Mike Coonrod wrote:
Here is my problem. I jointed a hunk of plywood (birch) to a 6 inch
wide maple board. This is the top to a window seat I am making. The
long and short of it is the good side ended up being the side that is
about 16th high, I sanded and now I have a rounded effect that I know I
will be able to see later on, when I paint it. So I am thinking I need
to plane the surface, with a hand plane. Problem is, I don't own one
and for the most part have never used one if you exclude high school
some 20+ years ago.

Other detail, plywood is 13x72 and the maple is 6x72 all 3/4 (except
the problem point. Biscut joint if it matters.

What sort of plane do I need or other options?

Jack plane, smoothing plane, wood plane, damned if I know what plane.
Should I get one of those knight planes, it sounds as if they are so
good a fool could run one and get good results. (I would practice first
as I would consider myself more then a fool with a plane in my hands!)

thanks



ow would like a general purpose plane but my imeadiate need is a
smoothing plane, I think. I have never used on before but so I really
don't know what I am looking for. I looked at Lee Valley's web site and
it looks like there are a bunch of choices.



Use any plane that you have.

I've never had to curse my Lie-Nielsen planes, but my two Stanleys are
another story. After *much* tuning they cut just as good - well, almost
as good - as the Lie-Nielsen planes. The difference was five minutes to
final-hone the Lie-Nielsen planes vs several *hours* of tuning the
Stanley planes. Of course the Stanley planes each cost less than $50
each at the local Lowes while the Lie-Nielsens were $225 and $300
respectively. I use the Stanleys first to make the rough cuts and
finish things off with the Lie-Nielsens, just as I use a cheap blade on
my Unisaw to rough cut lumber and a more expensive blade for final cuts.

I had the Stanley planes for several years, mostly sitting on a shelf.
Everytime I tried to use the block plane or the #4, I gave up, totally
frustrated. Finally, after much discussion with the people at the local
Woodcraft store, I bought a Lie-Nielsen, set it for a fine cut and
became addicted. Right out of the box, that plane outperformed anything
that I had ever used before. After spending five minutes total to hone
the blade and reassemble the plane, it cut perfectly. I went back to
the Woodcraft store, bought four Japanese water stones, a leather strop
and their yellowstone dressing for the strop, a video to show me how to
tune a plane and spent the better part of a day tuning up the two
Stanley planes. By the time I was through, I understood how a plane
works, how to do basic tune-ups, and most importantly, how to use a
plane as it was meant to be used.