Every Stanley Bench Plane Explained (Once and for all!)

if you were a woodworker in the 18th and 19th century you probably would have owned just three plants a medium-length plane like this four plane would have handled all your rough dimensioning and basic stock preparation then you would have had a longer and more precise jointer plane for shooting edges leveling off table tops generally making things straight and square and then you would have finished up with a short smoothing plane like this to get your final surface on the wood now i know it doesn't seem like a lot but i have built furniture with this exact kit of planes and it totally works but if these three planes is really all you need how in the world did this happen [Applause] stanley made their planes in sizes one through eight plus three more in between sizes for a grand total of 11 bench plants now did stanley actually think they were going to sell anybody 11 planes of course not almost no one could have afforded the whole set to begin with but understanding all these different sizes it isn't actually about woodworking it's about marketing stanley wasn't even trying to create one set of planes that every craftsman would buy they were trying to dominate the entire hand plane market by satisfying every conceivable demand with a different model of hand plane now believe it or not we can actually relate all of these planes back to our three historical planes and that's how we're gonna understand the whole stanley line not by looking at them one at a time but by breaking them up into three groups our first group of planes is the smoothers these are small short planes meant for getting the final surface on a piece of wood now the most important plane in the smoothing group is the number four this was one of the most popular planes that stanley ever produced and it's my personal favorite it's a great size to handle a lot of shop tasks and it's not too heavy so you can use it all day long without getting tired but stanley wasn't satisfied just making this plane it mostly copied the size of the most common wooden smoothing plane they wanted a lot more than that they produced many smaller sizes of smoothing plane like this number three over here and also the number two and the number one those planes are super tiny they're also rare and expensive and i don't own them stanley made these because even though this smoothing plane was common it wasn't the only kind out there a lot of craftsmen and a lot of trades would have been familiar with much smaller smoothing plane like this tiny little guy over here what staley wanted to do was create a plane for every craftsman in every situation no matter what you were used to they had something from a regular size all the way down to super tiny but that brings us up to the four and a half over here which is really quite a bit bigger and heavier than the number four and also the number is weird why do they call it a four and a half well stanley created their sizes one through eight and then they realized there were other little parts of the market other niches that they wanted to get in and crush the competition so they'd come up with a different size plane and then give it a fractional name that's where the four and a half came from here stanley was competing with scottish infill plane makers an infill is a very fancy type of plane it's got a metal body usually steel it's filled with wood and they tend to be wide very heavy planes great for precise work craftsmen loved these for smoothing and a lot of craftspeople thought that the weight of the plane had a lot to do with it they also liked the wide blade that meant that you could get a tabletop or a large piece done with fewer strokes so stanley wanted to do their best to copy that infill smoothing style they brought out the four and a half it's larger and wider and significantly heavier so it does basically the same thing that an infill plane does but it's inside of stanley's line and they could offer it at a competitive price our second family of planes is the jack four plane family in this case four is spelled f-o-r-e and it's contraction of the word b4 meaning it was the plane used before all the other planes depending on where and when you're talking about jack and 4 mean essentially the same thing it meant a medium-length plane that was used for rough stock preparation and taking off a lot of wood when you were re-dimensioning something stanley of course made a whole range of planes in this size and just like in the smoothing family there's one plane that needs special attention the number five in fact the number five is so good we should talk about it all by itself why don't you meet me down at the end of the bench the number five jack is probably the most important plane stanley ever made and it's definitely the most popular there was a period in american history where every single carpenter furniture maker and even homeowner had a number five the reason for that is the plane's unbelievable versatility when stanley designed the size and shape of this plane they just crushed it it's the exact same width as a number four but a bit longer so it'll produce a fine surface but that longer sole will really help if you're trying to true things up or create a straight line now another secret to these planes is there's at least two distinct ways that you can set them up and i've got two examples here to show you this one this is just a victor plane it's a lower cost plane made by stanley still really just as good as their main line and i've set this one up as a traditional floor plane you can see here the mouth is very wide and the iron has a ton of camber curvature to it that makes this a super aggressive plane like an antique wooden floor plane would be you can hog off huge bites of wood with this and it doesn't even take shavings it more like takes chips you can take almost an eighth of an inch per pass with this plane which makes it great when you need to waste away a lot of material really quickly now the other way you can set up a number five is a fine setup like you would with a smoothing plane and i've got that with this plane here you can see the mouth is very very small and the blade is mostly straight it only has a tiny bit of camber to it that means that this plane will work as a smoothing plane it's a little bit long but it'll get the job done and it leaves a really nice surface the longer sole also lets you do things like shoot edges or level tabletops if you don't own a jointer yet this is a good choice or if you do a lot of small and medium-sized work this will handle jointing tasks on smaller boards but it's not nearly as big or cumbersome as a big jointer plane those can be really tough to handle in the shop so i would even say if you're only going to have one plane a number five might be the perfect place to start it wouldn't even be unreasonable to own two of them i do stanley had a brilliant design with the number five but of course they weren't satisfied with that and they wanted to make a whole range of planes in the jackplane family going down from the number five they made the five and a quarter which is actually a narrower version of the regular number five jackplane stanley produced these from manual training schools and young boys that were learning to be carpenters and furniture makers the idea was they needed to learn on a plane that was the same length as a number five but smaller and lighter now moving up from the number five stanley made the five and a half another one of these weird fractional sizes and again stanley was probably competing with scottish infill plane makers in addition to their really highly regarded smoothers in filmmakers also made a style of plane called a panel plane it was a longer wider plane sort of similar to a jack but furniture makers would set them up for a very fine cut and they were usually used for smoothing out large panels in really high end cabinet work stanley wanted a piece of this lucrative market so they came out with a five and a half it was the same size as the panel plane had the same width and a lot of the same weight and it could be set up very finely so it could do the same job panel planes didn't really catch on in the united states because they're not really a part of our woodworking history but they're super popular in great britain and you can still find a lot of five and a half's there where they're also popular just as a general bench plane size a lot of people love these i've never really used mine very often but it's not because it's a bad tool it's just personal preference now the last and largest plane in the jack four plane family is the number six and this one is definitely the stepchild of the stanley family this is one of the few times they might have sort of messed up in their logic they took the basic wooden four plane and more or less copied the size of it exactly on the number six the problem with that is that a four plane that's made in wood is a very aggressive tool used to taking off big chunks of wood but because it's made out of wood it's very very light if you make the same plane out of metal it is super heavy i have tried to use this plane as a rough stock removal tool and it wears me out way too quickly it's one of the few times that i think stanley really didn't design the plane well for the task but here's the thing about the number six it's really close to a lot of other useful sizes so for instance if you wanted a five and a half but you couldn't find one you could take a number six and set it up to work pretty much exactly the same way if you need a long jointer plane but you can't afford one six will work as a jointer i've done it and it's really not a problem so if you're looking for a rarer sized stanley plane grab a number six they work great and they're cheap i did a whole video a couple years ago only about number sixes i will link to that down in the description our last family of planes is the big boys the jointers or more appropriately the number seven which stanley referred to as a triplane and the number eight which is technically a jointer plane in practical terms there isn't a huge difference between a tri plane and a jointer plane and there isn't a huge difference between these two planes either the number seven is a little bit shorter narrower and lighter and the number eight is bigger in every respect now anybody looking at these two planes is going to say my god rex look at the condition of those things why aren't they restored yet well the honest answer is i don't use super long planes very often in my work even though i work primarily by hand i just don't need them that much and when i do i really prefer wooden jointer planes these are really heavy and i find them kind of clumsy for most woodworkers the real question is do i need both of these or which one should i get the answer is they both do more or less the same thing and i recommend that you grab whatever you can find and whatever you can afford they're too similar for it to make a huge difference if you followed this whole video you've got a pretty good grasp on what all the different models of stanley plans are for but you still might be saying hey rex i'm a beginner what do i actually buy well here's my recommendations for which planes to buy and in which order i would start off with a plain old stanley number four people refer to these as smoothing planes but there's so much more than that an adjustable metallic plane like this is incredibly versatile and it'll handle a ton of different bench tasks throughout the whole day if you follow my super basic woodwork for humans series you've seen me build a bunch of pieces of furniture using nothing but a number four it's totally doable now once you have a decent number four and that's taken care of the next thing you want is a plane for rough stock removal and of course a great choice for that is the number five another classic plane super versatile a million uses in the shop you can buy an inexpensive one like this victor and set it up the way i have here with a very cambered iron and a wide mouth and that'll take care of rough stock preparation or planing a three quarter inch board down to a half inch board this plane will handle it if you don't have machinery in your shop once you've got these two sorted out you probably are going to want one long plane i don't think long planes are as important in a hobbyist shop as they would have been in a professional shop back in the day but if you work totally by hand you have to have at least one long plane a seven or an eight or a wooden jointer these are all great choices but if you don't have a lot of options or if you're strapped for cash i can honestly recommend a number six as an affordable option in a jointing plan i've used these for jointing i used to carry one to a shop that i worked at they work totally fine what's funny about this is we've gone all the way through all 11 models of stanley plain and here we are back at the beginning jack jointer and smoother it really sort of does come down to those three planes or at least those three families of plane now we have made some advances in the last two or three hundred years and there are some modern touches you might add to your collection once you have these three sorted out the next thing that i would add would be a low angle plane this is the stanley sweetheart low angle plane and i honestly think these are really excellent they're not the incredible plane that everybody seems to think they are but they'll handle a lot of jobs around the shop if you need to joint or level something that's too small for your jointer your low angle jack will get the job done they can also work okay as a smoothing plane they're a little bit long for that but they work and they're amazing as a shooting plane i do a lot of hand sawing which means i shoot a lot of end grain on the shooting board and i've never found anything that's close to being as good as my low angle jack as an affordable shooter these only cost a little over a hundred dollars they're made well i've had this one for like a year and it's still going great i can honestly recommend one of these once you have your three basics already sorted out when i first started woodworking i was really overwhelmed by all the hand planes out there i didn't know which ones i should get so i just got all of them and frankly i ended up with a lot of planes that i never use and they just collect dust i made this video because i'm hoping to save some of the beginners out there some of that trouble and some of that expense hopefully as you watch this video you figured out which planes you need and which ones you don't definitely start with a number four but if you decide you want something heavier and wider the number four and a half is always out there waiting for you no matter what you want stanley made something to try and fit the bill and before i go i always have to thank my patrons on patreon they're the ones who make it possible for me to write and film and edit these videos and then just give them away for free they're also an amazing community of craftspeople it's a community that i'm really proud to be a part of if you'd like to be a part of that community go on over to patreon.comkrueger and check out the early access rewards discussion forum and other extras that i have for the people who make these videos possible and wait before you go i have to dedicate this video to my seven-year-old daughter stella who has been sitting 10 feet over there quietly coloring the entire time i've been here talking about these plans she knows daddy has to work and she's been perfectly quiet the whole time which is not easy she even made us a drawing oh my hand plain and look look what it says across the top stella with love to all kiddo i couldn't have said it better myself thanks for watching

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 75,513

Rating: 4.9671903 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, handtool woodworking, hand planes, hand plane, hand tool woodworking, woodworking tools, woodworking planes for beginners, woodworking planes explained, hand plane shootout, woodworking plans, plane, smoothing plane, woodworking projects, woodworking videos, hand plane collection, hand plane setup, hand tools woodworking, handtools, wood plane

Id: p27uJvUhZrU

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2020