Different Hand Plane Numbers Explained and When to Use Each

today i want to run you through just the very basics of different kinds of hand planes uh what they look like and a little bit maybe about what they would be used for uh let's start over here these are planes made by stanley bailey and this is a number four smoothing plane there's actually these two there's two of them and i have two of them because i have different blade angles that i've honed so and they some of them are for one of them's for very tough gnarly wood and the other is just for normal wood but the smoothing plane is about two and a half inches wide and about nine inches long and it is used just as the name implies to smooth wood and i have a couple of them now in some instances you might want something that's lighter weight slightly so this is a number three plane it looks very much like the number four but it's not as wide and it's not quite as long it's a very handy plane if you're going to be doing a lot of repetitive work because it's not as heavy and so it's not as difficult to use now not all number 4 planes are the stanley bailey this is a veritas plane veritas is a company in canada they make uh modern day planes where bailey stanley bailey made planes along hundreds of years ago or a hundred years ago at least this is another number four plane it's heavier but it's more solidly built than the basic stanley it's more expensive it's more precise and it does an excellent job of smoothing it also has an adjustable throat here so that you can vary the width of this gap and that becomes very important in some applications of smoothing planes this is a number five plane which is called a jack plane you can see that it's considerably longer let's just measure it it is about 13 and a half inches long and it's the same two and a half inch width as the number four so this number five jack plane is used for removing a lot of material if you're trying to reduce the thickness of a board and get it started down to be become flat the first thing you would use is a big plane like this number six that will go to next which removes a lot of material the number five the jack plane also removes a considerable amount of material but it's a little less intrusive in the wood per pass as the number six and then when you've gotten it to the approximate thickness that you want then you would bring out the number four smoothing plane so this is a number five jackpot this is a number six number six i use to remove a lot of wood quickly it's two and three quarters inches wide and it's about 17 and a half inches long this plane is a lot of bulk here but when you're trying to remove material and smooth the board that bulk helps you get through the wood and push it through the wood just the mass of the plane helps and finally here and far as far as this type plane this is a number seven this is called a jointer plane a jointer plane does the work of a jointer a jointer gives you a smooth surface uh and and it gives you a smooth long surface so that there are not undulations in it but it that it's flat this particular plane as you can see is quite long it's 21.5 inches long and it's three inches wide this plane is very heavy it's also very expensive as hand planes go but to make a long board the edge of a long board flat there's nothing like a joiner plane which will run the entire length and if there are any valleys it'll get rid of them and give you that smooth flat surface and then i should mention a block plane this is a low angle block plane and it is mainly for touching up it's for doing bevels on the corners and most importantly it's for planing end grain on wood and because of the low angle of the blade it does a very good job of end grain so you use this you fit spray in your hand it's not heavy it's easy to use and again you use it mainly for end grain and touch-up work so that's the basics of the hand planes we have some other planes here and we'll get to those in future videos if you like what you saw please hit the like but like button and don't hesitate to subscribe so that we can keep you informed of future content

Channel: SawsHub DIY Woodworking Tips

Views: 10,616

Keywords: hand plane, hand planes, hand tool woodworking, hand plane numbers, hand plane numbers explained

Id: y_evUtDzVjA

Length: 5min 44sec (344 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021