Brace your right index finger on the frog. Trap the front handle between your fingers. This grip gives you control and downward pressure.

The plane gets its power from your legs and feet. You can plane about five feet of wood without having to travel. Begin the stroke with all your weight on your fear foot. (Top) Then transfer your weight as you propel the plane forward. (Middle) To complete the stroke, unfold your arms to their maximum extentions. (Bottom)

To plane a narrow edge, grip the toe between your thumb and finger. By touching the workpiece, your fingers act as a fence.

On wide work, overlap your strokes by about 1/4 of the plane’s width. To practice, draw marker or chalk lines onto the workpiece.

An end grain shooting board has a stop to trap the work and a ledge where the plane rides. The secret is the plane’s heft, allowing you to power across the hardest wood. Scribe a knife line around the workpiece. It prevents splintering and shows where you should stop.

Difficult figured wood, such as this interesting walnut with a knot and feather figure, are easy to plane cross-grain.

Planing wood is a whole-body exercise. Whether you are planing a face, an edge, or end grain, the grip, stance and body position are similar. Before you start, lubricate the operation by rubbing a little paraffin wax into the sole.

The Hand Grips

The right hand grips the rear handle. It applies downward pressure and transmits the push that comes from your legs and body. The right thumb comes around and virtually traps the second finger. The right index finger doesn't wrap around the blade assembly; it tucks down into the casting of the frog. This grip creates a lot of control tension between the index and little fingers. If you wrap your index finger around the blade assembly, sooner or later you will move it.

The left hand grip varies according to whether you are planing a face or an edge. On a wide board, press down on the top of the front knob with the palm of the hand and curl two fingers under it to the left and right. This grip helps you exert a lot of downward pressure, along with the pull that steers the cutting action.

To plane an edge, hold the plane in a pincer-like grip. The thumb goes just forward of the mouth, with all four fingers wrapping under the sole. This grip helps you sense horizontal while you apply down-ward pressure, and so it gives you more control and balance on a narrow edge.

Stance and Motion

The plane gets its power from your feet, which should be placed a comfortable walking pace apart. Keep your wrist, lower arm and upper arm in one line, and direct the push from your shoulder. As the cut proceeds, shift your weight from your rear foot forward, and unwind until your body has rolled over your ankles. Your more powerful lower body thus will propel the plane about 42 inches. Continue the cut by unfolding your upper body and arms, to push onward another 18 inches, more or less. This 60 inches is about the limit you
can cut without traveling or walking the plane. To plane a long board you have to travel in a smooth and unhurried way. Slide your rear foot up to the front foot, then slide your front foot forward. Don't try to cross your feet.

Planing a Face

To plane a piece of wood flat, you have to put it on a flat and solid surface and hold it against the push of the plane. Normally the solid surface is your bench, which, if you haven't done it yet, should be your first major planing project. If the bench surface has a hollow, the force of planing will press the workpiece into the hollow. The deflection might be only a few thousandths of an inch, but it will deflect. If there's a hump, the workpiece will swivel on it, out of control. The bench acts as a jig – if it's not flat, the workpiece can't become flat either.

The link between bench, plane, workpiece, and workman is very important. That's why it's best to push the workpiece against a simple bench stop. The first virtue of its simplicity is that you can quickly pick up the workpiece and check it for flat or square, put it back, and carry on. The second virtue is the constant feedback this setup delivers. Poor planing technique will skid, slew or tip the workpiece, you'll know it right away, and you can correct your technique.

The two alternative holding methods, holding the workpiece in a vise or trapping it between an end-vise and a dog, are not as good, for three reasons:

• You lose the feedback.
• Clamping pressure can distort the wood.
• The work surface won't be flat.

An end vise, even if flat and level when closed, will sag when opened. And wood trapped by its edges in the vise is not supported at all, so deflection is certain.

Narrow Workpieces

When the wood is narrower than the plane blade, each pass removes a full shaving. To plane evenly, be sure the edge is set parallel to the plane sole. Set it by sighting the blade against the sole and moving the adjusting lever. Check it by examining the shaving.

Wide Workpieces

When the wood is wider than the plane blade, the tool's geometry helps you work uniformly across the surface. If you were to plane in exactly the same line, you would get two shavings, maybe a thin third, then nothing. That's because the plane quickly bottoms and rides on the narrow web of metal alongside its mouth. To take advantage of this self-jigging property, begin at one edge of the board with the plane hanging over, so it takes a shaving three-quarters the width of the blade. For the next stroke, move the overhang just onto the wood. Go across the board systematically, moving about one-quarter of the plane's width for each stroke. If you were to attack the wood in a random pattern, half the time you wouldn't get a shaving, but more importantly, you would have no idea where wood had been removed or still needed to be removed.

Planing an Edge

The edges of most furniture parts can be planed on the bench top, against a stop. A rail that is 3 inches wide and 3/4-inch thick, for example, is stable when stood on edge; if it falls over, you're not centered over it, or else you're pressing sideways instead of down and forward. You will quickly become adept at the technique and the ease of lifting the workpiece to check your progress. To square an edge, center the plane over the material you need to remove and observe the shaving as it comes off the workpiece. You can trap a long or wide plank in the vise, but be sure to support the free end, or it will deflect.

Planing End Grain

Today the chop saw and carbide saw blade take care of most end grain cuts. The bench plane thus becomes an alternative for special situations. The size of the work-piece determines whether to hold it upright in the vise or lay it flat on a shooting board.

The shooting board allows you to use your heaviest plane to make a smooth and controlled cut. However, don't attempt to plane end grain until you have established a face side and edge. You need these reference surfaces to check your progress.

To plane end grain in the vise, you need a sharp and finely set blade, a plane with heft, and a deep knife line squared all around the workpiece. I prefer the 07 jointer because it is heavy enough to make a smooth cut. People commonly attack end grain with a block plane, but that tool is too small to grasp easily and too light to tackle anything but a very tiny area. The deep knife line will prevent splintering at the far end of the cut.

Planing Across the Grain

The technique for flattening wide surfaces and for taming difficult grain is the same: plane across the grain. Whether you want to flatten your workbench or smooth an ornery piece of sapele, you will need a straightedge and winding sticks to check your progress and a bench brush to get rid of the debris. Begin with the blade set coarse and work straight across the grain, or at an angle of up to 40 degrees from straight across. Check the surface frequently, get it flat quickly, then begin to refine it. Keep a sharp blade in the plane, and remove ever-finer shavings until you get a down-like fuzz. Now a once-over with 220 or finer sandpaper will leave a great surface ready to finish