Wooden Hand Planes

My wife and I celebrated our anniversary last Friday. I thought I was doing really well when I brought Roses home for her. Then I opened my new HNT Gordon Spoke Shave (The one I’ve been lusting after for quite some time) My first thought was—Oh crap, I only got her roses. I must do better next year. She bought me the 1/2” Shoulder Plane for Christmas last year (and no, I wasn’t that good——She’s just an incredible woman) Anyway, back to the review.

So often in tool reviews, you relate the process of unpacking, set-up, problems, trials etc. I simply took it out of the box, inserted the blade and wedge, tapped a couple of times with the hammer, and Wow!!!—-instant shavings. Some minor adjustments and I found myself planeing, and planeing, and planeing—-oh well, you get the picture. You have to understand, I’m a guy who was raised on power tools, and not much else. I really didn’t know how to properly set up a plane until 2 or 3 years ago. I, like so many of you, have discovered the sheer joy of using hand tools. No, I will never give up my jointer or planer, but hand planes just make you feel good. I also included 2 other Gordon planes in this review because they all pretty much set up and operate the same way. The quality is outstanding. Beautiful wood and workmanship. I know there are plenty of fine plane makers in the world today, and don’t want to diminish their work, but these happen to be the planes I have, and I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a great handplane. There is a learning curve to set up and use wooden planes, but the rewards are incredible. The smoothing plane was my first, about 2 1/2 years ago. I frequently plane highly figured maple with no problem. That hooked me for life. I plane more for the fun of it, than actually doing someting.

On all three planes, I did not hone the blades out of the box. I wanted to see how well they did. I was not disappointed. The blades are all very thick, and ready to use. Easy to maintain also. Normal sharpening methods work well.

The only flaw I’ve found is I don’t have enough of these fine planes.

-- Kent Shepherd * The goal is-----More Tools!