That 'plane cam' was a real treat. Very satisfying!

I love that plane cam!

In Paul's hands even a plastic plane without iron would cut the same as the fancy ones.

The incredible close-ups are very effective. In other videos, you talk about the sound of the plane and that really helps me know what I'm doing. Love the planes and your invaluable information. Thanks for sharing.

A plane ride with Paul Sellers at the stick. What a treat and who would have predicted the landing. Marvelous! My father’s old Lakeside (from Montgomery Ward} just got a new life.

Thank you so much, Paul, for this tutorial! I own several (Stanley) planes, but have never been taught how to use them, and have barely learned how to sharpen them. I now have confidence in the potential quality of the tool, and expect that any lack of performance is my fault, not that of a bad tool.

This is the way the wood should be treated. Simple, elegant and with passion. Good job master. My regards from Slovenia.

Mr. Sellers, you have just upped the standards of woodworking instructions again. Clear explanations as usual, but the closeups are simply golden. Thank you.

Thank you so much for this, and your others, down-to-earth videos! As it happens, I`ve just picked up a Stanley Bailey No5 Jack plane from ebay for £25, and can`t wait to put it to work!

Takes me back to my roots. Really liked this video. Some planes are better suited to the stock than others and your personnel geometry will also figure in this too. This is no nonsense woodworking, well done Paul.

Paul, this video is extremely helpful to me. I picked up what appears to be the exact same wood plane at a flea market last weekend for $3. It's in much better shape than the one you have in the video. I think whoever owned it stored it and never used it. After watching this video and the one on restoring a wooden plane, I now feel more confident. I didn't even know how to hold an older wood plane until I saw these videos. Thanks to your helpful content, I now know how to hold it, sharpen it, restore it and will now give it a new and useful life in my shop. Thanks again for the fantastic work you do.

I agree with you 100% the hand work hundreds and hundreds of years ago all by hand is so amazing I am in awe looking at the pieces.

Just bought my first jack plane. I am pretty excited to get to work with it. It will be my first adventure getting away from the jointer and dewalt planer. Thanks for the tips in this video and your other video's about hand planes.

I LIKE IT! I can´t believe how easy you make it look. Thank you for all the knowledge you give, I’m learning so much from you, I Thank you for that! Cheers from Argentina.

Amazing close ups and shooting , thank you very much Mr. Sellers. As always great tutorial!!

Paul, you are always a pragmatic, reasonable voice--important for novices and learners who can't separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to sales language, trends, and the dominant thinking of the day. Your assumption that the technology of 150 years ago ought to be good enough for us is spot on. Today, we see new tech as the quick fix for every problem, including our own lack of experience. Cheers!

When I got into Clay Pigeon shooting years ago and was discussing getting my first gun, I said to a friend who shot that I would love a Purdey. He said buying a 100k gun will not make you a better shot, and that is true of a lot of people of different trades, they think buying the best will make them the best. Skill and competence will always come first, tools and technology second. Then you hit on the other problems associated with the tools, the setting up and sharpening of them. A lot of people will never understand the mechanics of the tools they use, and will keep making mistakes, I respect Paul, Rob Cosman and a lot of others on KZfaq especially. Watching Paul and listening to him explain about the tools encourages me and being on a limited budget since being made redundant, I have managed to accumulate a lot more tools.

When ever I have a question I can always count on you to help answer it.. Your the best Sir Paul

My word, what a lovely and inspirational video. Thanks Paul!

I bought a Stanley bench plane at a yard sale for $1 that was fairly beat up but still had a flat sole and all its original parts. I put a few hours of restoration time into it, sharpened the iron and made a precise tool out of my dollar investment that works like a champ! I think this video is a fine demonstration that one need not spend a lot of money to get a quality tool and my comment is meant to echo that. Thank you for the excellent and informative demonstration!

thanks mr sellers. it has been and it will be the acquired skill in the hands of the woodworker that make handtoos work. the modern planes come with the promise that will make a craftsman right away the hardware store door. it takes a lifetime to master the craft and there`s the FUN of it, to enjoy the journey. hope after 20 years i can call myself one good apprentice at my craft.

My grandfather had several wooden planes. No idea what happened to them but I wish I still had one now! I have seen them at car boots so may get one. Great shot looking down the plane irons. I just love to take a piece of ROUGH timber and plane it absolutely smooth.

I could watch the plane cam footage on repeat all day.

Mr.Paul,True!what you said in the introduction that the carpentry craft was at its zenith.Glad to see wooden plane.It reminds me that my maternal grand father was a carpenter in Kolar Gold Fields(KGF) in British India.He had wooden plane.All his tools were made in England.He was trained and worked as carpenter under British Engineers.Great memory.I am 70 years old now.

your awesome man! so much learned here! just got my Stanley 71 1/2 router plane and going back to your sharpening video. aint got to my Stanley no. 4 yet but its coming. playing with Japanese planes too and like them as well! I'm newbie just having fun so thanks for what you do sir!

Amazing tutorial as usual. what hypnotic shots. perfect after few shots of prime v.

Thank you sir. Great close-up shots!!

Seriously impressed by that plane cam. Never seen that done before :)

I used to make a little money making stuff, but I was hack. I never made enought to keep myself. It seemed that I had a job to support an exspensive hobby. I believed someday I would make enought money to have big shop filled with power tools. I had to give it up, and left a box tools at my parents home. Time moved on, and it became apparent that I needed find an occupation to feed myself when I aged out of my current employment. I enjoyed these videos, and they made me believe I might beable to pick up with wood working, where I left off. I tried to regain the tools I left with my parents, but after a few decades, it becomes confused as to who own something. There are dozens of video showing how to fix up old hand plane. After the third time buying something off ebay, and having it either un fixable, or missing parts, I refused to buy anything I couldn't examine first. I tried to pick up items from people selling them from home. On the weakend I would drive to people's homes, and examine items they were selling. In most cases the items were damaged, missing parts, or companies I've never heard of. Under the eye of the seller, I did buy a few items, but it was always a mistake. All this time my wife would ask, "What are you going to use that for?" A paper weight my dear, a paper weight. After driving for forty minutes to a man's home, and looking at Stanley hand plane with a crack in the mouth, I tell him, "I can't use this. It broken." This seem to offend him, and he tells me I'm wasting his time. and I should pay him something for wasting his time. I tell him I'm giving him nothing, and he starts chest butting me. After I get out his home

thanks for enlightening me..this is the 1st time I've seen anyone using the wooden planes of yesteryear; they are normally in the background shot of well kitted out workshops.

How great a video. I'm starting to lean more to hand tools after 35 years of amateur woodworking. Feels better in the long run. This video showing that in the hands of a master they can make anything work. I was around someone who was quite good in tennis and played a game with a wooden racquet against someone with the latest and greatest technology of a racquet. Of course the better player won even with inferior equipment.

muchas gracias paul!! cuanta sabiduria en esas palabras. estoy aprendiendo mucho gracias a vos. saludos de argentia!!

I use a Stanley No. 5 Jack plane all the time and it works great for me. I paid $15 for it. I also have a Kellogg wooden Jack plane that I enjoy using. I have to use what I can afford. Perhaps one day I'll be able to afford the more expensive planes but for now I use what I have and am glad to do so. Thanks for dispelling the "more expensive the better" myth.

Paul ,thanks for this I am total agreement with your philosophy on older vintage planes. All of mine are at least 70 - 100 years old and work like a champ. I do not own a modern plane except for my medium shoulder plane. I also have a nice selection of older wooden planes as well. The newer planes are way out of my price range and budget.

Thank you Paul!! I love the bevel up planes for the low center of gravity😀

Watching this made me wonder why perform the test on such an easy board? Although this shows that all these planes are similarly competent for work on the edge of a board I would like to see how they compare on a variety of planing task such as, end grain, flattening the face of a board and interlocking grain. Also thinking about the wood plane I am going to go into the shop and laminate a piece of veneer to the bottom of one of my #4 Stanley planes to see how it feels in the cut. Love the addition of the camera on the tool. Great visual and editing was perfect. As usual Paul's presentation was spot on. Thanks for the post.

Great work Paul and very well presented. Old planes do work and they work very well. There's no real need for anyone to invest big bucks in order to enjoy/participate in working wood. At the end of the day, it has to be down to personal choice, but less money spent on tooling leaves more to invest in timber and skill acquisition.

Thanks so much for showing what an "old" plane can do, when it is properly sharpened and adjusted. I would like to see you make a video on plane set up, and sharpening. I have a few planes, but if am ashamed to say that not one is set up to make a shaving as beautiful as you are getting. Thanks HH

Well presented Paul. Woodworking should be accessible to everyone. Money is neither the limiting factor or guarantee of success. Basic tools guided by skilled hands will serve a craftsman well. Thank you for leading the campaign for skill building not money spending. P.S. The plane mounted camera shots were fantastic.

Hi Paul, I watched your presentation because I was trying to verify the angle that a blade needs to be ground to. When I went back to my blades, to get them to an engineering shop to have them reground/machined, I found on all of my Stanley blades; some manufactured in USA and some in UK ; all had printed on them the suggested angle of 25 degrees. All the presentations I saw spoke of other angles. So I thought I would mention it for what it's worth; 25 degrees seems to be a standard

I have 4 wooden planes that I bought off Ebay and restored. They are wonderful to use. Almost not enough friction with the wood against wood. Funny thing that. Ialso have an old Record metal plane, a few new Veritas, Woodriver, and LN planes. All are wonderful to use. Love all of them, bevel up and bevel down. I will say it's nice to sharpen the bevel up planes since it's one less step not having to deal with the chipbreaker. Saves that extra 45 seconds for another sip of coffee. :-)

Plane Cam! that is bloody excellent! Very Clever and Very Cool.

PLANE CAM!!! great stuff. I just tuned up and started using planes properly 2 days ago. Don't even have a named brand, but two "usa" marked ones. Joy.

Many thanks Paul for demystifying woodworking. It is never just about the tool. It is about the tool and your ability to use it. They say it takes ten years to learn anything, so I only have some six years to go before I can approach paul's exellence

Paul, Love your videos. However, even though the bedding angle of the Veritas and Lie-Nielsen Bevel Up Planes are 12 degrees, the cutting angle is the angle of the blade bevel, PLUS the 12 degrees bedding angle. Out of the box, the Veritas Bevel-Up Jack Plane is 12+25 degrees, or a 37 degree cutting angle. If you install a 37 degree beveled blade it will have a cutting angle identical to the Stanley Bailey types with a normal frog (45 degrees). The primary benefit from the Bedrock style bevel-down planes is the ease of adjusting the position of the frog for adjusting the blade opening clearance. I doubt their stiffer body design makes much difference. Additionally, both Veritas and Lie-Nielen bevel up planes have very easily adjusted mouths, requiring to tools or disassembly for adjustments. Any well sharpened and even moderately tuned plane with the proper mouth opening will yield gossamer shavings. The great advantage of the Bevel-Up planes is you can keep different bevel angle blades at the ready for different tasks from end-grain to highly figured woods. Additionally, there is no chip-breaker iron to adjust or maintain. My plane collection spans from a $5.00 garage-sale #4 Record (Bailey style) to a $400+ Lie-Nielsen #7. The big difference is the quality "out of the box" plus the advantage of a Bedrock type design for ease of mouth width adjustment. My #4 "Footprint" is my favorite smoothing plane, using its original blade and chip breaker. It cost $27.99 in 1986. I sold my #4 Lie-Nielsen bronze-body #4. A BEAUTIFUL tool, but its tote was too cramped for my hands. It made my hands ache to use it. I don't have that problem with the Bevel-Up smoother designs from Veritas and Lie-Nielsen since their totes are placed well back of the blade and adjuster. Keep up the great work! Steven Jaynes Making firewood in a dozen or more exotic species since 1962

Great video, thanks. I love my Juuma (Quangsheng) low angle jack for it's versatility but it can be a pain to adjust the blade. Bevel down planes are a lot easier to handle in my opinion.

Excellent demonstration and explanation. Thanks.

That's gratifying to see. For some of us, spending more on a plane than I did on my first car is just out of the question.

i am glad i watched this... i have wondered about spending money on a fancy plane but never have after 30 years... my old stanley's still work beautifully so will now figure out what else i would rather have lol.

Paul you are a wonderful craftsman.

"(...) and i can pick up a plane from that era and go all the way through history, decade after decade after decade, and see that plane, the value, the efficacy of that man's engineering it still stand against all the best today... [CHUUIIIIIIIIIIIII] WOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUHHH!!!" Love that way serious, knowledge and cheerfulness can be met into someone! ^^ I think this guy deeply loves what he does. :)

love the way u talk while u work.....sounds like u r SINGING :)

Thanks Paul for the great video. Am i wrong in thinking that a 12° bed angle with a thick 38° iron is approximately equal to an older Stanley? The steel in the bevel up iron doesn't know its only fractions of an inch thick, so that bevel could be a 6" long bevel as far as the wood would be concerned. So what's the difference? Thanks

Paul is having way too much fun planing that board, with all those planes!!! And, my hands are getting all cut up from learning to hone my irons!!! LOL... :-)

Dear Paul, Stanley Sb4 Single Blade Plane 1 12 034 used for and why does it have two adjusting screws on the blade(like the spoke shave) thank you for all your master classes. Kind regards John.

I bought some Chinese made Bedrock type planes (#4, #5 & #6). They are very nicely machined and have thicker irons and they are pretty heavy. I am very satisfied with their quality and performance, but I have to admit that I still reach for my regular Stanley planes (#4 & #5) more often than not because they are lighter and less tiring to use and do just as good a job. This pretty much confirms your own experience which is admittedly much more relevant than my own.

Thanks Paul for taking the mystery out of getting a decent plane.

Thank you for this vídeo. Demystify . Greetings from Perú

Oh boy you are my woodworking master 👏 , like your explanation .

That wooden plane is like the Japanese hand planes that are still in use today and are amazing.. oh and so is the plan action cam shot.. so good

where do you get your music, I love it

And ... the jobs a good 'un!! Spending serious amounts of money on a tool will not give us the skills we need to learn to do the work. That, is what we have Mr. Paul Sellers here for - to teach us to teach ourselves what we really want and need to know, to work wood the way we would like to!

Excellent and infomative videos, thank you. The old boy I learned from maintained that " there is a special circle of hell for folk who stand their planes on their irons" ;-)

paul i agree your correct in saying our forefarthers had lesser tools and made better woodwork . i have a full set of marples planes from 3 to no7 and guess what a 50 year old plane works just fine . please keep up you no nonsense way of work and let us all inspire the younger generation to the virtues of hand tools . as a northern soul fan all i can say is keep the faith.

Good point on old v.s. new woodworking. I always say the more advantage we have, the less we seem to do with it. The mayans and Egyptians could build mind blowing monuments. In the case of the mayans, without even steel! Now we build buildings that embody enormous amounts of mechanical energy and they start falling apart shortly after they're finished. The more spoiled we are with the advantages in work and processing the more spoiled we become viewing everything as too hard or beneath us if we don't have a machine to do it.

This and other videos of Paul's vigorously prove wrong all the BS being pushed today that we need $300 hand planes with thick, bevel up irons and the need to spend hours tuning and flattening them at that. Such ridiculous BS. I regularly cut shavings to 1000th of an inch with ebay and flea market stanleys, and craftsman brand planes (millers falls are great too). I do think there is a downgrade in quality of anything starting in the 1980's with US made products and alas we hardly make anything today that I can either afford or isn't crappy (or both). Also, I actually have better results on endgrain with bevel down planes and regular angle block planes as opposed to low angle. Stick with Paul if you like truth and reality instead of hype and fluff.

I have had to flatten the sole of a Stanley plane as it wasn’t working. I used a worn out belt on my edge sander. I find the tote on my Stanley’s a bit narrow. I have a Qiangsheng and it is far more comfortable but rather heavy. My favourite planes now are a wooden 4 with a wide open throat, thick blade and no cap iron; and two home made wooden planes with Veritas ironware. I find the lateral adjuster on these a bit short. When the irons are sharpened they all produce shavings equally well. For me it’s a matter of comfort. I have never had a Veritas complete plane so I can’t comment, but other Veritas stuff I do have is really top notch. The handle on your bevel up looks rather peculiar. One large drawback to my Stanleys is the sides not being 90* to the sole, which precludes use on the shooting board. The wooden planes are ideal for shooting.

I love the shavings camera view.

I love it when you (Paul Sellers) gets excited seeing the spiral curl of the wood shavings turn out... I laugh because I do the same. My wife tells me I'm enjoying my wood porn. Ha ha, please don't be offended. I have great respect for a master craftsman as yourself. Always a pleasure to listen and watch you work your magic.

My first handplane I bought was a Hong Kong style bamboo laminate plane for 25$. I had to do a little work on it, flatten some tool marks in the blade opening and the sole. Yeah you gotta use the mallet to adjust it, but it slides like butter and takes super skinny shavings.

What do you do with all the shavings and the sawdust? Do you throw it into trash or do you use it for anything else (like mulch for plant beds etc. )

Great video, the camera views of the planes working are amazing to watch. I have found in my 40+ years of woodworking that any standard, well kept plane (or other tool, for that matter) will do the job satisfactorily. Yes, there are better but for the extra money, you don't get an equal amount of improvement; In other words, you can pay a lot more but only get a slight improvement. That expensive set of tools is for the cork sniffers, not the everyday worker or enthusiast. What worked in the past will still work now - and let's be fair, all metal planes in existence today are nothing more than reinventions of ancient wooden planes; there's nothing really new about them. One point I would make is that the bevel down high angle planes do all have thinner irons but they are each reinforced with chip breakers, whereas the bevel up low angle plane has a thicker iron but no chip breaker. In that respect, they cancel each other out because there is a similar mass involved to get the job done (be it one thick piece or two thin pieces).

Mr Sellars, I have several wooden moulding planes. Many have curvilinear profiles on the blades- coves, ogees etc. I find these to be very difficult to sharpen. If you could do a video on how to fettle these I'd appreciate it.ThanksFrankB

That was an excellent demonstration. What I am curious about is how the low angle versus standard planes perform when going across the grain as in the end of a board. Also, how do well do they handle undulating grain or areas around knots? Seems like they all work well with straight even grain wood.

Thanks for this, I really enjoyed it. Must try the planecam trick. But alas, the denizens of eBay are wise to the value of old planes. You'd be very lucky to find a £25 Stanley now that wasn't rusty as hell with a sawtooth blade. I live in hope, though. Here's a thought: there are many cheap knock-offs on the go these days. It would be interesting to compare one with a "genuine" place.

Hi Paul: Can one just strop a plane iron/chisel to refresh the cutting edge to avoid going to the cutting stones every time? I've read both opinions but trust yours.

I agree that old Bailey's and the like are fine planes, but this test doesn't really mean much. Its a best case scenario where pretty much any type of half way competent plane would be perform well. And that's exactly what we saw. Put these planes into more difficult situations, such as highly figured wood or end grain, and you'll start to see the different geometries and cutter sizes show differences. There's no one single end all be all plane, and because of that each plane style has a place. Which one(s) you should have in your cabinet is really going to depend on what type of work you want to do.

Would you consider making an old fashioned box plane? Perhaps even videoing the project?

Dear Mr. Sellers, thank you for the video! I see other videos recommending the low angle jack plane for more figured grain. Here you are comparing them to a narrow piece of wood. What if you are planing a broad top, figured grain, and the plane just keeps getting stuck...? Thanks in advance, I do hope you will read this... all the best!

What Adams and Chippendale managed to get created at Harewood House is phenomenal, especially the Diane and Minerva commode. I’m not sure, even if the same opulence existed, it could be created any better with modern tools. It might take a tad less time than 30years to furnish it though.

The bailey planes are the finest planes of any type that I have ever used when it comes to being a user of planes. They are capable of everything a plane will have to do in a normal work shop. The irons grind and sharpen easily, the cap iron is designed *perfectly* to eliminate tearout and, the orientation of all of the parts of the plane make it so that you only get tired and never sore in the hands, etc, and to think that he came up with the design without other similar planes around is astounding. The wooden planes work a treat if they have a cap iron and the user learns to use the cap iron, but they do come out of the cut fairly easily when their irons dull if they are single iron planes.

This vid is 7 years old. I'm amazed.👍

like the new music

Never a truer word spoken.

Like watching Jim Kingshott in action!

Thank you, Mr. Sellers! The Madison Ave. guys did a number on folks when they planted the lie: "You get what you pay for." What most people take from that is, higher priced goods are always better. You demonstrate that it's not true.

Many of the newer high priced planes can be weighty affairs. The one advantage that I've noticed with wooden planes is that they are less tiring to use. Obviously not relevant if you aren't planing much wood but if you have an hour or more of planing tasks it does start to become a real factor.

Paul, love the video. A few thoughts: 1) From what I know (this coming from the owner of a set of #3-8 Bailey planes I've restored myself), low-angle bevel-up planes excel when working with difficult, swirly face grain on figured wood. Just about any sharp plane will work when planing the edge of a board unless it's wild grain, in my experience. I don't work much with figured wood, and I've never not been able to successfully smooth a board with my bench planes, so I've never seen the need for a modern low-angle bevel-up plane. 2) Any chance you'll do a detailed, step-by-step video of tuning and setting up a bench plane? I'd love to get your thoughts on how to mate the cap iron to the cutting iron, since that's an area I've struggled with quite a bit with my planes. I sometimes get a bit of chatter or gaps between the two right at the edge, and can't always close that up successfully.

Amazing

He is so very right about technology and capabilities of today. We have all the information today at our finger tips, the masses have opinions but no skill. Unfortunately the masses are just end users.

? Have you seen Bill Carter's blunt chisel technique ?

I am new to using a plane. I was lifting the tool up on the backstroke and cleaning any waste out. I notice you drag the tool backwards and the blade never leaves the wood, does this cause increased wear on the blade?

Great video Paul, thanks. For me the Veritas seemed smoother somehow. Whether it's worth spending £275 more to get that smoothness is up to the individual I guess. The Sorby's seemed better than the Stanley's too. I'm sat here with a cupboard full of Stanley's....... Interesting video.

Paul I've always admire your videos, your patience is consistent to deliver an interesting video for all. Interesting enough that on your shows you never ever mentioned any use of Japanese tools i.e. saw, hand plane or chisel. These tools also have been used for hundreds of years and actually didn't change a bit, like the old wood body plane you show at the beginning. It would be interesting on your part to look into it, or maybe I'm asking for trouble here...? Thanks.

Hey Paul..... Love your videos , but I am still in question about bevel up and bevel down. You said that the first one you picked up of the five was a bevel up . Was the other four bevel up also ? I have 3 or 4 old Stanley bench planes and I'm not sure if there up or down bevel ! Thanks

I just picked up a Bailey 5-1/2C because I did not want to spend $350 for a Veritas bevel up Jack. Got $70CDN into this one and I am happy with that. I will clean it up and sharpen it. I expect good things from it. From a site it appears to be made between 1924 and 1939. Old enough it does not have a frog adjuster screw.

Paul, thanks for your informative videos. I’ve just begun to use hand planes. I have three planes: block, jack, and a wooden one like you are using here. I find it difficult to get 90 degree cuts when edge planing. Do you have any suggestions?

Hi Paul, hope this question reaches you . I've been led to believe that if the shavings are not full and are serated its due to nicks on the blade yet I see you have this result testing the planes and you don't mention it . What's your view on it does it matter on not ? My opinion is once the finish is smooth that's what counts. Thanks Paul.

This is great.

I have the veritas in the smooth plane you add I higher angle blade (38 degrees?) it works well and is one of my go to everyday planes. But in a Jack I wouldn't have one. I have an old wood one like the first one he used and a 37" jointer that I wouldn't part with that are my favorite long planes and a beat up old coffin plane that is my most used plane of all. So I think he is right the old stuff is really just as good or better. Especially when it comes to trim planes.