Why Use a Hand Plane?

Well, we are lucky sort of, I guess, to have Tom in the shop today. I'm here. Giving him a hard time. Time is a big hand tool guy. I have used hand tools, but in all honesty, most of my hand tools are behind a sheet of glass. And it says, in case of emergency, break glass. So I'm hoping to get a little education from Tom. Why do I want to bother messing with learning to use a hand plane? Well, George, you really don't have to ever do, as you know, cause you've made lots of beautiful furniture without one. But you've probably seen it. I'll give you that 20 bucks later. Here you go, George. No. When you pass a piece of wood through a plane or a jointer, there's all kinds of irregularities in the surface that have to be taken out. I mean, you can't just finish this, right? And especially you can see them if you wipe a piece of chalk over something like this. Then you see all the scoring works. The ripple marks left by- So I've still got nicks in the joiner knives. Yeah, the straight lines or the nicks. And you're right. So normally, coming off of a joiner or planer- It's not ready to go. I'm sanding to take those ripple marks out. Right. Well, sanding takes time. Believe it or not, if you have a sharp plane and you know what you're doing, you save time. Okay? So let's turn this board over, for instance. Stick it in the vice. Working with black walnut here, so we're not cheating. It's a hard wood. This is close grained wood. This is called a smooth plane and its purpose is to make the surface smooth. It'll also make it straight, not so straight, because if it was a long piece, I'd use a bigger plane. But for just finishing this off with joiner, this is the way to go. It has to be really sharp to do what I'm about to do, but let's trade places, George. So I can stand where you are. And to be clear here, there's setup involved. Oh yeah. There's some behind the scenes stuff that Tom's already done to the plane. To get to sing the song. Yeah, this is not going to work the way it does right out of the package. Never. You have to learn how to tune a plane up. But once we're set up, the results we could expect are? That's your cue. Let's just have at it, shall we? Beautiful, big shavings. So one of the things I've heard you say, is that although we expect surfaces off a joiner to be dead flat, you have found, they often are not. No, and a plane will reveal that. It's amazing. You could convince yourself that it is absolutely flat, but when you start planning, you'll see that a joiner will actually make low spots as well. Or high spots, depending how you figure it. And a plane will reveal all, but when you're done, this is dead flat and smooth. A light sanding, so you're not quite done yet. And you're off. I'll beat you with a belt sander. Please don't beat me with a belt sander. Oh, sorry. So for a dose of reality for this, in your shop, if you're gluing stuff, edge to edge- Yeah. Are you hand planing those edges before you put them together or coming off of a joint? No, right? A joiner. I can do more harm than good. You know, it's certainly possible to join edges for gluing, but it's not necessary because that jointer cut is good enough. The tolerances are tight enough. So you're bringing the hand plane in when you want to really show what a surface is capable of showing. You want to really- It makes the wood pop. Because we're leaving behind this cut edge that's crisper than what we're going to get from sanding, sanding, sanding, sanding. Right. And a braided edge is always not, is never going to reflect light the same way that a cut edge will. Okay. So the, so you would use this on the show surfaces, like a tabletop, after maybe it's come out of a plane or you're going to go one step further. Flatten it with a hand plane. Am I right? To really get that surface to pop? Absolutely. Well, not only that, George, when I glue things together, as you were saying before, well how are you going to even up those glue joints, especially when you make a big top, you know if you don't have a big drum sander to run your top through, hand plane'll do it, just like that. Very quick. Well, I know I need some practice, but I guess I am sort of convinced that I should get some of my hand planes off the dusty shelf and get them rejuvenated and try working with them. Well hey! You miss another point, George. It's fun! Well, it is. It is a blast. It's way quieter when you're doing this than when I'm running the big equipment. We could actually hear music if it was playing now, which when the planer is running, you cannot. Yeah. I do this for enjoyment as much as anything. It's a heck of a lot of fun to learn how to use a plane. All right. Well, thanks for the plane primer, Tom. Sure, George. It's good information. And hopefully we've convinced you too to- Try it out! Give hand tools a try.