New Post has been published on Home Cabinet Bars
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You Need a Hand Plane
Have you ever used a hand plane, such as a block plane, smoothing plane, jack plane, or some other bench plane? If not, or if you have only ever used a poor quality budget model, you may not have a good perception of them. However, hand planes are awesome tools to have around and if you're going to be working with wood regularly, it's a good idea to at least have a jack plane and a small block plane.
There's something about hand planes that draws me to them like some people might be drawn to look at a painting by van Gogh. I can't quite put my finger on what it is about hand planes that I find so alluring, but I'd definitely have a huge collection of them if I didn't have to justify the expense to the wife;) I think these wonderful tools are works of art and science. The simplicity in the concept behind how a hand plane works is an idea that I find soothing enough to use during meditation. Well, I would use this idea if I regularly meditated anyway.
Don't let the simplistic appearance of these tools fool you though. A good hand plane has a lot of design history and science behind it. There are differences between a budget hand plane and a great one. The biggest difference most people notice is the price. A great hand plane, such as those from Lie-Nielsen, don't come cheap, but they do come extremely well made. You don't have to drop over $200 to get a good hand plane as long as you're willing to put some effort into tuning the hand plane and improving the shortcomings that will inevitably come with a budget hand plane.
There are ways to get a great hand pane at a big savings. One way is to buy a less expensive hand plane and do a very thorough revamp to turn it into a useful precision tool. Another option is to buy a good used hand plane, such as one of the many used Stanley hand planes from the 1940's and 1950's. These are sold all over the internet on various used tool and auction sites. These may require a little cleaning and refurbishing, but the age isn't a big deal if they have been maintained well. This is a good argument in favor of dropping $300 on a new hand plane; a great hand plane will last for generations…yes, generations! If you buy a good one, you should never need to buy another one of the same size. If, on the other hand, you buy a cheap hand plane, you may get frustrated with it or it may break in some way that can't be fixed, which will lead to you either giving up on using hand planes or buying more of them.
I have personally spent the time tuning a few Groz planes, and although there were some significant fine-tuning issues, I turned them into some great planes. It takes time though. I spent about 3 hours on each of the Groz planes to bring them up to a level that would meet my performance expectations. These hand planes worked right out of the box, but their performance was only barely acceptable. I love them now and wouldn't trade them, but I could have saved myself at least 5 hours by buying a higher quality hand plane set to start with.
I suppose it really comes down to how much your time is worth and your skill level in tuning hand planes. Regardless of how you get one, just be sure to get one soon if you're going to build a custom home bar or any other type of furniture. Just having a hand plane or multiple planes isn't enough; you will want to practice using a hand plane and get comfortable with using it before you touch it to something important, such as a bar top. Trust me, there will be times that you'll be very thankful to have have a well tuned hand plane and block plane.
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