A brief history of woodworking hand planes

13th August 2021


	A brief history of woodworking hand planes


	Shop for Woodworking Hand Planes




			Hand planes originated thousands of years ago. The early planes were made from wood and had a mortise (a rectangular slot) cut across the centre of the body.

			Some things don’t change. . .
			The iron (cutting blade) was secured with a wooden wedge that was tapped into the mortise and adjusted with a hammer, a piece of scrap wood, or the heel of the woodworker’s hand. And that’s almost exactly the same as it is today with traditional wooden hand planes.

			The earliest known examples of the woodworking plane were found in Pompeii. Other Roman examples have been unearthed in the UK and Germany.

			One example found in Cologne has a body made entirely of bronze without a wooden core – rather like today’s popular metal planes.

			Did the ancient Egyptians have woodworking planes? The history of the hand plane prior to these examples is not clear. However, pieces of furniture and other woodwork found in Egyptian tombs show surfaces that were smoothed with some kind of cutting edge or scraping tool.

			Planes with horns
			The planes of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries were provided with horn-style front handles. These disappeared in England but have persisted in Europe to the present day, where planes are sometimes used with a pulling rather than a pushing action.

			The leader of modern plane development
			In the mid-1860s, American Leonard Bailey led the development of hand planes, producing a line of cast iron-bodied hand planes.

			The patents for these were later purchased by another US tool innovator, Stanley Rule & Level, which later became Stanley Works.

			The basis for modern hand planes
			The original Bailey designs were further evolved and added to by designers at Stanley. The Bailey and Stanley designs became the basis for most modern hand planes manufactured today, hence many references to the Stanley / Bailey design, or the Stanley / Bailey ‘pattern’.

			The Bailey design is still manufactured by Stanley Black & Decker, which resulted from the merger of Stanley and Black & Decker in 2010.

			Stanley has a UK connection, too – in 1937 it acquired a site in Sheffield where tools, including woodworking hand planes, were manufactured for many years.

			So that’s where those numbers came from… Stanley originated a system of model numbers for hand planes which is still in use today for Stanley planes and those produced by some other manufacturers. See What’s in a number? The Stanley model numbering systemfor more details of this.

			Power tools don’t quite take over
			A hand plane used to be an indispensable tool, used to smooth, shape and straighten just about every piece of wood in a project. And they were invaluable on site for “easing” – shaving tiny amounts off, say, the edges of a door to get it to fit perfectly.

			A carpenter would lug around a bag or chest full of planes, each with its own special function.

			Today, power tools such as routers, jointers, belt sanders and power planers perform the same tasks faster, so many old hand planes are relegated to the collectors’ shelves.

			However, the hand plane is far from extinct. Because it can pare off just a thin slice of wood, it takes some beating when it comes to shaving the edge of a sticking door, chamfering the corner of a board or straightening a piece of wood that is twisted or warped.Also, the finish that some hand planes can put on a piece of wood, without the need for sandpaper or other abrasives, is unbeatable.

			Woodworking enthusiasts often use them in preference to power tools, which can leave a less satisfactory finish and damage the wood’s surface more easily.

			Making gains from planes
			Many planes, especially ones made early last century, or in the 1800s and earlier, are collectable and can fetch very high prices. There’s a booming market in antique and vintage woodworking hand planes on a number of auction and special interest websites.