A selection of planes made by Abel Dances 

Introduction

Making your own tools is a fundamental set of skills that every hand tool woodworker should possess. Building some of your own tools can take away the need to purchase expensive tools, help you repair and fix existing tools or even allow you to make a tool that is not commercially available.

At the Wooden Boat Festival Christopher Schwarz did a great presentation on "The Most Valuable Handplane Ever – The Fore Plane" using a wooden foreplace. A fore plane is a little longer (16-18") than a Jack (#5) plane and is most useful when it has a heavily cambered (curved) blade.

The cambered blade makes this a great tool to hog off material when you are flattening rough boards - much better than a scrub ( #42) plane. The lighter wooden body of this plane makes it easier to use a metal bodied plane.

You'll be able to treat this as dedicated plane to work along side your Jack and Jointer planes.

Class Description

In this weekend class Abel Dances will take you through the process of making a wooden fore plane

You can customize the plane  to your hands, preferred pull direction, and shape.

We'll provide each student with a kit of materials for the foreplane

Small Handplane Construction Process

These are the steps that you will go through to make a plane or spokeshave. In the actual course we batch the operations so that we minimiuze the setups and teardowns in the shop (see the course outline below.).

• Introduction to tool steels 
• Sizing the blade blank 
• Grinding the initial bevel 
• Heat treating (tempering and annealing the blade) 
• Final lapping and sharpening

• Laying out of width, length and profile of the plane body
• Establishing bed angle and cheeks 
• Crossboring and fitting the pin 
• Making and fitting the wedge 
• Glueing up the plane body 
• Developing the tote profile and bandsawing 
• Carving the detail of the tote and fitting to your hand 
• Truing  of sole and mouth of the plane

• Putting and oil finish on the plane bodies
• Final honing and test cuts  

Tools:

TBA

More about this class

• Class Notes
• Blog Entries

Prerequisites

You do not need any prior experience of metalworking to take this course. Please be aware that this is not a class for absolute beginners: You will  need basic handtool woodworking experience.

Class Information and Registration

Class starts at 9:00am on the first day.

Please read our What to Expect page for general information about the School.

Please also read our Registration Policy.

Coming Classes:

When you click on the Register link you will be able to register for the class or, if the class is full, sign up for the wait list.