Favorite Tool Friday

[Brian Evans]

Yesterday I received my shipment of wood for my next two projects, and included was a free sample - a set of archtop sides in highly flamed maple that had significant tearout from the planing process. I measured the sides and the tearout, and decided it would probably clear at around .120", a lot thicker than I need for a side. So I took it outside and proceeded to try to find a way to thin it down quickly and easily without a thickness sander (I have one that I made for thicknessing sides, but it is cobbled on my drill press, and is neither quick nor easy). None of my planes felt like they could cut this wood, my planer just made more tearout, and then I remembered I had a plane for tough, nasty wood. I pulled it out, set it up, and it took 50 thou off that side, and almost cleared the tearout, in less than 5 minutes. My new favorite tool!

What is it? A beech wood bodied toothing plane, made probably over a century ago by Robert Sorby of Sheffield, England, still in business. It's a small bodied plane, 6" long, with a very thick 2" wide iron bedded at 65 degrees to the bottom. The top of the iron is toothed with fine serrations, so the edge is grooved. Designed for toothing veneer prior to gluing, it's considered a step between a plane and a scraper. It produces a coarse dust rather than shavings, and proves itself to be the bee's knees for roughing obnoxiously grained maple, that's for sure! The surface left is very rough but level and true, so a few passes with a scraper brings it smooth.

A nice page on toothing planes https://anthonyhaycabinetmaker.wordpres ... -our-time/

[Eric Knapp]

What a great old tool and a great story to go with it. That's a real beauty. How did you ever find it?

-Eric

[Brian Evans]

I have no recollection of buying it. I was frequenting antique markets and shows at the time, and buying machinist tools and planes primarily. I once bought a wooden machinist chest full of tools for a couple of hundred dollars, it had a thousand dollars worth of micrometers and similar tools in it, the the biggest problem was how to carry 150 lbs of tool chest the mile to where our car was parked. I digress. This plane will take a set of hard maple sides fresh from the bandsaw and have them ready to bend in around 30 minutes. Quite astounding. Now that I know what I have (I don't think I every actually used that plane despite having owned it for 20 years) I did some research - they are well known in lutherie and makers of cellos and such swear by them. I am not the first to rediscover a toothing plane! I mean seriously, a simple hand tool that painlessly takes rough sawn wood from 3/16" to .090" with almost zero chance of tear-out, backs, sides and who know, maybe tops (have not tried it on soft wood yet). I am so totally impressed with this, I have no words.

Brian