Understanding Specialty Hand Planes

Woodworkers have been using hand plans to shape wood for thousands of years, and today hand planes still serve us well in many situations where power tools lack the precision or flexibility needed for certain operations. While the common hand planes that we normally think of, such as block planes, smoothing planes, jointer plane, etc. are typically the workhorses of a hand plane arsenal, there is a large variety of other specialty planes that are designed to help us in situations where the more common hand planes are not well suited. Some of those situations include:

Planing on a curved surface. The curved surface might be convex or concave, and for those situations a flat soled plane will not serve the purpose well. For that application, curved bottom planes and spoke shaves can be used to remove thin shavings of wood while following along the curved surface.

Planing up against a side wall or into a corner. A typical hand plane leaves a margin between the cutting iron and the side and front of the plane body, which makes it impossible to plane a smooth surface all the way up to a side wall or into a corner. For these applications, there are a variety of shoulder planes or chisel planes that can be used.

Planing different profiles. While you might think of planes as being useful for making flat, smooth surfaces, sometimes you want to add a profile to a piece of wood. For that application, the combination plane was invented. The combination plane allows for irons with different profiles to be installed, giving you the versatility to cut a large number of different profiles using a single tool platform.

If you are interested in learning more about how you can expand your hand tool skills and arsenal, check out this class that covers some of these planes and more.