What PLANES do you NEED?

so when you first start woodworking is often confusing to work out what planes you actually need what size do I get what type do I get what the bloody hell does this thing even do so in this video I'm going to talk you through each lease what they do what they excel at what they're not very good at and hopefully answer some questions for you so what is on the menu today well as an overview we are starting with bench planes so they're going to be the most common thing using all of your woodworking secondly we're going to cover block planes thirdly we are going to cover joinery planes so shoulder planes and router planes and finally we are going to cover specialist planes so a scraper plane and a scrub plane so let's get started with bench planes so if I'm to simplify this down to its bare bones these will go down from the teeny tiny number 1 all the way through to the absolutely monstrous number 8 and in most cases all manufacturers stick to these and they're actually the old Stanley sizes so one two three four five six seven eight but there are a few curveballs in there for example a number four you can also get a four and a half which is pretty much exactly the same length it's just got a wider body and a wider blade on it you can also get the same thing for the number five you can get a five and a half which is again exactly the same length just a wider body on it so that would be a four and a half five and a half however they're confusing here's if you go to a number seven and get a seven and a half that makes it a low-angle don't ask me why I have absolutely no idea why they do this but if you're after a plane of this length with a wider body go for the number eight there is a little bit more width on that so I mentioned low angles this right here is a low angle Jack plane so again this is a number five probably the most versatile size you can choose but as you can see about when it's bed at 45 degrees this one is bed at 12 degrees so if you watch my reducing tear up video you'll see why use these and you'll see the advance just this has over a standard bed angle of 45 degrees and you can also get number fours as low angles as well again sharing exactly the same benefits as this low angle Jack just with a shorter sole on it so we all know what bench planes are used for flattening faces squaring edges sort of general workshop use no toolbox is complete without at least one of these tools so now it begs the question which once you actually need well the number one you don't really need that it's more of a gimmick so get rid of that in terms of Jack planes I tend to find that the low angle Jack is a lot more versatile again if you don't know why watch my reducing tear up video and you'll find out so I'll probably get rid of this one in terms of jointers you've got the number seven or the number eight and you've also got the seven and a half don't forget which is a low angle version of this I've got a low angle plane here so I don't need the seven and a half but choosing between these two depends if you want to be able to wrestle the extra weight of the number eight you've got an extra inch or two on the end and you've also got a wider body on it and that does add quite a bit of weight and it's quite a lot of effort using this my work doesn't usually go up to that scale but it would be lovely to own it however I would just go for the number seven so let's get number eight and finally smoothing planes so same sort of thing as to the number seven and number eight it depends if you want the wider body or not so again I don't really find it useful wider body planes the only thing that I do like about them is that they add a little bit of extra weight so if planes you want to be able to keep them in the cup and if the plane is doing that work for you then it makes planing a lot easier with my number four I've got this in bronze as opposed to iron and that adds a lot of weight to it anyway making it a similar way to this four-and-a-half despite being a smaller body if this one wasn't made of bronze and was made of iron and it was significantly lighter than the four and a half I would probably go for the four and a half just to have that extra weight on it so for me I'm gonna get rid of the four and a half but just bear in mind that the weight can really help with these when you start going up to number Seven's and eights that weight can be quite troublesome to handle but something like this it really helps having that extra weight so let's get rid of that and there we go so that is the three basic planes I would go for and these are the ones that I own now the only reason I've actually got the number seven is because I was making a guitar a few years ago and I'll put a little thing to my portfolio up in the top corner you can view that if you want but that was to make the fretboard on it I don't find a lot of use for it nowadays I generally just stick to these two so if you were to choose three planes your basic kit go for these but for furniture making on my sort of scale generally these two do everything for me if I'm flushing off through all sides or something like that number four is really nice if I'm doing tapers on legs or just general workshop stuff the low angle jack because it's so versatile I find a lot of use of that so there we go now let's go on to block planes so onto block planes similar case the bench planes a few different sizes you can get and different blade angles as well so to start with this is a nine and a half and for example this has a wider body and a low angle blade this one here is a premium one from Veritas narrower body than the nine and a half with a low angle blade on it but you can obviously still get ones with narrower bodies and lower blades with a lesser quality tool like this I just got this one because it's shiny and it's got a few gimmicks on it and I'm just a bit of a flash bastard to be honest and finally that is an apron plain just a small handy version of one of these in reality I wouldn't say that size is much of a factor to choose from between these just choose whichever one fits your hands the best however one thing I would say is make sure that it is a low-angle all of these here are low angles that you can get them bed slightly higher don't see a lot of use for it these are really handy for trimming endgrain for example where you just want to keep the pressure on a localized area and get a nice clean cut if you've got a higher angle on that it's harder to slice through end grain so far you just stick with a low angle to these but for me I just like the shiny one to be honest and it also has Veritas is premium steel in it which I wanted to try if you haven't seen the video where I did a tall duel between a1 a2 and P and b11 be sure to watch that the card is up here so next let's go on to joinery planes so joinery planes again you can get them in different sizes so this one here is a router plane this one here is a small router plane this one here is a medium shoulder plane and that one here is called a detail rabbet plane but it is a former shoulder plane but for my work I haven't actually found a use for the smaller ones just yet I tend to get by with just these two so-so characteristics of a rail to plane well this one here works exactly the same as your old screaming electrical router except you can't cut overloads with it obviously so it really excels at cleaning out the bottom of grooves to a certain depth and you can do that by adjusting these and that is moving the blade up and down they also have depth stops on them as well a shoulder plane is really good for trimming shoulders for example and also trimming the cheeks of Tenon's characteristics of this is that the blade is flush with the edges of the tool it's not limited by the sides of the mouth as you are on a bench plane and block plane so you can essentially cut these to an infinite depth which like a router plane that makes them very good at cutting grooves to a certain depth and you can obviously choose the size and shoulder plane you want to suit the width of grooves that you need now if you watch my workbench video you'll know that I use these a lot when I was trimming the Tenon's to go into the legs and also the stub tenon going into the end cap as well a router plane if you watched my crane off cabinet series you'll know that I use these for clearing out the hinge recesses I had the cabinet all stood up and I needed to clean out the hinge recesses on it you don't want to be doing that with an electrical router obviously because holding that thing on its side would have just been absolutely catastrophic and doing it with a chisel you can do it but you don't get the precise depth control that you can get with one of these so well I did stuck it on its side and trimmed out the hinge recesses like that so really handy tool to have both of these it's hard to choose between them if I was to get one of them in my toolkit I would just say buy them as you need them every tool kit can benefit from one of these and your joinery will thank you for it so finally let's go on to the specialist planes so specialist planes are exactly that they're not massively versatile tools and they are usually used for one purpose only this one here is a cabinet scraper and if you watch my video on sharpening a card scraper basically all this is is a holder for one of these this has a slightly thicker blade on them but what these really really excel at is if you've got a big wide surface to scrape this will allow you to keep it perfectly flat while you're reducing that tear on it like I said in the other video if you're using one of these it's very easy to start putting bumps and stuff in one of these because you don't have a flat reference surface on the bottom this one will allow you to keep that flat surface while also reducing the terror the trade-off of one of these is that they are a little bit of a pig to set up I haven't really messed around with these in the past and still haven't found a method to sharpen them properly and set them up properly so some of you are asking if I was going to do a video on setting up one of these unfortunately I'm not like say don't use them enough not to you can't always setting them up and I don't want to just make a video for the sake of it if I don't actually know what I'm talking about this one here is a scrub plane looks very similar to the bench planes over there until I turn it over and you look at the blade on this thing and I say the reason this is a specialist plane is because it is for one use only and that is hogging off a ton of material that Canberra on the blade allows you to take off really aggressive cuts and if you're working with rough sawn timber and doing hands or only work one of these basically does the work of a thickness er if you need to reduce the thickness of timber by a considerable amount again if you're doing it hand tool only one of these is the tool for you it has a very thick blade on it to cut down on vibration as you'll slamming it through the material the handle on it is bigger than a bench plane so whereas a bench plane you meant to grip it with three fingers and have your index finger pointing down onto the Frog like that this one is built for a full hand grip it's also quite lightweight as well which you probably wouldn't but you'd think for something that you want to be hogging away material you're gonna want momentum of a heavier body but as you will also expect if this was really heavy and you using this to slam through material you are going to get knackered from using it so it's actually quite a light tool to use no I don't actually own a scrub plane with these characteristics and body shape but I have converted my old Stanley number five which was an absolutely awful tool into a scrub plane for course work now did that boy foiling open the mouth putting a massive camber on the blade and that was hogging away a lot of material but like I say being heavy at all it was extremely tiresome to use that's where a proper scrum playing like this would be very handy but like I said it's not like Pokemon you haven't got to catch em all you just need the Select view that's going to suit your work the best my advice is to start with a low angle Jack plane because that's going to be the most versatile tool you own and also a block plane of some description like to say go for a low angle if possible smoothing plane nice to have but your Jack plane can cover a lot of the things that the smoothing plane can do router plane shoulder plane if you can't choose between them I would personally say that a shoulder plane is a little bit more versatile but other people may have different opinions by them as you need them if I were you cabinet scraper yeah I've never needed it to be honest if I'm wanting to reduce tear out on a certain area but also wanting to keep it flat I stick a high angle blade in my low angle Jack plane again more versatile and finally a scrub plane maybe you need it maybe a tone its bends if you're doing hand to only work or not and you're working rough sawn timber if your Timbers tends to be really twisted and you just need to take the high corners off that is the plane for you but again buy it as you need it I would just start with these two low angle Jack block plane so there we go any questions chuck them in the comments below and hopefully if I'm not useful [Music] [Music]

Channel: Matt Estlea

Views: 304,143

Rating: 4.9419985 out of 5

Keywords: woodwork, handplanes, starting woodworking, beginning woodworking, start woodworking, what tools do i need to start woodworking, what plane to get first, what hand plane to get first, starter woodwork tools, best handplane, what handplane to get first, difference between planes, bench planes, joinery planes, block planes, specialist planes, lie nielsen, rider, veritas, nx60, shoulder plane, veritas shoulder plane, veritas router plane, router plane, scrub plane

Id: v0VItLJTRnU

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 04 2017