Thread: In praise of little planes

I would not equate myself with Bill Carter, by any means, but I have acquired something of his passion for tiny planes. Bill seems to have a weakness for mini mitre-planes, whereas I’ve developed something of an obsession with tiny infills. I’ve made well over a dozen of them over the last couple of years, which is a far cry from the hundreds Bill has turned out, but still many more than I ever intended making – the next one is always going to be better than the last!

Little planes have a long & honourable history; “thumb planes” survive from mediaeval times, and were probably made well before then. They were/are used by luthiers & carvers and come in a variety of sole and body shapes, and can be quite whimsical little things. But very small planes can be useful to just about any woodworker for those small jobs where large planes are far too cumbersome.

There are plenty of “how-tos” on making small planes from wood on the web, e.g. here or here . The lamination technique would be the easier way to go, but if you’re up to a challenge, you could try a tiny solid-bodied version like the master of minis has made. (Bill has madea huge number of wooden planes of all types aswell as metal ones).

Metal is a little more demanding to work with, though not that much, and though I would suggest that working at such a small scale for your first try at dovetailing a body together would be a bit of a challenge, there’s no reason you couldn’t make a very good job of it if you worked carefully. It takes very little material, and so it little matters if things go badly awry and you have to start over.

Typically, finger planes are very basic tools, with wedge-retained blades, and no fancy construction techniques are required. For the majority of general woodworkers, a plain flat-bottomed style is likely to be the handiest. This chap came up with a rather cute style and construction method, and if you are tempted to give it a try, Stavros Garkos has a whirlwind video of the making of one here . You don’t need to use all the spinning, sparking machinery Stavros employs, the whole job could be done with hand tools and less drama. Fitting the circular dovetails will be a little more difficult than making a straight body, but a fun project if you are up to it.

You can also make a small metal-bodied plane very simply. I made my first attempt at a mini plane about 25 years ago, using a bit of 25mm brass channel for the body. It was a crude, but functional thing, with a body about 70mm long. I used a bit of industrial hacksaw blade for the (bevel up) iron: Vers1.jpg
The brass was barely 1.5mm thick, so it was a bit of a lightweight, with a mouth that a politician would envy, and a goodly dip in the rear sole. The sole was flat & coplanar at the essential points, but I was afraid to lap it any more than this to remove that low spot for fear of making it too thin: Vers1a.jpg

It was really meant to be a “proof of concept” but it worked well enough for the little jobs I used it on, so like many of my prototypes, it hung about in my toolbox & I tolerated its shortcomings for a decade or more before I got around to upgrading to the “production model”.

Version 2 began with a piece of the same brass channel, but this time I sweated a steel sole to the brass. I’d also learnt by then that making brass lever caps was pretty easy, so it got a teeny brass lever cap. The LC thumbscrew is ¼” NC job from Lee Valley (I didn't have my little metal lathe then), and the infill is figured Gidgee (Acacia georgina) glued, then riveted in the body. It was definitely an advance on vers1; the thicker sole gave it a more solid feel. (The axle screws for the LC were made flush with the sides after this picture was taken): Vers2.jpg

To give you an idea of scale, here it is beside a Norris 5-sized smoother:MP2.jpg

A few more years went by, & a few dovetailed plane bodies got made. This gave me some more confidence and a lot more scraps of brass & steel of various sizes. Very little is allowed to go to waste round my shed, so I started making smaller planes, then smaller, then smaller! Midi to mini.jpg

My first attempt at going "small" was a 150mm smoother (similar to the one on the left, above, but with straight instad of curved sides), which I found quite easy to work on, but when I stepped down to try “palm planes” at about 100-110mm long, things got a bit more intricate, and the “finger planes” at 60-65m are fussier still. I've kept to roughly the same side profiles, and set the blades at ~45 degrees. I did consider switching back to a lower angle, bevel-up configuration, like Bill Carter’s reproduction of a Mathieson finger plane (take a look at it, he’s done an amazing job of artificially ageing it!). But I decided to stick more or less to the same side profile as on my bigger planes & maintain a family resemblance. Perhaps a Mathieson copy will make a good little project for some future scraps.

Dovetailing the really small planes wasn’t as bad as I’d expected, you just have to be very careful cutting & fitting those little dovetails, just as you would with tiny dovetails in wood. At least with metal, you have the advantage of being able to close the gaps!

So we come to vers3 of the finger planes, which was my first try at a dovetailing rather than using he channel brass. I used some scraps of 2.5mm phosphor bronze for the sides, and some 3.2mm thick stainless steel for the sole. It took careful filing & testing, & more filing, to get the sides & sole fitting neatly, but overall, the build went quite smoothly. I worried that such small pieces of metal might squirm around during peening and end up badly out of kilter, so I tied the sides down very firmly. In the event, both the steel & the bronze proved easy to peen, which helped a lot, and the body came off the peening block gratifyingly straight & square. This one got Mulga (Acacia aneura) infill. I also used a better iron - a piece of 3mm thick M2 HSS, which I bought from McJing )and it is an excellent performer: Thumb plane.jpg

Any sane person would have let it rest there, but of course an obsessive isn't sane and when I found I still had some scraps of the bronze, I started on ves4.

The infill is from one of the “Wattles” that grow in our back yard. Fitting the woodwork was as much of a hassle as I expected. Holding that little piece for the front bun while I cut the shallow rebates was a challenge in itself. But after most of a morning of careful sawing, paring & filing, I got them fitting tolerably well: Vers4.jpg

This little plane has a very tight mouth and leaves a very clean surface despite not having a cap-iron. I reduced the height of the back bun a bit compared with Vers3, which gives it a lower centre of gravity and the iron is a bit shorter, so it’s slightly more comfy to hold: Vers4 shavings.jpg

Although small, you can hold these planes two-handed reasonably comfortably, but I probably use mine one-handed slightly more often. It also seems just as happy being pulled or pushed, which is handy.

A great little tool for jobs like easing the corners of this mallet head: At work.jpg


Cheers,