I like my Veritas low-angle, bevel-up smoothing and jack planes, but I do not like their rear handles (totes). The handle has broad flat sides, and is more vertical and less curvy than a classic Stanley or Lie-Nielsen.  

While some woodworkers may like the design, I find it to be unfriendly to my hand. Here is my prototype (in poplar wood) of an alternative. The shape is based on the classic handles. It feels right to me.

Adapting this shape to the Veritas handle mount takes some engineering. The Veritas handle is secured with two bolts that enter the base at an angle. The company supplies a full-scale measured drawing of its handle that also helps to design your own version. However, the two-bolt system prevents what I consider a nicely shaped handle because the curve intersects one or both of the bolt pathways.

My solution involves using a short front bolt to replace the stock bolt. The counterbored stock rear bolt runs through the full length of the handle while the countersunk replacement front bolt goes through just the front projection of wood to enter its hole on the mount. This allows the wood above it to be cut away to create a hand-friendly curve in a classic style. The back of the new handle projects beyond the mount.

For a permanent handle, bubinga would be the best choice because of its strength. It is also a beautiful wood and will match the Veritas front knob.

I mentioned my dislike of the Veritas bench plane totes in a previous post. Since then I learned from Chris Schwarz’ blog that Bill Rittner is making superb quality replacement handles for old Stanley planes. I asked Bill if he was making an alternative for the Veritas handles. He is not yet but is interested. I hope he will because, while I enjoyed developing a solution to the Veritas tote “problem,” it was painstaking to make even the prototype in easy-going poplar, inelegantly sanded to 120 grit. I’d rather make furniture. Pending further testing and refinement, I think that many otherwise happy Veritas bench plane users would appreciate this kind of tote professionally made.

A helpful article, “Totes and Knobs for Handplanes,” by Charles Murray, in the November 2009 Popular Woodworking describes the use of a shop-made jig to make a plane tote. The resulting tote has flat sides with roundovers made on the router table. However, it would take considerable additional hand work, starting with a thicker blank, to produce the nice elliptical cross section seen in Bill’s totes. 

I will have more detail on the design and construction in a future post, and possibly an update from Bill. I also have to do more shop testing of the prototype.

Here’s a little tip that you may find helpful. I use these little brushes constantly in the shop.

The lower one in the picture, with the red collar, is labeled “oily.” I use it often to clear plane and spokeshave throats of dust and jammed shavings, especially when I need a clear look to adjust the projection of a blade. The bristles have been shortened to give them helpful stiffness. This brush gets all sorts of other duties clearing dust and chips in small tool places and spaces, including where there may be some oil hanging around. This might include bandsaw bearings, screw heads in machinery, plane and blade parts, and so forth.

When cutting joinery, I do not want to use that brush for clearing chips and dust that didn’t get blown away from tiny spaces. So, I use the other brush in the photo, labeled “for joinery.” It stays away from any oil.

I doubt this simple work habit would be found in woodworking books and articles. It’s the kind of thing that I imagine an apprentice might pick up from his teacher without it ever being mentioned. That’s one place where blogs are handy, to share this kind of tip.

Bevel-up, low-angle smoothing, jack, and jointer planes made by Lie-Nielsen and Lee Valley have 12 degree beds for their blades. This style of plane is simple to set up and especially versatile. The use of a thick blade, 3/16″ or more, supported very close to its cutting edge, and an easily adjustable throat opening contribute to effective planing.

One of the most important advantages of these planes is their ability to employ blades sharpened at different angles to manage a range of woods. With the 12 degree bed, a blade sharpened with a 33 or 38 degree bevel (secondary bevel) results in a 45 or 50 degree cutting angle, respectively. Either would be a reasonable choice for general work.

To get a 60 degree cutting angle for difficult figured woods, the blade needs a 48 degree bevel. The result is effective but this makes the blade more difficult to sharpen to a keen edge. Furthermore, this is a large wedge to drive through the wood. I believe this creates more resistance at the cutting edge, making the tool cut less cleanly and harder to push, even aside from the effects of the higher cutting angle.

If the blade bed was 20 degrees, it would require a more manageable 40 degree blade bevel to achieve the 60 degree cutting angle. A 25 degree (perhaps in O-1 steel) or 30 degree blade bevel (giving a 45 or 50 degree cutting angle, respectively) could be used for tamer woods. Another point, minor but helpful, is that a blade bedded at 20 degrees does not require as much actual camber to achieve the same functional camber as does one bedded at 12 degrees. Explanation here.

I imagine a 20 degree bed would also make the sole of the plane less prone to distortion from the pressure of the lever cap. Supporting this idea, I have not found distortion to be a problem with Lie-Nielsen’s shoulder planes with their 18 degree beds, but Lee Valley’s shoulder planes with their 15 degree beds have been a problem for me, even with rather gentle tightening of the lever cap. The 3 degrees seems to make a difference.

Considering other bevel-up planes, the fabulous Lie-Nielsen #9 “iron miter plane,” which I use for shooting end grain as well as long grain, has a 20 degree bed. Block planes come in 12 and 20 degree beds. The 20 degree tools seem to work just fine on long grain. Karl Holtey’s #98 Smoother has a 22.5 degree bed, and Philip Marcou’s S20A, which is designed to use standard Veritas blades, has a 20 degree bed. I’ve never used the Holtey or Marcou but I can’t imagine they are anything less than wonderful.

I also do not think cutting end grain is good justification for the 12 degree beds on the smoothing, jack, and jointer planes. I do not think end grain requires a 12 degree blade bed and I am skeptical of even an advantage over a 20 degree bed. Indeed, my Lie-Nielsen shoulder plane at 18 degrees works beautifully on end grain.

I own the Veritas bevel-up, low angle smoother and jack and have used the Lie-Nielsen bevel up planes. While their features differ, both makers produce superb planes. It is the 12 degree bed that I question.

I am a plane user, not a plane maker, and certainly have room to learn more. I wonder if any of these makers would care to comment on this issue.

Thoughts arising while sweeping the shop floor, waiting for boards to come out the back end of the thickness planer, or putting away tools . . .

A principle known as Occam’s Razor holds that the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is usually the best among reasonable, verifiable, non-simplistic possibilities. In other words, eliminate the burden of the unnecessary. I propose the Woodworker’s Edge: let this principle apply to woodworking jigs. The simplest jig that gets the job done quickly and well is the best jig. The idea is to make woodworking projects, not elaborate jigs. Simple, effective jigs are cool jigs.

I wish someone would manufacture a 12″ jointer with about a 55″ bed. I mean just the jointer, not a jointer-planer combination and not an aircraft carrier monstrosity. I could use it along with my DW735 portable thickness planer. I imagine it would save a large share of the cost of a combination machine, not to mention changeover hassles, while retaining the advantages of the 12″ width. 

I wish Lie-Nielsen would make a 55 degree frog for their #4 smoothing plane (2″ blade width) as they do for their #4 ½ (2 3/8″ blade width). 45 and 50 degree frogs are available for both planes. I’ve used the #4 bronze nearly since it was first produced, and later replaced its 45 degree frog when the 50 became available. It is my all-round smoother and I’ve never used the 45 frog since. It seems the 55 would make even more sense for difficult woods in a #4 than in a #4 ½ since the narrower plane would reduce the pushing force required.

Speaking of planes, the rear handles on Veritas bench planes are . . . well, if you use them you know . . . not exactly agreeable to human hands, at least not to mine. I do understand that they are fixed with two bolts instead of the usual one and the straighter profile accommodates this. I have two of their low angle planes and otherwise like them very much. Lee Valley is a wonderful company. But the handles, please, guys, can you do something?

I wish more wood was sawn into different thicknesses within one flitch. That way table legs, aprons, and tops could be made from consistent wood taken from one flitch without having to resaw the dried lumber. I guess this would be a lot of trouble for the sawmill and maybe just too impractical, but it would be nice to have such lumber widely available. Using 8/4 lumber for all the parts of a table requires a lot of resawing.  There is always a bit of a gamble, certainly considerable waste, and more work in resawing 8/4 lumber to get 3/4″ finished stock.

I don’t think techniques need to be advertised as they so often are in woodworking publications: “foolproof, super-easy, super-quick, perfect every time,” etc. Woodworking is wonderfully accessible, but it is not that easy, not that quick, nothing works out perfectly every time, and techniques do not need to be foolproof because woodworkers are not fools. I guess the following is less marketable: “Here’s a clear, sensible procedure that works for me, and, after some practice, will give you excellent results as long as you are careful, patient, and use the proper tools.”

I’d buy that.

The bandsaw holds a truly special place among woodworking machines because the woodworker interacts with it differently. I steadfastly contend that developing skill with a quality bandsaw can have greater effect on a craftsman’s development than with any other machine.

In use, the bandsaw feels to me more like a motorized hand tool. In contrast to operating a table saw, where the idea is to make the outcome of the cut a done-deal as much as possible beforehand, cutting at the bandsaw usually has an aspect of freedom. With the exception of resawing, I much more often cut to a line by eye than by using a fence, using it as a mostly non-jigged power tool. As evidence of the creativity fostered by the bandsaw, I use it almost exclusively in sawing pieces for mock ups. I can also feel the bandsaw’s cutting action – much like a hand tool – much more than with a table saw or router.

The bandsaw also allows us to use wood in ways no other power tool can. Resawing, cutting curves in thick stock, and cutting non-parallel to the edge of a board are tasks at the heart of how I build with wood. True, I could do those jobs with hand saws, but I prefer the bandsaw the great majority of the time. For woodworkers doing other types of work, such as turning, chairmaking, shop-made veneering, boatbuilding, and musical instrument making, the bandsaw is pivotal in getting the most from nature’s bounty of wood.

Consider what is involved with setting up and tuning a bandsaw compared with other machines. When setting up a jointer, it is a fairly clear-cut, though hardly easy, task: tables flat and parallel, all knife edges parallel to the tables, fence square to the table, etc. Lots of imperatives, not many decisions.

The bandsaw, on the other hand, leaves more room for personal preferences within a range of reasonable options. Do you like the wheels flat or crowned? What style of blade guides do you prefer? Where do you like to set the thrust bearing? How much tension on the blade? On these and many other bandsaw tuning issues, reasonable people can disagree. Though only two different blades cover almost all of my needs, it took me considerable research and trial and error to refine those choices from the myriad available, leaving aside many other good ones.

This is another way of saying that the bandsaw allows for personalization. In fact, it really demands that a skilled user exercise his preferences more than with other machines.

So, while I might sound like a bandsaw salesman, my real purpose in this post is to encourage woodworkers who are building their tool set, and who might be, ahem, on the fence, to put the bandsaw– and bandsaw skills – high on the list. It has the versatility and freedom of a hand tool, with a machine’s muscle.

Sometimes an inexpensive tool can be designed and made perfectly well enough to do its job.

I wanted a new crosscut saw for breaking down stock, something faster than what I had been using. I found it at my local Woodcraft store: a Pony brand 22″ handsaw, manufacturer’s model #66221, for $15.99. For the inelegant task of rough crosscutting, this tool vastly exceeded my expectations. It cuts like a Tasmanian devil and tracks surprisingly well.

The diamond ground teeth, 8 ppi, each have 3 bevels which make them essentially Japanese cross cut teeth with a negative rake. The induction hardening makes them unable to be sharpened in the shop, so when they dull, no doubt after a very long time, the saw will go to the metal recycling pile. The manufacturer states that the saw cuts on both the push and pull stroke, though the push stroke does most of the work. Not surprisingly, the saw does not rip very well.

I measured the saw plate, which is straight enough, at 0.040″ with 0.004″ set, each side. The plate is not taper ground (of course, it’s $15.99!) so it is helpful to keep it waxed to avoid pitch build up from some woods and thus slower sawing. The soft-grip handle is adequate, though it tends to lure my hand into a hammer grip rather than a better grip with the index finger extended. The handle acts as a 45/90 square, quick and handy for stock breakdown.

Several times in this blog, I’ve made the case for buying the best quality tools one can afford, going beyond tools that are just “OK.” Yet, I really like this saw because it does its job, which requires more power than finesse, very well and with ease. I think that makes it a good saw even though it lacks certain refinements that I can do without. That leaves more of my woodworking budget to devote elsewhere. Where? Take your pick of great saw makers – Lie-Nielsen, Bad Axe, Wenzloff, Lunn, etc., or what I own several of: Gramercy.

[As with other tool reviews on this blog, this is unsolicited and unpaid.]

Thoughtfully managing the wood right from the start is one of the most critical elements in the success of a project. I find it to be also one of the most exciting aspects of woodworking. Here I show how I managed a board of 8/4 lacewood to get the desired figure and sizes of wood needed for a project.

I pieced back together the sawn board to recreate the decision process. Below is an end-grain view. The more prominent lines in lacewood, here running across the board’s width, are rays. The faint annual rings are nearly vertical and approximately perpendicular to the rays. At the top of the board, the rays meet the edge at an angle and so produce a rather fine figure on the surface. This is not quite what I wanted.

The two photos below shows the board flipped over. Now, at the top of board, the rays are nearly parallel with the edge and so produce a broad flake figure on the surface. To my eye, this is not the most attractive look for lacewood.

To get the desired figure and have all the surfaces consistent, I resawed the board at an angle such that the rays, as they traverse the core of the board, meet the cut line at an angle, but at a lower angle than at the top surface in the first photo (at top). To give this a test, I made a 1 ½” end cut, marked a resaw line and cut it to reveal the new surfaces. They looked good so I went ahead, set my bandsaw table, and resawed the board at that angle.

The photo below shows the resawn surfaces. I also ripped the resawn boards to produce pieces from which I can get 1″ and 3/4″ thicknesses, which will fit the needs of the planned project. Of course, since the resawn surfaces were all originally adjacent to each other, there is excellent consistency in the figure. (The surfaces have been hit-or-miss jointed.)

Some of these pieces will be gently shaped, primarily along their lengths. Because this will not appreciably change the angle at which the rays meet the surface, there should be no noticeable change in the figure pattern. There will be a bit of shaping across the width of some of the pieces, but I will keep this to a bare minimum because that will change the angle at which the rays meet the surface and thus change the figure.

This was fun – especially since the wood came out the way I had hoped. Sure, sometimes things won’t work out because, as Dr. Hoadley reminds us in the first sentence of chapter one in his seminal book, Understanding Wood, “wood comes from trees.” Careful strategy in breaking down stock is essential to the success of a woodworking project. This thinking should start even as you are selecting the wood from the supplier.

The chalk line, a tool usually found on a job site, can also be very useful in the woodshop. When breaking down stock, it is good practice to not automatically accept the long edges as they come from the mill. Ripping a new edge may improve the figure pattern or location, and maximize the yield of quality pieces from a board.

A few examples: you can eliminate some “runout” of the annual ring pattern off the edge of a board that will be part of a glued-up table top by relocating the long edge to be closer to parallel with the figure lines and to match the mating board’s edge. A waney edge may be removed to produce a maximum of clear wood and prepare the board for the jointer. A new edge can adjust figure patterns in the wood to coordinate with how the wood will later be shaped.

Snapping a chalk line quickly and easily marks a new edge to be ripped. The chalk line produces a much more visible line than does a pencil on rough-surfaced wood as it comes from the mill. It is far easier to handle and has more capacity than a long straightedge. Blue chalk shows up well on light or dark woods.

Though most any chalk line from a hardware store would probably be adequate, I prefer a Shinwa brand tool which uses a thin string and very fine chalk to produce a distinct, fine line. (Tajima also makes what appear to be similar chalk lines.) I insert the push pin at the end of the line into the desired spot on the end grain and then draw out line to the opposite end of the board, adjust the location of the line, hold down the line, reach out, lift the string straight up, and let it snap to produce the line.

I usually use the bandsaw to rip rough lumber, never the table saw where uneven surfaces and unpredictable wood create safety hazards. Sometimes a hand saw or jig saw are more practical for this cut.

Strategically managing the wood in the early breakdown stages is one of the most important factors to producing quality woodwork. The simple chalk line can help.