Schwarz - Handplane Essentials, Revised & Expanded

Cincinnati, Ohio

PHOTO BY AL PARRISH

Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working.

John Gay (1685 - 1732)

English poet & dramatist

In 20 years on this mountain, Ive never been cheated by a hoe.

Stonehouse (Shan shi)

poet

I cant imagine building furniture without handplanes any more than I can imagine building furniture without wood.

Planes touch almost every surface of my projects. They flatten panels and prepare them for finish. They define and refine my joinery so its tight. They add the mouldings, beads and chamfers that differentiate my work from a shipping crate.

Most power-tool woodworkers assume that I do all this because of some political choice. That I have an affection for the pre-Industrial age. That I live off the grid with goats, granola and two grimy children.

Nothing could be further from reality. I own a full suite of machinery in my shop for the brutal processing of rough timber. Instead, the reason I use handplanes is that I believe they are the most highly evolved wood-cutting system ever developed. And that basic handplane technology has yet to be eclipsed by anything with an electric cord.

And in many cases, handplanes are faster than the equivalent power-tool. I know this sounds absurd. Bear with me.

Sure, a router can cut 200 feet of moulding in a couple minutes. But consider this: How often does a garage furniture-maker need to cut 200 feet of anything? And how does a router-cut surface compare to one cut with a moulding plane? It doesnt. Router-cut surfaces require sanding. And the more complex the profile, the more grueling the sanding. Hand-cut mouldings are ready to finish right from the tool.

What about dealing with flat surfaces? In my years of sanding and planing, I have found that dressing my stock with sandpaper is slower than doing it with a plane. Good sanding requires careful attention to detail as you progress through the grits. With a plane you can make two swipes and be done.

To be certain, industrial machines like wide-belt sanders can leave planes in the dust, but these are out of reach for most home woodworkers.

Because youre holding this book, I suspect some of these ideas have crossed your mind. And by now youre probably wondering: Whats the catch?

The catch is that you have to learn some skills to become good with handplanes. It wont take you years or even months. But it will take time, effort and risk. You see, the difference between handplanes and power tools isnt the electricity. Its the engineering.

Power tools have brilliantly eliminated the need for the first-time user to be highly skilled to do basic operations. Even beginning woodworkers can turn out stunning feats of woodworking thanks to the cleverness of the tools themselves.

Im not saying that power-tool users are unskilled. In experienced hands, power tools can do amazing things. The difference is among the beginners. It takes a lot longer to learn to make mouldings with a plane than it does with a router.

So where do you begin? To use handplanes, you need to learn to sharpen. Its the gateway skill to everything else. This book includes the essentials for getting you started, but nothing beats hands-on teaching. Find a weekend sharpening class in your town if you can.

After you learn to sharpen, the puzzle pieces will fall into place. Mastering one tool (such as a block plane) will get you halfway to taming the bench planes. Understanding the bench plane system will prepare you for the joinery planes. And mastering the odd cutters and grips of the joinery planes will pave the road to mastering the moulding planes.

This book is a compilation of a lot of the things Ive written about handplanes during the last 15 years, but it will always be incomplete. No matter how many years I work with handplanes, there is always something more to learn.

This is supposed to be heartening not discouraging. Even the best plane users are still learning something new with every stroke. And the universe of these tools is rich and deep enough for a lifetime. So before I waste any more of yours, lets get started.

Christopher Schwarz

April 2016

Covington, Ky.

PHOTO BY AL PARRISH

Hand work is remarkably straightforward once you overcome one barrier.

Learning to use hand tools is far easier than acquiring the hand skills to type on a keyboard. I should know I cannot type worth a dang (despite being a trained journalist) and yet Ive picked up the skills to use chisels, planes, rasps, hammers and braces with little effort.

Thats because Ive found that using hand tools successfully is not really about manual dexterity. Its not about having natural gifts. Its not about years of frustrating training. And its not about being an apprentice and having an old-world master to guide the way.

Instead, its about overcoming a barrier that stymies many home woodworkers: the fear of taking a gamble and messing up the project youre working on by trying a new process. I see this all the time with woodworkers. After we experience success with a certain operation, we then resist trying a new way to do that operation because it seems risky. And because most of us (though not all) learned the craft with power tools (through shop class, television or magazines), thats what were comfortable with.

I, however, was lucky. When I was 8 years old or so, my parents embarked on a crackpot adventure. We bought an 84-acre farm in rural Arkansas and decided to build two houses there. There was no electricity on the farm, so the first house was built using mostly hand tools a handsaw, brace and hammer. This kindled my interest in woodworking, and I lusted after my fathers table saw and radial arm saw, which he kept in our house in town.

For obvious reasons, I was banned from the machinery. But I was allowed to use any of the hand tools, and I had my own small kit in the garage. I built a workbench with the help of my grandfather. I built an embarrassingly wretched tool tote. But it was all with hand tools, so I knew that these tools could actually work in the hands of a kid.