These courses teach you to sharpen, tune and use handplanes. Handplanes are an under-utilized resource in many workshops. Working with truly sharp and well tuned planes marks the transition of woodworker to the next level of proficiency. You can work with greater precision, greater safety and much less effort.

Plane and Simple

This course will remove the mystery from bench planes. Bench planes are the family of planes that are used to flatten board, true and trim edges.

At the end of this course you should be able to get a smooth surface on a squirrelly piece of wood using a plane with a razor sharp blade. Plus you'll have had a great workout.

On the first day of the course we’ll teach you to sharpen a plane blade using locally available materials and a commercially available jigs. We'll teach you the sandpaper method of sharpening and we'll show you how to use waterstones for sharpening. We compare the various commercial jigs. We'll show you how to put a back bevel on the blade and how to camber a smoothing plane blade.

Then we'll teach you how to tune up a plane. By the end of the first day your plane should be creating long transparent shavings, even across endgrain!

On the second day we'll delve in the techniques for using handplanes.  We'll show you how to use planes to accurately square the end of board,  flatten a large board, joint the edge of a board. We have a large selection of bench planes - explore our collection.

Please bring along a block plane that you'll work on during the class. We suggest that you bring a used or new block plane. We recommend not bringing your new Lee Valley or Lie-Nielsen plane for the sharpening / tuning session on the first day - you'll be twiddling your thumbs because they come tuned out of the box.  Edensaw stocks some Record Block planes for around $40 which are a good candidate for the sharpening / tuning session. If you don't want to buy a handplane bring a 1" chisel. Ask us if you have questions.

If you have some old and interesting bench planes feel free to bring them along - hopefully we can identify them and suggest how to use them.

Class size:              10 
Cost:                       $260
Materials Charge:  $10

Beyond Plane and Simple

This weekend course takes you beyond the basic bench plane covered in Plane and Simple to explore the world of specialty planes. Most of these planes were invented to make joinery cleaner and more consistent. For example, the narrow-soled shoulder plane was designed specifically for quickly and accurately truing up the shoulders of tenons.

Other specialty planes, each with specific applications include: Rabbet, Dovetail, Plow, Compass, Moulding, Miter, Model maker's, Router, Luthier's, Bullnose, Chisel and Cooper's planes. You'll get a chance to use each of these and understand their specific purpose.

We'll look at combination planes (like a Stanley 45 or 55). We'll show you how to customize a blade for that special profile.

However, just like their more prosaic brothers the bench planes, the specialty planes need to be razor sharp and well tuned to work properly. Unlike the bench planes, though, they are a bit trickier to set up and to use properly, so we’ll show you ways to deal with their idiosyncrasies.

Some of these planes benefit from accessories such as shooting boards (which bring great consistency and speed when truing the ends of boards or making mitres), you’ll make one to take home with you.

Finally: If you have some old and interesting planes feel free to bring them along - hopefully we can identify them and suggest how to use them.

Class size:              10  
Cost:                       $260
Materials Charge:  $25

Note:
We'd hoped this course would be attractive but we've seen virtually no enrollment. So we're cancelling the classes for this year. We'll keep the class on the books and might offer it in the future. Let us know if you're interested.