I decided to try to make a wooden jointer plane as my primary jointer.

My first attempt was a Krenov-style plane that is 30 inches long and has no tote. It had two big problems. first, the blade at 1.75" was too narrow. Second, without a tote, it found it too hard to push the plane.

For attempt two, I got a 2 3/8" blade from Lee Valley specifically for making wooden planes without a chip breaker. The blade seems good so far. It is a huge piece of steel.

Here’s jointer plane 2.0:

This was a prototype, so I used hackberry, which I have a lot of and use as a utility wood. The tote is “extra fancy” yellow pine. The tote was much easier to make than I expected. I just traced a tote from an old plane. Then I cut it out and cleaned it up with a rasp and sandpaper.

This plane has two problems. The first problem is that I used a brass, 5/16" cross pin, which is not large enough. The wedge gets a significant dent from the cross pin. The bigger problem is clearly visible. Can you see it?

I placed the tote too close to the blade, so I can’t get my hammer in there to adjust the plane. After I did this, I looked more carefully at other wooden planes and found the tote set back significantly. In a lot of the planes, if the iron were very, very long, then it would clear the top of the tote. I might have to move the whole blade assembly forward to achieve that, which wouldn’t be a bad idea, anyway.

Despite these problems, I was able to effectively use this plane to flatten my workbench top.

I abandoned this style of plane and now think that a Philly-style plane is the way to go.