If you'd looked inside
the tool chest of an 18th-century colonial joiner,
you'd have found chisels, gouges, a bit stock and bits,
handsaws, hammers, squares, gimlets, a hand adz, and an assortment of planes
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To shape the back and top, violinmakers use the smallest of planes-finger planes.
Many are less than 2 in. long, with flat soles or soles curved in two directions like
the cooper's stoup plane. They are finely made of gunmetal,or made of dense hardwood
with curving sides and beautiful screw caps or wedges. For hollowing against the grain,
or for planing a highly figured tigermaple back,a violinmaker can replace a straight iron with a toothed one.
using fingerplanes
Chisel planes are unusual in that they have no sole in front of the iron.
They look like a chisel iron held in the back half of a plane body This design makes
the tool challenging to use because, with no sole out front, the iron wants to dive into
the cut, making the plane hard to control.
using chisel planes
Shoulder planes look like any rabbet plane, with a rabbet mouth
and an iron that peeks through the side. Traditionally, they are metal planes, either wholly of
cast iron or gunmetal or fabricated from dovetailed-together steel plates with exotic wood infill.
using shoulder planes
The name "block" plane, so the story goes,
comes from the plane's use to resurface the end-grain tops of butcher blocks.
using a hand plane
Where router planes surpass mechanical routers is in working a convex or
concave groove to a consistent depth, in finishing the end of a stopped dado or groove,
or in working in a tight place.
using a router plane
Compass planes have their usefulness shaping curved work.
Metal versions show the same ingenuity of a whole range of plane designs only possible out of this material.
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