Woodworking Planes

These are two matched raised-panel planes. They are made from beech and are of the sandwich construction. They were finished by submerging them in raw linseed oil overnight.

I made plane like it quite a while ago, to make the top panel of a blanket chest. At the time, I did not have any problems with tear-out and was kind of amazed at the performance. When I built the doors for my tool chest, I again used that plane to make the two raised panels. Everything went well until I encountered some cross-grained portion of the panel. The tear-out was quite bad, to the extent that I had to redo the panel with a regular plane and sandpaper at a lower angle. I liked the way the panel came out, however, for future use, I decided to make a mirror-image to the plane. This plane had a slightly higher blade angle, a cap-iron, a thicker wedge and a blade made from modern steel. Unfortunately, I was rather imprecise in marking the dowel that keeps the wedge in place. I used a rasp to modify it but it looked rather ugly. Additionally, I was not able to modify my original plane in this manner. As such, I built a new set. They came out well.