The Legendary Scottish Infill Plane

if you're buying your tools if you're buying your planes you have a lot of choices you can choose tradition or a little bit of europe you can go with the reliable old standard or yesterday's forgotten invention or you can choose a strange romantic sense of mystery that's somehow captured in a lump of wood and iron it's an option [Applause] if you've even thought about buying hand tools you've heard someone talk about infill planes oh but it's more like this [Music] there is so much myth and legend built up around these tools that it's like they're the freemasons or the illuminati well maybe that's overselling it but these tools are soaked in rumor and hype and as a woodworker you might be wondering what all the fuss is about i mean it's a plane right yes it's a plane it takes shavings off wood but why does it look so different i mean it looks like a british sports car all flowing curves and the occasional awkward lump just to let you know it's from sturdy old england the design of this plane is saying something it's saying luxury refinement tradition oh and money these things cost a boatload of money from the very start these were upper crust tools for british cabinet makers and high-end furniture metal body planes date back to the roman empire but they mostly disappeared during the middle ages and wooden planes dominated carpentry and furniture making for over a thousand years slowly small numbers of metal planes began appearing as specialty instrument makers tools and miter planes designed for tough end grain trimming these tools were rare and most woodworkers never touched one until the 19th century when the industrial revolution exploded across europe and america and everything changed forever a woodworker in the 1800s would have seen the rise of steam power and highly organized factories that could turn out large numbers of identical objects these new technologies revolutionized industry but steam engines were huge and their power was mostly stationary crafts like furniture making and house building we're still out in the field where tools were powered by human muscle as the industrial age picked up speed these tools transitioned from craftsman made to factory made before finally giving over completely to new designs made from inexpensive and durable cast iron and steel materials that could now be made consistently and in large quantities in america lots of manufacturers were experimenting with cast iron mechanically adjustable planes and there was heavy competition in the market but when stanley purchased leonard bailey's patents they quickly dominated the industry and squeezed most of their competition to the margins metallic planes are heavier and more fragile than wooden plants cast iron is brittle but metal planes aren't affected by climate and don't warp with the seasons their souls don't wear and their mouths don't open so the craftsman never has to spend time patching a worn plane metallic planes were more expensive than wooden plants but they could last a craftsman his entire career and the mechanical adjuster is easy to learn if you're new on the job in the high volume high demand victorian era metal planes had a clear edge back in britain english tool makers saw the advantage of metal plane construction and their tradition of steel miter planes stuffed with wood suggested a new way of making all the plants in a cabinet maker's kit by the early 1800s british and scottish plane makers were already handcrafting bench planes encased in metal many of these were straightforward copies of existing wooden designs just wrapped in a metal shell some of these metal planes were based on iron castings but craftsmen were also developing the technique of dovetailing metal parts together although it was labor intensive and took a skilled worker to execute dovetailed construction in steel and other metals created a plane that was stable highly durable and moved smoothly across the wood rather than making the whole plane out of metal parts like the americans scottish and british plane makers filled their planes with dense timbers like rosewood combining wood and metal parts into a working tool required lots of hand work and all the precise hand fitting meant that these tools would never be well suited for factory production as the industrial age sped up and mass-produced goods overtook handmade ones the infill plane just couldn't compete they were always made in relatively small numbers and always expensive even at the height of their production an infill plane from an established maker cost almost double the comparable stanley and was triple the cost of a traditional wooden plane ironically the elite craftsmanship and luxurious materials of the infill were the very things that doomed this plane the major infill makers struggled through world war ii and soon after the war most of them disappeared now if you're used to using a vintage stanley plane you might wonder what's different about the infill well the infield plane is finely made but kind of clumsy it's a lot heavier and that weight is kind of a liability at the bench it's not nimble and easy to move around like the bailey pattern planets the interiors of these planes are also very different you've got the bailey which has a metallic frog that's got the adjuster built in but the frog itself is also movable and you can take it out if you need to file away a little bit or even replace it the infill is totally different the bed of the plane is just a solid piece of wood that is pinned to the metal shell you can't take it out you can't adjust it you really can't do anything to it the infill also has an extremely fine mouth much finer than the stanley and that's saying something because most of my stanleys have really fine mouths and they fight tear out really effectively that the infill is honestly on a totally different level now there's also kind of a mythology about infill plants people want to explain why they work well why they fight tear out effectively and here's the theory the infill has a very tight mouth the iron is pitched a little bit higher more like 47 degrees the plane has a ton of mass and the wood stuffing combined with the rigid metal shell is supposed to this is really the explanation dampen harmonic vibrations which makes the plane stay in the cut and resist shattering honestly i have no idea at the bench both of these planes take a respectable shaving there's the stanley and here's the infill they're both really nice but there are some important differences the stanley has just a just a very nimble feel it's always light on the wood and it's kind of gliding over the surface except if it runs into problem areas like i have some reversing grain at the end of this board this stanley is finely set and very sharp but you hear there's a little thunk right at the end there and that's the plane actually catching that grain and either tearing out a little bit or chattering skipping over it a tiny bit now the infill is totally different in this way the infill doesn't go over anything it goes through so as i'm using the plane it moves through whatever grain i put in front of it and it always takes a shaving this thing is like driving a precision snowplow but i should point out that the stanley's also a lot more versatile both of these planes are good for surfacing the infill probably has an edge there but i do a lot more than surface with my planes so let me get this piece of wood here and for instance i might want to chamfer the edge of it and the stanley is fantastic it's easy to balance and it's quick to adjust so while i'm working on the wood i can make this chamfer really fast and very precisely and it's not difficult i just might want to round over one of the edges to make a panel or a detail well this really also makes that easy i can switch the board around in the vise and come right across the end grain and now i've created an excellent round over detail right here it's very easy for this plane to do now the infill might do some of these things but god it's just it's like a boat anchor you just don't really want to use it for these tasks because it is so heavy and clunky it also doesn't have the versatility because the infill plane has a fixed mouth it's very fine and it can't be widened should also point out that this one and a lot of infill smoothing planes have curved sides which reduces the weight but it means you can't use them on a shooting board because they rock back and forth this is a cabinet maker's tool it is for fine woodwork it's for surfacing it's not a general purpose plane and it's not going to replace your day-to-day bench flare so look i'm a practical craftsman i care how things work and in my tool reviews i am the hype deflator the bull destroyer i won't let the tool companies get away with anything let me tell you this plane is honestly it's kind of great i meant all the things i said before this tool is bulky and heavy it's not very versatile it won't take a heavy cut hell it won't even take a medium cut but if you've got a tricky piece of wood with figure or reversing grain you can probably plane it with this tool the plane i'm using in this video is a norris and they were the only company to sell infills with an effective mechanical adjuster this single stem above the blade controls both the depth and lateral adjustment and it's not some quaint old curiosity it works really well in fact lots of modern manufacturers are now making versions of the norris adjuster even on mid-price planes a plane like this one can't be your do everything bench plane but it's also not meant to be if you want to add one of these to your toolkit you should think of it as a specialty tool it won't replace your standard smoother or jack for most operations but you can keep it sharp and finely set and pull it out just at the end of each piece for getting that final surface on the board this tool compares favorably with the lee nielsen and veritas planes i've tested i'm not saying it's just as good but it's in the ballpark and it cost me less and this all brings us to those final questions do you want one of these how do you get one well as to the first question i would say this is not an essential tool but it is a useful tool these planes were never made in the huge numbers that stanley plans were but they were very popular with british cabinet makers at a time when those guys were turning out some high-level work if you aspire to that kind of fancy high-level cabinet work you probably want one of these underneath your bench so how do you get one well my first piece of advice is not ebay there are lots of vintage infills floating around the internet and with all of those numbers you are going to find some bad repairs some modified planes and some downright forgeries being pushed by unscrupulous dealers none of that is stuff that you want to get into the first thing you need to do is educate yourself about these tools for that i recommend hans bruner's excellent book it's a good read not very expensive and i will link to it down in the description after you get educated i suggest that you buy from a reputable tool dealer i bought this plane from patrick leach he is a super well-known american tool dealer with a sterling reputation for only selling the best goods i'm very happy with the plane that i bought from him i will link to him down in the description as well now because i educated myself before i bought this plane i knew exactly what i wanted this is a post-war norris plane and the post-war norris planes are not very collectible they were no longer dovetailed construction instead norris had switched to a cast iron body not very different from stanley they also had gotten rid of rosewood and instead this plane is infilled with common beach that's been stained to look like rosewood these things make the tool much less desirable to collectors and also a lot cheaper but they still work really well all the key elements are still there and norris was still producing a pretty high quality tool this tool is also good as a user tool because it's well it's newer i mean a lot of infills date from the 1850s or even earlier and a lot of those planes are just they're worn out this one isn't the mouth is still tight the adjuster isn't sloppy there's still plenty of iron left this is a working tool and you know i'll be honest there's also look i don't go in for all that warm fuzzy stuff with tools but there is a sense of history here this tool came out of great britain just after the war norris like so many other british institutions barely survived the war years and when they emerged they were a diminished version of themselves making a slightly less high quality product than before but i do like to think about everything that they survived i mean hitler the nazis the blitz my god they they soldiered on after all of that and they were still producing a high level tool norris wasn't the same after the war but nobody else was either and i kind of like thinking about all that stuff and when i use this plane honestly it gives me a little thrill now you might be interested in the history of woodworking and getting more into the details if you are i highly recommend mortis and tenon magazine this is their newest issue it just came out and mortise and tenon is by far my favorite woodworking magazine it's pretty expensive but it's worth it every time it comes in the mail it's like you're getting a complete woodworking book i get super excited when it shows up and i really recommend that you subscribe to these guys i will link to them in the description as well before i go i always have to say that these videos just wouldn't be possible without my patrons on patreon they give me the support and the encouragement and the community that lets me research and script and film and edit and put together these videos and give them to everybody for free which i love doing i want to keep doing it if you'd like to be part of making that possible go on over to patreon.comkrueger and check out all the rewards i have for the people who make these videos possible and of course i know that i'm only here because i have great viewers so thanks for watching

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 9,621

Rating: 4.9589167 out of 5

Keywords: british infill hand planes, norris infill hand plane, slater infill hand plane, spieres infill hand plane, infill jointer plane, infill, jointer plane, metal planes, woodworking plane, legends of tabletop, learning by listening, learn while on the move

Id: bxas__ygLmg

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 28 2020