Wrought Iron

A plane is a tool for shaping wood. Planes are used to flatten, reduce the thickness of, and impart a smooth surface to a rough piece of lumber. Special types of planes are designed to cut joints or decorative mouldings. more...

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Hand planes are generally the combination of a cutting edge, such as a sharpened metal plate, attached to a firm body, that when moved over a wood surface, take up relatively uniform shavings, by nature of the body riding on the 'high spots' in the wood, and also by providing a relatively constant angle to the cutting edge, render the planed surface very smooth. A cutter which extends below the bottom surface, or sole, of the plane slices off shavings of wood. A large, flat sole on a plane guides the cutter to remove only the highest parts of an imperfect surface, until, after several passes, the surface is flat and smooth.

Hand planes are ancient, originating thousands of years ago. Early planes were made from wood with a rectangular slot or mortise cut across the center of the body. The cutting blade or iron was held in place with a wooden wedge. The wedge was tapped into the mortise and adjusted with a small mallet, a piece of scrap wood or with the heel of the users hand. Planes of this type have been found in excavations of old sites as well as drawings of woodworking from medieval Europe and Asia. Roman planes found at Pompeii are largely similar to planes in use today. In fact wooden planes can still be bought from modern plane makers. As time went on, though, some people began to make plane bodies out of cast iron or even bronze. Though most planes are pushed across a piece of wood, holding it with one or both hands, Japanese planes are pulled toward the body, not pushed away.

Woodworking machinery that perform the same function as hand planes include the jointer and the thickness planer, also called a thicknesser.

Parts of a Plane

Two styles of plane are shown with some parts labeled. The top of the image is a bench plane; the bottom is a block plane.

A: The Mouth is an opening in the bottom of the plane down through which the blade extends, and up through which wood shavings pass.; B: The Iron is a plate of steel with a sharpened edge which cuts the wood. Some people refer to it as the blade.; C: The Lever cap holds the blade down firmly to the body of the plane.; D: The Depth adjustment knob controls how far the blade extends through the mouth.; E: The Knob is a handle on the front of the plane.; F: The Chipbreaker or Cap iron serves to make the blade more rigid and to curl and break apart wood shavings as they pass through the mouth.; G: The Lateral adjustment lever is used to adjust the iron by skewing it so that the depth of cut is uniform across the mouth.; H: The Tote is a handle on the rear of the plane.; I: The Finger rest knob Block planes are held in the palm of the hand the tip of the user's index finger rests in the indentation on top of the knob. On some planes the knob is used to adjust the size of the mouth by allowing a sliding portion of the sole to be moved back or forward to accomplish this.; J: The Frog is a sliding iron wedge that holds the plane Iron at the proper angle. It slides to adjust the gap between the cutting edge and the front of the mouth. The frog is screwed down to the inside of the sole through two parallel slots and on many planes is only adjustable with a screwdriver when the plane iron is removed. Some planes, such as the Stanley Bedrock line and the bench planes made by Lie-Nielsen have a screw mechanism that allows the frog to be adjusted without removing the blade.;

Read more at Wikipedia.org