Which Hand Plane Should You Get? | Hand Plane Foundations

Welcome to my Hand Plane Foundations course. In this course I'm going to introduce the different types of bench planes and discuss their setup and use, focusing on the planes you’ll need most as a new hand tool woodworker. I’ll cover sharpening the iron, setting up the cap iron, and troubleshooting and tuning the tool up to perform at its best. I’ll finish up by building a modern two tone cutting board from some beautiful North American hardwoods, completely by hand.

[@billquantrill4960]

Good advice. IMO you can get by with a #7, a #5 and a # 4 and probably not want for much. But I'm a hoarder and have two #8's, five #7's, four #6's, seven jacks, two #4 1/2's, seven #4's two #3's and some odd Millers Falls sizes that were their own sizes no one else produced to my knowledge.

[@plakor6133]

So that's where all the planes went!

[@darrenmacmartin9392]

Thank you Bob, great video.

[@joeleonetti8976]

Well thought out advice. I have been woodworking with hand tools exclusively now for 6 years and am saving for a band saw and a planer. Planeing to thickness is about as fun as sharpening. When possible, I purchase S3Sor S4S to make life easier for me. My day to day planes are a No 4 with an 8" camber. It gets used a lot initially so as to preserve the edge on the other planes a bit longer. The No 5 does most of the work. A No. 3 is set up for smoothing. If I need to thickness (ugh), I have a scrub plane with a 3" radius to hog off wood. If I need to get perfectly flat on larger pieces, the No 8 (my battleship) comes up. I could get by with a lot less. When I started, I had a No. 4-1/2 and a No 8 and used those two for a few years before the current config. I still have the 4-1/2 but I put a 55 degree high angle frog in it and it now is used when I have tough grain that is prone to tear out. If I were looking for a travel kit or a minimal, I'd likely go with a No 5 for multi use (with several blades - no camber, slightly cambered, heavily cambered) and a No 3 for smoothing. I could also be talked into swapping out the No 5 for a No 6 in the travel kit as well. All good problems I suppose.

[@W1ldt1m]

I'm a little plane deficient. I have a 3 and a coffin for smoothing, a no. 5 and a wooden jack for stock prep. I joint with a 6 because it's the longest I inherited. I want to build a triplane but it's a bit past my current skill level.

[@2testtest2]

Good sound reasoning. Personally I think the #7, or similar is entirely optional. It's easier to get a straight edge with a #7, but it can be done just fine with a #4 or #5. Personally I have a #4ish plane set up as dedicated scrub plane, usually set to take a ~1mm shaving, and with a heavy camber. #5 with moderate camber to get things reasonably flat and straight. #4 with an almost straight iron, just rounded corners as a dedicated smoother. #7 with a perfectly straight iron, which I only use for edge jointing glue joints longer than the plane it self, shorter ones, I go from #5 to #4, and call it good. Personally I would recommend anyone to start with a #4 or #5, then get the one of the two you don't have after that. Those are the ones I use the most, and I could do all my bench planning tasks with either one of those two (in fact I did for a while).

[@BRFineWoodworking]

I agree to a point. As long as you’re boards are short a #4 or #5 will work for jointing and flattening. But when the boards get over about 3’ in length then the shorter planes become a hindrance. Plus, the No 7/8 is set up with a different camber traditionally. For someone with no planes at all and no power jointer or thickness planer, a No 5 and No 7/8 are a much better pairing. In fact, I’d give up every smoothing plane I own before I got rid of the the jack and jointer. When you build full sized furniture from rough sawn lumber all by hand, the smooth plane is the least used tool. In an all hand tool shop, the smoothing is the last plane I’d recommend buying. But with all that said, I don’t use a jointer plane in this course, though it would have been very helpful for edge jointing the boards for the final project.

[@acp45blue]

How is a "jack plane" distinguished from a "bench plane"?

[@stevedyke1818]

Bench planes are numbers 1 to 8 bevel down so smoothers, jacks and jointers are all bench planes. Hope that helps