How To Use A Hand Plane Video Screenshot


Learn how to adjust and use a hand plane. Hand planes have been used by woodworkers for hundreds of years, but it can be challenging to smooth wood using a bench plane if you don't know how to adjust and properly work it across the wood surface. Master Woodworker Ian Kirby demonstrates the proper way to adjust a hand plane, how to stand when using a hand plane, and how to push a hand plane across a board to get great results. After watching Ian's hand plane lesson, you'll be able to easily plane boards perfectly smooth.


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How To Use A Hand Plane - Video Transcript


Speaker: The grip that you use on a plane is three fingers through the handle. Index finger down on the frog, don't put it around the blade, you'll reset it. It's not a good idea, put it down the frog down there. Your thumb goes around your second finger. Now, there is the grip on the right hand. You hold it with your wrist aligned with the plane, your forearm, upper arm, and shoulder are all aligned as though the plane was an extension to your arm so that when you push everything, all your muscles are behind it. In order to get lots of downward pressure, split your fingers, put them across the handle, and put the palm of your hand on the top of the handle, which is also called the Tote.


Now, you can press down hard with your left arm and push with your right hand, but it isn't an arm motion altogether, it's body. Your feet are in a marching position and you are pushing, the power of the planing comes from your legs. You could stand and do that, but it won't be as strong if you use your leg to propel it as well. Now, I'm going to eject the blade. This nailed knob is the way that you eject and retract the blade. This lateral adjusting labor is the way that you get the blade absolutely parallel with the soul, and you may be able to see the blade going down left and right as I adjust the lateral adjust in labor now. I'm only gonna take it out quite a small amount because we're plaining across the grid.


The movement of the plane, as you go across the board planing, is straight, but you generally come back in a sort of a circular motion. So, it's straight circular, straight circular. You could hear that there was a hollow in the center but I'm quite rapidly taking it down. In fact, it's now planing all the way across, and you need a bench brush to hand and get rid all of this stuff. If we marked it, it would be about two or three thousands of an inch, this. Sooner or later, you're going to have to put the plane down. You place it down on the bench carefully, put the toe down and lower it. If you just dump it down, you'll reset the blade, which you took a long time to carefully get right.