The Bench Plane
A wood bodied smoothing plane
Another question that might come up in the historic woodworking shop is "What did they do for a belt sander? "The practice of sanding wood with various kinds of abrasives, both by hand and with powered tools is so pervasive now that many people would find it hard to imagine how craftsmen of the pre-industrial period, for example those that made museum quality furniture in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries would have obtained the smooth finish on wood that they did with without something like a belt sander. The answer points up an important difference between the industrial and non-industrial approach to problem solving.
The answer is that pre-industrial woodworkers smoothed, and flattened wooden pieces and brought them to a high degree of smoothness with bench planes, like the little smoothing plane shown above. Starting with rough sawn boards, which themselves were hand sawn, the preindustrial woodworker carried out all this smoothing and flattening, which now would generally be accomplished with powered machinery, or powered tools, by hand.
By the way power driven woodworking machines were invented in the late eighteenth century, but found little application until rather late in the nineteenth century because of the lack of cheap power to drive the machines. With an expensive power source woodworking machines could not compete with skilled craftsmen using hand tools. It was simply a matter of economics.
The small smoothing plane was used to remove such marks from finer indoor work and achieve a more polished finish.
The longest of the bench planes was the jointer, at about three feet. It was used to true the edges of boards to be joined by gluing or tongue and grooving.
In the picture above you can see the four parts of the small coffin shaped smoothing plane. The body has a mortise chopped through it at an angle to create a bed for the iron to rest on and to open up a throat for the shavings to pass through.
The iron is held in place in the plane by the two pronged wooden wedge. The thick iron has a hard steel cutting edge welded to the softer material of the rest, which has a "keyhole" cut in it for the screw that holds the "chip breaker", a separate cap that stiffens the iron and presumably encourages the evolving chip to curl and break, helping to prevent tear out of the grain.
As simple and even primitive as the design of the bench may seem to be, it is remarkable effective at its work provided that the iron is truly razor sharp and the sole is is a flat plane. It is particularly important that the sole of the plane bears firmly on the work right in front of the cutting edge. Japanese carpenters adopt the excellent plan of slightly hollowing the area behind the blade to make sure this is true, and even have a little scraper plane designed to plane the soles of other planes.
Here is an illustration of what my little smoothing plane can do, in rough condition as it is, but with a razor sharp blade.In one view is a rough sawn and weathered scrap of pine, and the other is the smooth surface left by a bit of scrubbing with the smoothing plane.
The smoothing plane has no motor except the user's muscles, and if the plane is sharp. and the sole well flattened or hollowed Japanese style, and well lubricated with wax the effort of using it is not onerous. I suspect it is vastly more efficient in energy terms in removing wood from the work piece than a belt sander would be. It is certainly far less noisy and produces pleasant shavings, not dust, Of the most important point is that bench planes like the smoothing plane will be usable in a post-industrial world, even if an electrical supply is not available.
Woodworking planes, both bench planes and moulding planes, are capable of leaving a beautiful, near flawless finish on the work, provided the blades are truly razor sharp and well adjusted in the body of the plane. Here is a picture of a favourite nineteenth century moulding, the grecian ogee, which I just put on the edge of a piece of clear white pine scrap. You can see, and could feel if you had it in your hands, the smoothness of the moulding. It is every bit as good as anything you would find in a modern building supply, and could be shellacked or painted right away without any sanding.