Thread: Roundovers with a handplane?

FINE Set of 18 Skewed Hollows & Rounds Moulding Planes by HIELDS NOTTI – Jim Bode Tools


Rob

Wooden hollows, rounds, rebates, side beads and snipe bill planes are what were used to make all the intricate mouldings before portable routers hit the streets; there are thousands and thousands of them gathering dust in boxes or in peoples sheds all over the world. They regularly come up on Ebay/Gumtree and flea markets; most of the time the owners don’t know how to set or sharpen them so they are usually very cheap, around $20 each is common. Grab a book or two like Plane Basics by Sam Allen or The Handplane Book by Garret Hack to get an idea of how these can be made to work for you. You can also make your own, I’ve seen plenty of plans and youtube videos on the interweb. Forum member Planemaker has some great threads on making his own sets too.

Rob’s link is to a very fine and complete set of hollows and rounds; they would have represented a massive investment for a cabinet maker so they tend to have been looked after. If you come across a full set for sale just bear in mind that for your needs you might only ever use three or four...

Bothe Stanley and Record made sets of “hollows and rounds” bases that fitted into their combination planes but these are ridiculously expensive; $600 upwards for a complete set. I have seen homemade versions made from wood but have no idea if they worked or not.

I just use a normal hand plane. Paul Sellers has a good demo on a YouTube project at present - I think the first episode of the desktop organizer series.

it is not a perfect curve but it would be hard to pick after sanding.

I've got a couple of sizes of matched H&Rs, but for small roundovers I use a block plane. Count the strokes it takes to get the desired form & repeat on subsequent corners that need to be the same. A quick rub over with some folded 180 grit paper & it looks as good as the machined edge.

You can get it pretty close to perfect for small roundovers, up to around say, 3-3.5mm diameter, but it gets harder to keep them even when you have to remove more wood. I daresay with enough practice you'd get pretty good at it & able to do the larger diameters you mention.

Another alternative is a scratch-stock, which you could use to do the whole job, or to finish after removing the bulk of the waste with a coarse-set plane. It's essentially a scraper, but a scratch-beader works on most woods, even those that don't normally respond well to a cabinet scraper. Here's one being used to put a small quirked bead on recycled Red Cedar: scratch beader.jpg

I like scratch-stocks, you can make one in minutes and they are quick & efficient for occasional small jobs, especially where you want a "non-standard" profile that isn't available as a router bit, but they could never match the speed & efficiency of a bearing-guided bit for simple rounding-over. Much as I love the "quiet contemplative" approach, I'd be reaching for the electron-burner if there was a substantial number of edges to deal with, especially where time was money.....

Cheers,

Excellent. Good stuff.

I was on Ebay and Gumtree looking for those planes, but couldnt recall what they were called! Zero results

But, with hollows and rounds, up pop a thousand. Yay!

Each display has 10 shelves. There is only one or two a week. I could easily use my kehiki to mark a 10mm line on both sides and do the straight-plane thing to match.

No doubt a scratch stock or a template would work too (I used templates for when I did lathe work. Very accurate). The roundover doesn't need to be sub-millimetre 1/2" or 10mm, simply the *same* on all shelves.

I'm keen to move from the router. My options are severely limited without a workshop and being in a building. The neighbours dont even know I use the balcony for work so far and I think I'd prefer to keep it that way!


I was simply looking at my Record 405 with its depth and side fences and thinking... hmmmm... that would be good if... Maybe I'll sacrifice one of the beading irons and dremel the profile I need. .... old blades seem to be on Ebay all the time, so its no heresy

One could rough plane using my ssseeeeexxxxxyyyyy Veritas planes (again, all, 1000 thanks for selling me your old ones!) then finish with accuracy using the Record.


That Jim Bode link is great, I was looking for that, plus there is another in Victoria (?) that does the same. A seconds or old tools shop from memory... cant find it in my bookmarks

Another possibility for getting curves to match nicely might be to custom shape the curve into a cabinet scraper. Then you can use a plane of whatever description suits you to create the basic form, leaving a small excess, which is cleaned up with the scraper to give consistent shape, and a nice smooth finish into the bargain

+1 for the method Paul Sellers demonstrates - YouTube

I used this and got great results. Probably not perfectly round but after sanding the final facets out it looks fine to the eye. It's very quick to do too. And very satisfying with just a No.4. I think it would be more difficult as the length of the piece increased though.

Regards Adam

image062.jpgimage061.jpgimage064.jpg

Hi Evan,

Before diving into purchasing sets of hollows and rounds there are a number of posts online that recommend getting just a few matching pairs.

Moulding Planes: Where to Start | Lost Art Press

The above link recommends two pairs and i remember a video from Shannon Rogers who said to just start with a single pair of no.6s.



Regards,

Adam

P.s. this is exactly the same thing I'm thinking about at the moment.

Sent from my SM-G973F using Tapatalk