A plane, also referred to as a hand plane,
is a woodwork hand tool used for shaving wood, in most cases the purpose
is for smoothing wood, working towards smoothing wood, trimming wood
or forming a shape such as a groove, rebate or mould.
In its very simplest form a plane is a block of wood with a chisel / blade
firmly in position through a hole.
The simple hand plane has existed for thousands of years in some form
including evidence from Ancient Egyptian times.
I believe the first evidence of commercial planes (or at least in UK)
began in Britain in the late 1600's in the form of wooden moulding planes.
From the late 1600's to the late 1800's the wooden plane grew in popularity.
With time and demand, different types of planes evolved mainly in the
form of different moulds (different shaped soles) see the
'old wooden planes'
page.
During this time, millions of wooden planes were made, as such wooden
planes crop up very regularly, certainly in the UK.
The wooden plane began its evolution into the metal plane design in
the 1800's going through various forms before the Stanley planes became
the mainstream popular designs in the late 1800's.
The Stanley plane designs became the dominant designs through the 1900's
and continue to this day.
Some of the most famous old iron plane makes include: Edward Preston,
Record and Stanley.
There are many forms of old metal planes including:
Many of the old planes have of recent times been sought after due to their quality,
collectability and for some of them because there was no new manufacturing of such
a tool. Some hand tool manufacturers caught on to this and have been making their
versions of the old planes.
Some of the most famous new plane makes include: Clifton, Kunz, Lie-Nielsen, Stanley
and Veritas.
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