Larger planes are very good for jobs where a fair amount of heft is required, a good example of this would be drawer fitting. When fitting a drawer to a solid wood carcase it is essential that the inside of the carcase is dead flat. Well, solid wood being what it is, it is fairly common to have to slightly dress the inside of a drawer carcase just to take out the slight lumps and bumps. A large shoulder plane is ideal for this job. It can be sharpened to a low cutting angle ideal for use across the grain, it has the blade extending across the width of the body of the plane so it can get into the corners and being large it will have enough heft to carry it through the job without undue pressure from the operative, though the size and weight of these very heavy planes make them unsuitable for small delicate jobs. Here a scaled down version of the same tool will give you more control and probably a better job.

Another version of this particular plane is seen less frequently now and that is the rebate plane. This is very similar in pattern to the shoulder plane but the cutting angle is set slightly higher at approximately 600. This plane works very well in long grain and as the name suggests is a very useful tool when seeking to just trim a rebate with the grain rather than across it. It is possible to find rebate planes. A contemporary German manufacturer still makes a wooden body rebate plane and I have seen antique planes by Norris and Spears coming up at auction occasionally.

This more or less covers most of the planes that would be found in a cabinetmakers tool chest. That, however, is not the end of the story. There are another category of planes that need to be kept, not necessarily in a craftsman's tool chest, but instead would be kept in some forgotten drawer of the workshop. These are workshop planes.

Whilst I couldn't reasonably expect all of my craftsmen to have, for example, a side rebate plane, as a responsible manager of a supposedly profitable workshop I would be pretty silly not to have one in stock because there are occasions, admittedly infrequent but never the less occasions, when only a side rebate plane will do the particular job in hand.

The first in this special category would be the bull—nose plane. This is a lovely little short plane with a set up similar to a shoulder plane but with a very short nose. This allows the tool to be worked into awkward little corners. Many years ago I bought, at enormous expense, a particulary beautiful Norris bull—nose plane cast in gun metal and fitted with an ebony wedge. I tried for years to justify this expenditure by saying there will come occasions when only this tool will do the job and I must admit that after fifteen years I am still waiting for that occasion.

Moulding planes are jolly useful. I don't mean those planes that are frequently seen in local junk shops that were used to plane mouldings on skirting boards. But what I do mean is a nice half set of rounds and hollows. These are planes invariably made with wooden bodies and with a cutting iron set with the bevel up and at a cutting angle of between 45 and 550~ Kept sharp they are equally good in long and cross grain and can with a little practice produce those unusual mouldings that one can't find in the tooling catalogue. I must admit, however, that this is conjecture for I am still looking for a good set of rounds and hollows for my own workshop.

A word of warning about multi planes. I have no wish to condemn this particular tool but you see them very frequently at auction. They usually come in quite a nice wooden box with loads of spare cutters, each one offering the promise of producing this or that moulding. It should be noted that most of these tools are in pristine condition. I am sure there are craftsmen out there that love their Record 405s and can make them do anything except dance a tango but I have yet to meet a maker who regularly uses one of these cumbersome monsters to earn a living. It seems to take so long to fiddle about with and set up that by the time you have got the thing up and running the job should have been and gone.

The side rebate plane as I said earlier is a useful little tool for it will get into places that a rebate plane would never go. It is especially useful for those occasions when one has cut a groove and then finds the finished panel that one wishes to run in that groove is a little tight and sticky. To avoid fiddling around with the panel and incurring all kinds of finishing problems just enlarge the groove with a stroke or two from the side rebate plane.

I mentioned mitre planes earlier when discussing low angle planes. This is a workshop plane par excellence. Its name is misleading. Certainly, one of the prime uses in workshops of old was in conjunction with a shooting board or mitre chops where the plane was used to trim the end grain of components that would be brought together in a true mitre. This end grain work is,however, only half of the job a mitre plane can do. By adjusting the cutting angle as previously described we have set up our mitre plane to cut everything from Cucabolo to Ripple Sycamore, to cut it cleanly without tear out and to leave a cut rather than a sanded surface.

There are I am certain many other planes that cabinetmakers could collect but then we are talking about tool collecting rather than cabinetmaking. I know that the tool shop window to a grown man is very like a toy shop window to a small boy. I fully sympathise with the gentleman pressing his nose against the glass because I have been there myself. However, I would suggest to you that collecting every known woodworking implement is not a route to better craftsmanship. It always surprises me how few tools a really skilled craftsman requires. These will invariably by very carefully chosen tools, quite often well modified and invariably absolutely sharp. But, you see, speed which is the other side of the coin of craftsmanship is all about picking up and putting down tools.

first published in The Woodworker Magazine by David Savage in the series CRAFT OF CABINETMAKING 14