This is the first wooden plane I made. To built it, I followed the directions in Making and Mastering Wood Planes by David Finck. I was too lazy to make a cross pin as he describes, so I used a 1/2" oak dowel. The blade is a Hock iron that’s 1.75" wide. The wood is red oak.

The plane is laminated from 4/4 lumber. The board I used had been in my shop for several years, so it was well acclimated, but it had significant twist. I figured that it had been in my shop so long that the stresses would themselves out, but I was wrong.

After I built this plane, it moved like crazy. Every few days, the sole would be concave. When the sole of a plane is concave, the plane becomes “binary.” It will take no shaving at all or a huge thick shaving. Each time I flattened the sole, the plane would work sweetly again. After a few months, it settled down.

The dowel works as a cross pin, but it does significantly limit you access to the throat of the plane. In later planes, I tried using a brass cross pin, but I’ve settled on a Philly style plane instead.

Finck suggests flattening the sole using sandpaper on a flat surface. I had very little success doing that. The outside edges of the plane abraded much more quickly than the middle, so the plane becomes a banana quickly. I found using another hand plane to flatten the plane works very well. The rest of Finck’s instructions work great.

I decided I don’t like Krenov-style planes. There’s nothing to hold onto and the planes are hard to sharpen because they are so small.

Read about my other Planemaking.