Hand plane recommondation for thicknessing

tangimango

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 26, 2013
Messages
811
Reaction score
1
Location
Honolulu/Hawaii
looking for my first handplane.
wanting to thickness 4.5mm figured tops to 2.5 then hand scrap or sand smooth.

should i get a NO.4 or NO.5 jack planes? low angle jack? block planes?

any tips thanks in advance
 
Hand thicknessing tops, backs, sides etc sounds fun, and it is the first time but then becomes ...something other then fun if you start building a lot.


I would recommend this plane for the job you want.
https://www.lie-nielsen.com/product/low-angle-jack-plane

Even better is a drum sander.
 
I'm sure the Nielsen is a very fine plane and would do the job well. However you may not want to spend so much money.

As a hobby maker, I have in the main used the tools I already had. I always prefer to use a block plane (despite having several larger planes). Having a sharp blade and removing material slowly ie correct technique is important. If you go to Youtube and enter 'thicknessing a soundboard by hand' you'll see different ways of doing it (mostly guitars) and different sized planes being used. You could start out with what you have or buy something inexpensive and see how it goes. Learning to make an instrument is a journey in finding out which methods and tools suit you.
 
looking for my first handplane.
wanting to thickness 4.5mm figured tops to 2.5 then hand scrap or sand smooth.

should i get a NO.4 or NO.5 jack planes? low angle jack? block planes?

any tips thanks in advance

For flattening something the size of a uke top, there isn't any advantage to the longer length of a No. 5 plane over a No. 4. And the No. 4 size plane is much better for smoothing. So if I could have only one plane for thicknessing uke tops, I would get a No. 4 size plane with two blades. One blade would have its cutting edge ground with a significant amount of camber to speed up the thicknessing operation, and the other would have a tiny amount of camber for smoothing the somewhat rough surface left by the first blade. Having a second smoothing blade will be a much more efficient way to get to a smooth surface than skipping it and going to a scraper, although having a scraper on hand may still be necessary for areas of tricky grain.

The Veritas bevel up smooth plane from Lee Valley is excellent (I own one), and allows the use of high angle blades that may work better for highly-figured woods. http://www.leevalley.com/us/Wood/page.aspx?p=52515&cat=41182 It's also substantially cheaper than the Lie-Nielsen competition. That said, I've gotten my old $40 Stanley Type 9 No. 4 tuned well enough to smooth curly maple, but it took a lot of work and a thicker replacement blade and cap iron to get it to perform that well. I'm into that old plane for less than half the cost of the Veritas smooth plane, but tuning old planes is fairly fussy, time-consuming work that not everyone is up for.

Edit: Also, if you're new to hand planes, practice on scrap wood until you get the technique down.
 
Last edited:
You can set the chip breaker super close on a #4 and get good results but when you're trying to get down close to the final thickness with the smallest risk of tearing out, I think the Veritas low angle jack is the plane to go to. You don’t need the high angle blade though, a small steep bevel on the regular blade accomplishes the same thing. Another reason to get the jack is that when you're trying to joint the edges of boards with a curly grain, you really want to avoid tearout and the extra length doesn't hurt.
 
If it's simply split tops and you're on a budget, perhaps resaw on a bandsaw close to thickness and sand flat? I've made a sanding block out of an 8x10 sheet of MDF when I had to sand something large by hand, and it works fairly well - just spray glue a whole sheet of sandpaper to it and go.

Long term, if you're going to invest in a tool and use it repetitively for tasks such as this, you'll be much happier with a thickness sander (Performax and Supermax are the same brand, and are pretty popular, and Jet makes a somewhat less expensive one). Something like: https://www.woodcraft.com/products/16-32-drum-sander?
 
You can set the chip breaker super close on a #4 and get good results but when you're trying to get down close to the final thickness with the smallest risk of tearing out, I think the Veritas low angle jack is the plane to go to. You don’t need the high angle blade though, a small steep bevel on the regular blade accomplishes the same thing. Another reason to get the jack is that when you're trying to joint the edges of boards with a curly grain, you really want to avoid tearout and the extra length doesn't hurt.

There isn't really a wrong answer here. The choice of which plane to buy partly depends on what else the tool will be used for, but it's unclear what the OP might be looking to do beyond the thicknessing operation mentioned. It's certainly possible to joint uke-scale parts with a smooth-size plane, but a jack-size plane would make it a bit more automatic.

If the OP only wants to do thicknessing and wants an inexpensive tool, it can likely be accomplished with a decent antique (1950s or earlier) Stanley (or Record or Millers Falls or other decent vintage brand) No. 4 or 5. Good examples can often be found for under $50. Planing across the grain with a standard angle plane works to dimension most highly-figured woods. Then IF there is significant tearout when switching to planing with the grain, then that last step can be completed by sanding or scraping. It's just that there is sometimes an investment of time to getting vintage tools to work well, but it's a one-time effort (other than more frequent sharpening, as modern premium plane irons have much better steel than the old planes did).

I agree that there is no reason to buy a high angle blade. It's better to put a higher angle bevel on a standard blade, largely because it's then much easier to convert the blade back to a standard angle if desired (much less to grind away). I didn't make that point in my earlier response, but perhaps should have.
 
Last edited:
After reading a thread by Pete Howlett some years ago I bought an old Stanley No. 5 and there are some jobs that the hand planes do really well. I have a whole stable full now from the brass thumb planes to the No. 5. I put a Ron Hock blade and chip breaker in the No. 5 and it's marvelous. The rest are just factory.
This is information I probably wouldn't have gotten any where else but here.
 
I would bookmatch first and then thin if you have enough room. Thinning with a planer can be problematic. You can end up with a lot of match wood. Good luck and send pix of results.
 
I have that planer and it works very well for thinning clear straight grained pieces down to less than 2mm, as others have said you have to be very careful with figured, curly grained wood as it can reduce it to matchsticks if you go much thinner than 4 mm. I move from the planer at 3-4 mm and then worry it down to the correct thickness on a drum sander
 
Last edited:
A planer can cause tearout in even the thickest figured boards, but this problem is compounded when the chips that are torn our become a significant part of the thickness of the wood. Take thin passes, and feed it slowly if the feed rate is adjustable. If you have a fancy, expensive piece of wood, I'd stop using the power planer and switch to a hand plane or sander once you notice any sign of vibration in the piece being planed.

Let us know how it turns out,

John
 
To hopefully save you some grief if you hand plane it- don’t plane into a stop the way you would on thicker stock. Clamp it at one end and plane away from the clamp.

Honestly, if you're not in production, hand planing it down from a ¼” board doesn’t take that long. I wouldn’t bother with a planer.
 
thanks for all the info.

I was also thinking of making a router plane jig to thickness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0H1C3AiFrw

does this method create tear outs or 2mm thin not possible?

To hopefully save you some grief if you hand plane it- don’t plane into a stop the way you would on thicker stock. Clamp it at one end and plane away from the clamp.

Honestly, if you're not in production, hand planing it down from a ¼” board doesn’t take that long. I wouldn’t bother with a planer.
 
It really is quite a quick process once you've developed the knack of hand planing. But I'd get a couple of scrap boards and practice on those first.

My technique, about 50 ukes in to building is to clamp the board down with two clamps and plane at 45% to the grain in three stages:

1. A clamp at the LH corner and about 1/3 way from that corner, and plane the RH side of the board.

2. A clamp at both LH and RH corners, plane the middle.

3. A clamp at the RH corner and one about 1/3 way from that corner, plane the LH side.

For the next pass I rotate the board 180 degrees so I'm planing in the opposite direction.

I use three planes for a soprano board: a smoother set to take a thick shaving, which has a steep camber on the blade; a smoother set for a fine shaving which has very little camber; and a block plane. As I get closer to final thickness I switch from the thick shaving to the thin shaving smoother, then finish off with the block plane. But you don't need the block plane, I just find it handy to creep up in the final thickness taking small shavings.

Rather than try to plane along the grain direction, which risks the plate buckling as you push the plane, I finish off with a hand held cabinet scraper.
 
As far as hand planes go I have used all of the mentioned above and if I were to say either No. 4 or No. 5 I would say the No.4 as it is smaller which makes it easier to wield .....besides if you are willing to clean it up , true the iron and sharpen it, you can usually get them used REALLY cheap in comparison...

I would be real careful if you choose to use that planer as even straight grained wood can get dicey near target thickness... I have done it and gotten away with it...but I also have not and not only is the piece ruined but it is a bunch of splinters of wood flying across the shop....Be safe!

Hand planes are very easy to use if you have them trued & tuned up, sharp and a basic handle on how to use them...make yourself a stop/shooting board and rotate/flip after equal passes...check your thickness across the board while flipping / rotating and make adjustments in your passes based on that data.....get close to target thickness with some extra to spare, join the boards and sand or scrape the rest (a oscillating sander works well for that last leveling after joining).....It does not take long and is quite enjoyable actually.

The other thing that can be helpful is to place the wood on some stickers and put weight on them afterward to let the now thickness-ed boards settle...if your humidity is consistent and the wood is well seasoned all should be fine but better to be safe and let them settle straight.....I have seen wood turn into a curved up potato chip because some one did not do this and the humidity shifted after thicknessing.....In technical jargon that would be referred to as a real bummer!

Easier than you think and does not take long.....just take your time and make sure it is sharp and remove material as evenly as possible!

You got this!
 
Top Bottom