If you need to hand plane very small pieces of wood you’ll soon discover that it isn’t that easy to do it in the conventional manner. One solution, however, is to adopt the coopers method of inverting the plane and holding it rigid, while you push the wood over the blade instead. Coopers jointing planes are between 2 foot and 6 foot long, but most of them fall into the four to five foot mark. They’re usually set on a stand or fixed to a low bench. While the average workshop may not have the luxury of having a coopers jointer, you can still use the same method by holding the plane in the jaws of your bench vice or your workmate. A note of caution though – be careful about cranking the vice up too tight as the casting may break from too much pressure. If you use a wooden plane then the pressure that’s exerted will be more evenly distributed but a basic rule of thumb is still to not overtighten. With the hand plane upside-down in a vice its a matter of just guiding the pieces over the plane blade. The only problem with this is that, [...]

You can find this original article on Handplane Central at Hand Planing Small Items

While you don’t need any sort of “specialty” plane to use on plastic laminates the issue is mainly one of blade longevity. A blade ground at the normal angle of of 25 to 30 degrees soon becomes quite dull when used on these materials. What’s really needed is a higher blade angle and a more durable blade edge so that the blade “scrapes” the surface of the plastic laminate, rather than cut through it. Fortunately this can be achieved quite cheaply with a normal Bailey style bench plane and a “spare” blade and chip-breaker. Grind your spare blade in the normal manner and at 30°. There’s no need to finesse over the sharpness of it so honing the blade is not necesary. Once that’s done, flip the blade over on the other side and grind a secondary angle at around 45°. This will end up giving you a side profile similar to the one in the illustration. As there’s no need for the chip-breaker to break the shaving in the traditional manner, its still useful to have it so that the blade can be adjusted easily. One problem though is that it’s now too long for the purposes of this [...]

You can find this original article on Handplane Central at Planing Plastic Laminates

When you have to plane end grain or a specially hard wood you no doubt skew the plane at an angle so that it makes a shearing out. Why? Because you have found from experience that it eases the work. But have you considered just why this is? Well, in the first place skewing the plane round gives it more of a slicing cut. Think of when you carve the joint. You don’t just force the knife down; you draw it across the meat, and the more you do this the more easily it cuts. This is what happens on a reduced scale when you skew your plane at an angle. A greater width of blade is in operation for a shaving of the same width. For instance in Fig. 1 a piece of wood 1 in. wide is being planed, and when the plane is held square as at A it is clear that a 1 in. length of the cutter is doing the cutting. If, however the plane is held at an angle, say, 45 deg., shaving is still 1 in. wide, a length of nearly 1-1/2 in. of the cutter is in operation. There is more in [...]

You can find this original article on Handplane Central at Using Hand Planes – The Shearing Cut