Bridge City Tool Works Block and Bench Plane

Ginny and I are at the AWFs show in Las Vegas. And let's have a walk through the show and see what amazing stuff we can find to show you. We're talking to John from Bridge City Tool Works and I can't wait to show you these amazing new planes that he's brought to the show. John, one of the things I think people are thinking about is people know there's been a little bit of change in ownership in Bridge City Tool Works, but we talked about this and assurance that same amazing quality and tools that people know Bridge City for, right? That's correct. We're making quality as good, or maybe even better than what we've been doing in the last 35 years. And I think part of what people are going to vote of confidence from as you're still deeply involved in the company. I am. I have a design contract for the next year and a half to design and make sure that the people who are making these tools are trained properly. Very cool. Now these planes are amazing. And what we've got here are, well instead of me saying that, I'm going to let you say it. So I don't screw it up. What I'm very intrigued by is the multipurpose nature of these tools. So the whole idea was to create planes that eliminate the need to buy multiple planes for the same purpose. For example, our block plane is both a low angle block plane, and a regular block plane. And the same is true with our bench plane. And in order to do that, I had to invent a new mechanism that allows the iron to be flipped around. And so that the dual grind iron with no possible way that people could hurt themselves in using the tool, which is pretty cool. So in broad brush strokes, we could say you're going to use one side for end grain one side for long grain. And I know there's other stuff to talk about, but that's one of the separation points, That's correct. And also too, another important point is we are the only plane maker in the world that allows our planes to be converted with depth skids that allows you to convert the plane into like a mini thickness planer. So that has all kinds of functions from making very precise splines to things like Japanese Kumico. Or anytime you want to make something where your little sticks for say are all the exact identical thickness. It's pretty cool. And the other thing you were telling me about that I like a lot is you do an amazing job pre-lapping the back of the iron. So the end user, a lot of times you buy a plane or a chisel. And the first thing you're going to do in your shop is spend a boatload of time lapping the back of the iron or the back of the chisel to get it dead flat, but you've taken care of that. That's correct. Our irons are lapped on a machine that was designed to grind silicon wafers. So the bottom of the iron is an RMS 0.5 finish. And what that means to people who don't know what that means is it's an optical surface. So in a typical shop that woodworker has no capability to match that. So for the entire life of that tool, you never have to touch the back of that iron, which is pretty nice. That's very nice. Well, next thing is to get these babies to work in the shop and show you just what they're capable of. Thanks John. Thank you. It's one thing to touch and feel a hand plane at a woodworking show. That's a whole nother thing and way more fun to touch and feel it and work on a really cool piece of wood. So here's what I've got going. This is an ash burl and I'm using the Bridge City plane right now with the scrub iron in it. And I started with a scrub iron because this whole thing was pretty darn rough when I started. So I'm going to work on this a little bit. That's going to help get it leveled out, clean it up and then we're going to switch to another iron and clean it up some more. Plus get some hands on time with the block plane. This is more fun than I should be allowed to have. I've got the scrub iron out. I've changed to the other iron. Now we're ready to smooth this baby out. You can see it coming to life already. Look at the grain here and the chatoyance that we're getting here Man, that's a pretty piece. Pretty happy with how this is coming out. In fact, I'm really happy with how this coming out. And here's something I like to do gives us the kind of sexy look at what this is going to look like under finish. Wow, we got some burl. We got some crotch. Boy did that clean up nice. All right, I'm going to stand here and look at this all day. If I don't move on to something else. So let's have a look at some other features of those Bridge City planes. One of the things we can do with this tool is we can plane parts to a specific thickness. Application would be this spline slot right here. And we want a piece that's going to go in there. The way that works is the runners go on. You set a finite distance from the bottom of the runner to the sole of the plane, and then we do this. And I think you can see where this is going to go. When these bottom out on my bench. That's going to get this entire piece established to that exact thickness. In other words, when it stops cutting, you're done. We need just a little bit more. So the way this will work is once we've got a test piece cut and we know the runners are set to the right distance we'll be able to plane every part we need to that thickness, and they'll drop right into those splines. So in my case I've got to do just a little adjustment on my runners and then that's going to let me take these splines down to the perfect size. It's a neat application of a hand plane. When I put in a spline my favorite way to do that is to glue it in leave it proud of the surface. And then the ideal washing up tool is a block plane. That didn't take much and worked really, really well. The other thing I use a block plane for a lot is if I'm going to put a chamfer on a board it's not at all uncommon If it's a onesy, twosy situation rather than setting up a router I'll mark that chamfer out top and edge, and then come along with a block plane in order to hit down to that chamfer mark. And this lovely piece of hickory. Now, one of the things that's neat about these Bridge City Tools is anticipating this kind of need. They've actually got a fence I can put on that makes us a little simpler and a little bit more repeatable. So let me throw that fence on and I'll show you that approach for using the block plane. If you're not confident about your ability to get the plane on there for a chamfer and hold it at 45 degrees, that's what this fence is all about. It's actually multi-purpose, I'll talk about that. When this component rides on the face of your material the sole of the plane is at a 45 degree angle and lets us shoot that chamfer and get it right every time. Now let me point out I'm on end grain and hickory. Look at the nice curl that baby's producing. Wow. The other part of the fence, this is at 90 degrees. So if you want to use your block plane this way shooting end grain and make sure that you're going to stay perpendicular to the face. That's what that portion of the fence is for. Big scheme of things, man, I've really enjoyed using these Bridge City planes in my shop. I think there's a great marriage between power tools and hand tools, where like I was talking about with the chamfer in a lot of cases it's easier to grab a hand tool and take care of the work than it is to set up, plug in, and run a power tool. So it's sure been a blast and I've enjoyed making shavings and I'm going to do some more of that because it's way too much fun.