Sandpaper and Smoothing Planes

Who can love sanding? A painstaking repetitive task that kicks up dust and seems to last forever. Since I began using hand planes, I have cherished the hope that someday, somehow, sanding would be a thing of the past and hand planes or scrapers would provide the finished surface for all or nearly all of my work.

This week, David Charlesworth dashed my hopes. In the book "David Charlesworth's Furniture-makeing Techniques: A Guide to Hand Tools and Methods" he states:

"I think the concept of applying finish to a hand-planed surface is somewhat academic and not particularly useful. All applied films require sanding, and unless you can find a clever way of doing this with flexible abrasives, sanding for flatness is going to be necessary."

I found a shred of hope in the words "all applied films." Did that mean oil (like Boiled Linseed Oil) could be applied without sanding? Very preliminary research suggests that answer is "yes".

Until recently I would have said "Great! I'm already applying an oil finish" because I primarily use a product called "Tung Oil". Unfortunately, I recently learned that what Minwax and Formby's call "Tung Oil" is actually wiping varnish: a form of thinned varnish that can be applied with a rag. That means (you guessed it) I'm using a film finish.

So on my latest project (project name withheld in the name of the gifting season) I started testing whether sanding left a discernibly better surface, and sadly on this first test I think it did.

Will I be giving up my hand planes and scrapers? No. Even if I didn't use them for shaping and sizing wood, they would be safe. In the same article, Charlesworth issued another encouraging statement that suggested that planes and scrapers can at least reduce the amount of sanding required:

"It is fatal to assume that flaws in your surfaces will be disguised by a finish. The reverse is actually true. (...) This partially explains my obsession with getting the best possible surface from our hand planes and scraper planes. Tear out can be surprisingly deep and difficult to remove by hand sanding."

So my dreams are dashed, but I'm still looking to increase the number of planes in the shop and make them work as well as I possibly can.

Photo courtesy of Bob Key and Wikimedia Commons

Little Planes for Little Hands

Months ago—could it have been a year?—the Little Victor arrived in my shop tucked in an impossibly small box. I pulled her out, looked her over, and put her back in the box. There she stayed, wrapped in a sad little piece of anti-corrosive paper and wishing for better.

Last week during a shop cleaning she was noticed, removed, and tested without any honing. Above you can see what she can do straight from the Lee Valley factory. She was perfect, if small, and I awarded her a spot on the shelf with two miniature planes, the perfect foils for this tiny colossus. That's where she was found, on Saturday, by my oldest girl.

"Oh daddy, you have tiny planes! Can I try one?"

How could I say "no"? I try to inspire the girls to work with tools, and this kind of self-inspired shop time is rare. So Little Victor got to play with the children, and she had a great time of it. My youngest was there too, and I facilitated (to prevent the usual shouting match about who wasn't being fair). This woodworking paradise lasted at least half an hour, and the girls came away beaming from their success at making a tiny pile of tiny shavings.

Here are a few pictures:

Woodworking Word of the Day: Sneck

While rereading the August 2008 issue of Popular Woodworking, I noticed a word I had never heard or seen before: sneck. In his review of the Brese 800-series planes, Christopher Schwartz said "I wish the iron had a full sneck—a horizontal bar of metal—which would make the iron easier to retract."

For reference, the plane iron on the Brese plane was similar to the standard iron found on most hand planes:

I couldn't picture it from his description. When I looked up sneck in the dictionary, however, there was no reference to plane irons. The only dictionary definition had to do with door latches.

I thought the clearest definition came from Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 2d edition: "SNECK, that part of the iron fastening of a door which is raised by moving the latch. To sneck a door, is to latch it." So the sneck, in fact, is a hooked end of a traditional door latch, which minus the handle looks something like this:

Some research on the Web, however turned up two types of sneck used on plane irons, and after seeing the type used on some plow planes, it is easy to imagine that the term comes directly from the traditional definition of sneck—the hooked end of a traditional plow iron looks like a door sneck with the thumb rest removed:

I don't think that is the type of sneck that Christopher Schwartz was picturing. I think that the "full sneck" he had in mind would look like this:

I have no idea whether etymologists would confirm my suspicion that plane snecks are so called because of the resemblance to door snecks, but that's my story and I'm snecking to it.

First Rabbets with the Moving Fillister

Here's the moving fillister plane with the wedge inserted correctly. Also shavings and a half-decent rabbet (my fifth of the night) as evidence that it works. Seating the blade properly challenged me quite a bit since I'm used to the incremental adjustments on the metal bench planes. When I finally got it seated with a light enough cut, it turned out to be skewed slightly, so in profile this rabbet has a slight slope, like half of a sliding dovetail. That's nothing a chisel won't fix until I get the hang of this tool.

Just a little more playing around, and I'll feel ready to try this on something that matters.