candidates for the master's examination, many fall back on the unguild profession of toolmaker. This occupational group survived until the beginning of the 20th century and then had to give way to the increasing pressure from tool factories in southern Germany, whose products were also widely distributed in the north thanks to improved transport options."


And if I read right then the maker of your planes died in 1893.

The way the fence is fixed on your dovetail plane is really nice and with nice little details.

Sad the others got damaged.

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Originally Posted by Cklett

They are fantastic. I am envious. Hamburg is my hometown. Grew up there. I need to keep my eye out.

On this site (Kleines Werkzeugmuseum (Hamburger Werkzeugmacher))

Do you get back there much now ? And would second hand old tools be available like in Antique shops or swap meets like here ?
What about German Ebay ?

Thanks for the link . I had a look at the makers listing . I may go back and try some translation with computer later or my German Dictionary . I scored some old school lockers for my workshop and the dictionary was sitting in one of them . Never thought I may have a use for it . Almost threw it out . I'm a bit of a hoarder though .

The Dovetail plane is a beauty. I have some nice English planes, but that Hamburg DT is a special piece in amongst them. English DT planes are hard to find. I have one which is nothing like the Hamburg plane . Beech with steel sole and no fence. You clamp a straight board to the work to use them.

What is also interesting is how much you see the sliding dovetail in German made cabinet work and how you hardly ever see it in English furniture. Im pretty sure the English DT plane was used for shelf supports in the side of Bookcases. And that's about all I have worked out regarding them.
I used to see a bit of Antique stuff in the SA Barossa Valley. It was a big Antique furniture thing around the Australian bicentenary in 1988 . And I went to some auctions in Adelaide SA or Antique shops around Kapunda SA . Plus buying stuff off farms around there. The Lids of 1870 /1880 German made trunk lids had two sliding dovetails running front to back. To allow for shrinkage . Ive seen big antique cake boards from an old bakery that have the same. Not sure if they were German though .They were imported. That Hamburg plane would have been how they were done .
My Hamburg planes had nothing to do with my trips to SA. They were found in Melbourne .

Have you seen much of the SA Barossa Antique furniture ? German influence antique furniture in Australian timbers. Some very special interesting things have been found and are now in collections or in books on the subject.

Rob

Hi CK. Here is my contribution.

I have been keen to try a "European" style plane for a while. First purchased a Marda branded one with horn but no webbing block behind blade. Very lightweight in use and while a nice partner for my Marda coffin shaped smoother, may not get a lot of use.

Saw this and realised they are still in business. Price was right so put in an offer and it was accepted 20230211_095719.jpg

Nice close mouth and the whole plane feels great in the hand. Hornbeam for base (and wedge)?
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Do you have any idea on age? I notice that contemporary versions of this plane now have a plastic dowell in place of the more traditional abutments?
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Not obvious now because it has been scraped clean but someone had clear coated it and trapped all sorts of muck in the finish. Blade is 45mm wide, 3mm thick and currently sharp but bevel is about 22°. Oh and body is Beech!

You blokes are making me wish I'd kept this one!
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I had no idea of its origin when I posted it here, but various people helped me out, especially with the logo. The rather corroded example I had looked like it might be a medieval knight's head, but Stewie & swk put me right - it's the head of a woman wearing a scarf...

I don't know how old it is. It was in very rough condition when I got it & had seen much use by a previous owner or two. There was a deep crack along the upper body which I managed to glue closed & the rest cleaned up pretty well. It felt very light but actually worked quite nicely and in retrospect, I think it probably would've suited my ageing body better than the metal Veritas scrub I've had for yonks. But I didn't need two scrubs so I passed it on (can't remember to whom!) in favour of the Veritas.

I did have some concerns about the sole. I presumed it was hornbeam from its appearance (& because it is very commonly used as sole material in Germany), but it seemed to be softer than bits of hornbeam I've had, so I warned the new owner that it might not like being used for roughing down ironbark & blue-gum....

Cheers,

Hi MA, I had a read through what information there is on dating German planes. It's not easy.

However, here is a good write-up in German to what to look for.

Kleines Werkzeugmuseum (Identifizierung und Datierung)

A few things though:

1. The hand piece was only introduced around 1920 and ECE filed a patent in 1932 to that

2. The sole with different wood showed up early 20th century, but still in 1936 ECE only had this on their high end plane.

3. A catalogue in 1952 showed exactly plane like yours.

4. And still today ECE has a scrubplane with the abuntment style like yours. So who knows when they changed. A different company called "Laupheimer Werkzeugfabrik" had a patent on the cross pin style for the wedge to hold against. That was 1931. So maybe time until the patent ran out gives a bit of indication when ECE might have switched.


I would say your plane is most likely post WWII.


I tried to also find out more about Ian's plane. But there is not much more than we already know in his other thread.

BTW, please don't see me as an expert in that. I just happened to be able to read the German sources [emoji6]

Thanks CK. Happy to collect whatever nuggets of information are available.

Hi, I thought about where to put it, but I feel it fits here quite well.

Some time back, I found another bunch of fellow German planes in a second-hand shop. So I took them home. What can I say, I have a soft spot for them.

One of them is this rebate plane made by Ulmia. Not particular old, I think.




What is special is that it has a chip breaker and an adjustable mouth. The reason is pretty clear and confirmed by my research that they use the "double iron" version for difficult grain or against the grain. At the same time, they also make "single iron" versions without chipbreaker.

I did not do much to it other than cleaning up, truing up the sole and sharpening. The chipbreaker also needed to be matched to the iron. I am always surprised how badly they are matched at some planes.

When I first used it, it was impossible to adjust. When I taped the wedge in, the chipbreaker moved forward. With some investigation, I noticed the chipbreaker screw was protruding through the chipbreaker and into the wooden wedge.
Here you can see the indent.



I solved that by cutting a little groove into the back of the wedge, and that solved that.



I am a bit embarrassed that this came out of my home country. I like to think that would be an obvious problem.

Anyway, I tested it a little.

Here, I cut a rebate with my favourite wooden rebate plane, which has a fence and everything. But it left a bit of tear out.



And then I went after with the new plane to remove the tear out.



Although I think that in most cases some tear out is no issue. It gets mostly covered by something that goes into the rebate. But maybe there can be the occasional case where I want it nice and smooth. This plane will do that for me.

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I do like the ECE ones I have . 2 different sized smoothers. And a 3rd I have set up as a scrub. All are pre plastic wedge bars. Keep the pictures coming.

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