What Hand Plane Should You Buy?

[Music] last week I released a video on how to set up a number for bench plane to be a smoother and it was a big hit you guys really liked it and I got a bunch of questions that ranged from how to tune a plane to which plane should I buy and so I'm gonna be doing a hand plane series we're gonna talk about different kinds of hand planes how to tune them up and that kind of thing but first I want to talk about which hands you should buy what are most important what are sort of novelty or not needed and sort of fun to have and where you should start and work on your collection this is a collection I've been working on for a few years and there's some that I really want to replace some that I really don't like some that I love and I wanted to talk about them with you and the different types of hand planes and what they're for I wanted to start by kind of quickly going over all of them and what they were and then we'll talk about which ones I think you should buy first and then which ones you should buy after that so starting over here on the Left I have a violin makers plane which nobody needs or unless you're a violin maker but it's super cute and a fan of the show gave it to me so I thought I'd include it then I have a rabbit plane which is actually a three-in-one plane that can be switched from a chisel plane to a ball nose plane to a rabbet plane pretty easily I have two different block planes a low-angle block plane and then a rabbiting block plane to number three is here I have one set up as a scrub plane and one as a smoothing plane number four which the adjustment lever is busted but I use occasionally number four smoother by Stanley a number four smoother by Lee Nielsen a five and a half by I think grizzly I don't know it was a cheap when I got when I first got started but works actually amazingly well a Stanley Sweetheart low-angle Jack plane a Lee Nielsen low-angle Jack plane a Bailey number six that I refurbished from Stanley and then again I think this was maybe a grizzly hand plane or something again a cheap number seven that I bought when I first got started and then of course I have a Lee Nielsen router plane here so first I wanted to talk about bevel up versus bevel down low angle versus standard angles so your low angle planes like these two jack planes this smoother both of these block planes the frog angles at about twelve degrees and then you sharpen it 225 degrees giving you an attack angle 37 degrees 37 and a half degrees and that is great for smoothing and for kind of straight grained woods Manama kn'l job and you can open and close the mouths on the low angles and control your chip removal speed and that kind of thing where as kind of your standard frog angle is going to be great all around plane those are at 45 degrees and then you sharpen 225 degrees with sometimes a micro bevel of 30 degrees those are gonna be great for more figured woods and that kind of thing but usually you know there's a reason number four is the most popular plane it really is a great all-around smoother kind of getting quick things done that sort of thing the rabbiting block planes are designed for getting right up to an edge and being able to clear material in a corner and then of course a router plane is designed for what you would use a powered router for but it's to be used by hand and then the violin makers playing is for doing very very very detailed work inlay work and smoothing in a very very small area so let's talk about which ones you should buy so obviously the first thing you should buy is a low angle block plane a low angle block plane is the most common plane I use in the shop I use it for everything I keep it really sharp I keep it so it takes really shallow passes unless I'm doing a chamfer on a corner you can use it to clean up glue squeeze-out you can use it to clean up any imperfections if you need to if you you know nicked an area you can sort of smooth it out with your your low angle block plane there the most versatile thing in fact I'm gonna make a leather pouch that goes on my vest because I use it so much I'm always like walking to the other side of the shop to go get it from where I used it last because I never put things back the other planes that I would get first if you're if you're gonna buy if you have to start out and you can only buy three planes I would get a low angle Jack plane a block plane and a number four the reason being a low angle Jack plane can be used for light jointing if you have a really wavy surface over a very long edge it's gonna be tough to do but it can work they're great smoothers for straight grain type stuff for stuff that's not too figured whereas you can set up your number for to be a smoother as well and you can even get another blade for it and put a heavy camber on there and use it as a scrub plane but if you're gonna start with three planes use I would get these three the block plane the number four and the low angle Jack now I'm a big proponent of violence cry once there's a lot of people who'd like to restore planes I've done videos on restoring planes and there's nothing wrong with that especially when you're first getting started and you're really on a budget the Lee Neil sin or the Veritas planes can get quite pricey I think this is three hundred and twenty-five dollars same about with the Veritas but I did on the low angle I got this Stanley sweetheart one I'll leave a link to all of these down in the description but I got started with this Stanley and honestly especially if you're having a tough time planing like you just can't figure it out go watch my smoothing video but a low-angle jack will make you feel like you know what you're doing it really is kind of a great beginner's plane it does lots of different things and it really makes you feel like you're you're kind of doing a better job because hand planes can be pretty frustrating when you first get started so I did I really enjoyed the Stanley sweetheart low angle but I love this Lee Nielson so much more that I really wish I bought it first and not just spent one hundred and thirty on this one one thing I really like about the Lee Nielson besides its build quality in the fact that they come ground flat and all that you have to do very little work to get it ready to plane is they have some grooves cut into the Frog that help align your plane iron so that it's square to the body of the of the plane the Stanley sweetheart does have an adjustment lever and it does come with a two tool steel which is really good all the new Stanley's do it's a great tool steel because it stays sharp much much longer it's also harder to sharpen because it's a harder steel so it takes longer to get a grind going but great plane so that's what I would start off with and then from there what I would do because you can set up your number four as a smoother and a scrub plane this could be a smoother as well as a heavy removal item and then of course your block plane is your best all-around go-to guy I would get it number six or number seven now these can be very expensive brand new I have not been bullet and gotten a big one yet because typically you're not using them for fine planing I mean you're just using them to get something straight and then from there you're gonna go to a smoother and get it nice so for a big plane I don't recommend going nuts unless you got some money in your pocket you want to burn I got this number six off eBay for $40 and I did no more than sharpen it and the thing is a champion I have it set up with the Frog moved a little bit forward so it's for lighter stock removal but it gets stuff really clean really smooth and it was a great purchase I love this thing I use it all time and then surprisingly this cheap one that I bought off Amazon again I'll leave a link works great for jointing it's a big old beast number seven as long as you keep the plain iron sharp it's really good you can even replace the plain iron with something nicer but it's it gets the job done and like I said you're not trying to make stuff look nice when you're using a number seven you're just trying to get it flat and so that if you're gonna save money somewhere that's a great place other planes that I absolutely love this Leigh Nielson rabbiting block plane is by far my favorite plane that I've ever owned it is so cool it's a pain in the butt to sharpen because it doesn't fit in a jig and it because of the shape of the iron it's kind of weird to do by hand and so it's a pain in the butt to sharpen it doesn't have an adjustable mouth but it is so versatile it has knickers on the side so when you're using it as a rabbiting plane it severs the fibers ahead of the blade so you don't get tear out so I use this for cleaning up rabbits all the time and then it's a great all-around plane it's a2 tool steel it holds its edge forever so if you want to spend some money on something that you're going to love the Leigh Nielson rabbiting block plane it does everything a block plane does except it doesn't have an adjustable mouth so when it comes to like super smoothing operations you could this is going to tear out more than that although it doesn't it's not like a big problem not having it but it's the other part that's hard about it has no lateral adjustments so it's a little tough to get aligned I just use a hammer and kind of knock it on both sides but again if you're going to spend some money on the blokland go with the lee nielsen rabbiting block plane and then from there this lee nielsen smoother this number four is awesome really great plane but it is certainly a luxury item these kind of things I would buy towards the end of your collection because they don't add anything to your arsenal that you can't already do but they certainly are luxury item when you're trying to get buttery smooth surfaces on like walnut maple cherry really really cool the the next plane that I would buy in my collection is a router plane these are great for doing hinge mortises for cleaning out the bottoms of grooves where you can't really get anything else to clean it up these are really really versatile there's I used to have an inexpensive one I got on Amazon it got the job done it obviously wasn't as nice as this Lee Nelson it comes with an edge guide and you can get different sized blades for it but this is a phenomenal plane and the next one I would buy in my collection these number three's I just got because I they don't really do anything that a number four can't do you know if you're doing some fine stuff it's great but you don't need them that's not something I would buy unless you're kind of into collecting them like I am I just like them because they're fun to use they're little I can just pick it up and do a couple things really quick and it's cool to kind of have all the numbers I think I'm still looking for a number two and number one but those are crazy expensive and big collectors items so if anybody want to send me one feel free my address is in the About section this is a great shop box plain it's less than a hundred dollars you can get it on Amazon delivered in two days it's a rabbiting plane it's a bullnose plane so you can get right up to the edges of stuff and a chisel plane so you can get right in the corners it's there's an allen key in here it's a simple adjustment you just switch it out and it's it's a great plane I would highly recommend putting that into your collection if you've gotten to this point and then from there you know get into your sort of specialty planes which would be like the Lee Nielson smoother this is a stanley number for smoother I have which to be honest I think I said it in the the plane setup video it's just not my favorite plane it's bulky the adjustments are loose on it you know it in the smoothing plane video we just released we did get it to get ultra-smooth savings and we got it to perform well but again it's great if you don't want to spend the $275 for early Neil Center Veritas then you can definitely tune it up really well but it takes a lot of tuning up when you get it to get it to work and then from there you can get some kind of mid-sized plans like the five and a half that will be in between jointing and smoothing you can kind of cover larger areas of things and get a little bit of a better surface as you work your way down the plains and you're trying to get a finish ready surface all in all hand plans are great if you're a hand - only woodworker of course this is going to be something that you really invest in but if you're a power tool hybrid work worker like me who uses hand planes to sort of round out the experience and sort of work in between things that power tools can't get to or you know if I have a type of wood that is having a tough time with the machines and I need to do something slower and kind of get it perfect without having to just sand for two hours that's when I bust out the hand planes so we're gonna dive deeper into the hand playing arena over the next couple weeks we're gonna talk about how to tune up a plane we already talked about how to set up a smoother so we'll talk about how to set up a scrub plane and a jointing claim I'm gonna share with you what I know about hand planes and hopefully that helps you make more educated decisions about what to purchase and also what it is that you want out of your hand planes it's so important when someone asked me which one they should buy I say well what do you like to do because that makes a big difference depending on what you do is where I would spend my money and there's no right or wrong answer for different people but it's just important that you make the decisions that are going to have the most value for your woodworking so guys I hope you found this informative if you're new here please subscribe we'd love to have you thanks for watching guys stay safe in the shop I'll see you next time you

Channel: Jonathan Katz-Moses

Views: 98,615

Rating: 4.9320855 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, hand plane, hand tools, hand planes, plane, hand tool, jack plane, smoothing plane, bench plane, best hand plane, block plane, plane (product category), low angle jack plane, hand plane review, hand planer, best hand planer, what hand plane to use, hand tool woodworking, what handplane to buy, hand plane shootout, handplane, hand plane blade angle, which hand plane blade angle is best, what plane to use

Id: v2WbVksjYuw

Length: 13min 17sec (797 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2019