How to Make Grooves, Rabbets and Dados with Hand Planes

[Music] now with the case doveet Tails all cut and fit it's time to move on to the rest of the joinery for the cases um so what I'm going to be doing now there are three different types of additional joinery that these cases are going to get the center case is going to have a Groove plowed along the back Edge to accept the back of the cabinet and this groove is going to be inset several inches so that there's actually a space at the back of the cabinet cinet where um you know uh plugs and receptacles and things can sort of nestle in and um not get crushed by the back of the cabinet the center cabinet is also going to have a DAT running down the center of the top and bottom to receive a vertical Center divider that's going to divide the cabinet in two and then finally the side cabinets are going to have a rabbit in the back to accept their backs now all of these joints are going to be made using Joiner planes so let's take a second and look at the planes that we're going to be using to cut these joints so the first of the Joiner planes is the plow plane we're going to use this for plowing grooves now the plow plane has a skate rather than a sole because these typically came with a set of irons that ranged from uh an e/ of an inch wide up to uh 9/16 or 5/8 of an inch wide um usually you end up finding them just with one iron left in them it's usually the quarter inch and that's okay because the quarter inch is usually the most used of the irons um in addition to the skate um there's a a movable fence this one is secure with wedges there are some that are secured with um screws there are different types of mechanisms for securing the arms of the fence and the fence is to set the distance of the cutter away from the edge of the board that you're scribing and there's also typically a depth stop now this one has a very old style depth stop that's just made out of wood with a wooden thumb screw here um you will frequently in more common um and more recent plow planes see um brass or steel depth stops the second plane I want to talk about second of the Joiner planes that we're going to use is the dado plane uh this one is very similar to the plow plane and that it's meant for plowing a groove or a dado But A datato is for is is a cross graen Groove so while a Groove would be considered along the grain this way a DAT would be a Groove across the grain of the wood this plane is a little bit different than the plow in that one the iron is skewed that means it's it's not straight across the sole of the plane it's actually at an angle what this does is it helps to sever the fibers cross grain fibers more easily it Al has a scoring iron in the front um these two little nicking knickers on the side here score the sides of the DAT before the trailing iron shears away the wood fibers now these planes come in single widths not like the plow that would come with a set of iron so when you look for data planes you need to look for one in the size data that you need these also have depth stops sometimes they're fitted on the outside of the stock sometimes s they're morti into the stock and the thumb screw at the top adjusts the depth of the DAT finally there are a couple different kinds of rabbit planes so this first one looks sort of similar to the DAT plane um this is a fenced rabbit plane otherwise known as a moving fillister plane um again it has a skewed iron on the bottom this one has a fence secured with screws you can also find them with fences that are similar to the pl plane it also has an iron here for again um this is for cross grain work for scoring the fibers these planes are designed for use along the graen as well as across the green so the skewed iron really helps across grein as well as the scoring iron which scores the shoulder of the rabbit for cross grain work and again it has a depth stop in addition to the moving fillister or fenced rabbit plane we have unfenced rabbit planes now again this one is skewed these also come in square mouth although the square versions Square mouth versions are typically a little bit more difficult to find these I don't typically use for sinking rabbits um if you look in Peter Nicholson's mechanics companion he does note that the moving fillister would have been used for sinking a rabbit and the unfenced rabbit plane would be used for adjusting and smoothing the bottom and sides of the rabbit to your scribe lines to your mark and gauge lines you can use these for sinking a rabbit as well but you need to use your fingers as a fence to guide the depth of the rabbit so let's start by using the plow plane to plow the groove so my board is secured my panel's secured to my bench toop with my hold fast I'm planing into the planing stop um and I have the crochet set below the top of the bench so that it doesn't interfere with with the fence of the plane so that allows me to fully support the board and not have to hang the panel over the side of the bench toop now one of the tricks to using a plow plane is getting it started um the the great thing about joinery planes is that they don't have to be set up to take a super fine super smooth cut you're cutting joinery you're not cutting a show Surface here so if the bottom of the groove is a little bit rough it's no big deal that's not going to be seen in the finished piece the idea with joinery planes is you're looking to make these joints quickly and efficiently um not spend all day doing it so this plane is set for a fairly rank cut one of the easiest ways to get these started is to actually start at the end of the cut so I'll start by making a couple passes just here at the edge and you'll see I'm actually planing Against the Grain here that's one of the drawbacks of the Joiner planes is really you don't have left and right handed versions um you're going to end up planting Against the Grain probably 50% of the time so you start at the end and gradually extend that cut as you deepen it until you're making a full length pass now notice one thing here is that I've laid this out so that my groove is going to fall inside side a socket here and through the edge of the the tail um by having the groove fall inside a socket and and a half blind This Groove will be covered up by the lap of the dovetail so you won't see it in the finished piece so we can go ahead now and continue plowing this groove my left hand is holding the fence against the side I'm not pushing forward with this hand it's merely holding the fence against the side of the stock to keep everything controlled and keep this plane vertical my right hand is doing all the pushing now another thing you can do with these planes is use them sort of choppy unlike a a smooth plane or a joiner so by doing this I'm focusing down at the end finishing the cut down here and then I can just gradually work my way back and this works really well for longer boards like the top and bottom of the case with the depth stock once I get to the bottom of the cut the plane simply stops cutting and I know I'm done okay so let's move on to the rabbit now as I mentioned before I'm going to sink the rabbit or make the initial Cuts with the moving fillister plane and this is because it has a fence that I can set to make the rabbit the width or depth that I want and it has a depth stop so I can set it for uh the bottom of the cut then I'll come back and and I will clean it up with the unfenced rabbit so here's the top board for my one of my side uh cases you can see there's a couple knots here so it's probably going to be a little difficult down this end with a little bit of tough graen but uh the skewed iron should help get through that um similar to the plow plane it can help to start at the end but you don't have to and once again you can see I'm not really taking super fine shavings here I'm trying to peel away this wood and get this joint cut as quickly and efficiently as possible now it can help with a rabbit plane to start the cut by leaning it slightly so only the corner is cutting and you might be able to see on the camera here that this rabbit is slightly angled um the with the corner deeper than the outside edge that's okay to start the cut that actually can help you to start the cut because of often times with a rabbit plane the tendency is to push down harder on the outside edge causing the outside of the rabbit to tip down so I like to start with a slight angle upward and then adjust it later as I get close to final depth to keep the rabbit square and just like before once the depth stop bottoms out the plane will stop cutting and you know you've got it plain to depth now if you need to you can come back with your unfenced rabbit and square this up [Music] and with the unfenced planes if need be you can also ride them on their side on the rabbit to clean up the shoulder [Music] line and our rabbit's done the dado plane is slightly different because it doesn't have a fence of its own this is because you're typically using the dado plane in the middle of a board somewhere not along its Edge like you would for a plow plane or a rabbit plane what that means is we have to find some other way to guide This Plane because you're not going to be able to just guide it freehand so we have to attach a fence to our workpiece rather than ATT having a fence attached to the plane so you can see here I've simply used a hold fast and ANF clamp to attach a board that I plain straight to the edge where that data is going to ride now there's a knife line scribed right along that straight edge I don't know that you can see it on the camera but I measured where I wanted my data before I attached this fence and I use the framing square and my striking knife to knife a line where the side of that data is going to be this is going to be a 3/4 in Dado so the DAT plane is going to come out to here and make a 3/4 in wide dat um you can also use nails to temporarily attach this fence very common um in Period pieces to find small holes underneath a dado on the inside of a case where a temporary fence was uh temporarily attached with nails um but since this is a more contemporary piece and um this top is going to be very visible um I decided to go with clamping it instead of nailing it on now one of the things with the DAT plane is because we're planing a cross grain we need to define the outside edges of that dato with the scribing iron first you would need to do the same thing if you were working across screen with the rabbit plane so we're going to start this plane by dragging it backwards and dragging the scoring iron holding the fence tightly holding the plane tightly to the fence and I'm just going to drag the plane backwards and what you're going to see is that scoring iron is going to define the width of that dat for me so now you should be able to see I have a nice knifed Edge for the width of that dat and I'll usually make two or three light passes so that I'm sure I've got that data well defined and then again I'm going to start at the far end short Strokes working my way back and it's important here to use this hand to keep that plane up against the fence you'll see I rocked a little bit um and that caused some scratching and scraping over here that's okay because that's on the inside of the joint and I'm going to cut that out with subsequent passes but if I would have done it on the outside here that's going to show later on so helps to take your [Music] time and again similar to the other two planes this planes set up to take a fairly thick cut we're not looking for a smooth plane type surface here we're looking to get rid of this material as quickly as possible just like before once the depth stop bottoms out on the top of the board the plane will stop cutting now if you're used to making Doos with a router or table saw you may find the process using a uh a data plane a little bit backwards because in this case we don't make the The Joint to fit the panel that's going to go in the joint instead we make the panel to fit the joint so it's important in the case of a dado and for most joinery when cutting it with planes to cut the joint first unlike with a table saw or router where you may make your panel first and then cut the joint this panel I made in plained over size because I know I'm going to have to fit the panel to the Joint later on the DAT plane that I use cuts a 3/4 in Dado so I need this panel to be 3/4 of an inch when I PL when I plane it up um I will plane the panel to fit the joint as you can see right now the panel's a little bit wide for the joint but probably 10 or 15 passes with a plane so what I'll do is I'll take a smoothing plane to the center divider and plane it until it fits this dado and the nice thing about using a dado plane um and planing the panel like this is I don't need to PL the entire panel to fit the joint all I have to do is focus my effort on the edge that's going to go into the joint and I can just PL this panel until it fits right in that dado so that's about it we're about ready to go ahead and glue this case up um I hope you found this episode informative and got an idea for the power of the joinery plane um as you can see they're really fast to use and I mean in the time that it would have taken just to set up a router really for one of these Cuts uh I was able to go ahead knock my boards down and cut three different kinds of joints so um you know they can be very quick for if you're cutting just a few joints um so I hope hope this will encourage you to give these planes a try I think you'll find there're a lot of fun [Music] thanks for watching

Channel: Bob Rozaieski Fine Woodworking

Views: 9,110

Keywords: woodworking, hand tools, dado, rabbet, groove, plane, plow, plough, fillester

Id: M7yWtD7EJ08

Length: 18min 42sec (1122 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 29 2014