Bench Plane

identity

• name: Bench plane. The push-stroke Western hand plane of the joiner's bench. By size/role, the family runs scrub → jack (fore) → try (jointer) → smoother as a common (not mandatory) hand-preparation progression [P28]. Japanese pull-stroke equivalent: kanna (鉋) — named here as the cultural fork, built on a later run [P49].
• family / category: Surfacing tools → planes. Defined by a two-handed stock-preparation role and a sole/body form that registers a fixed-angle iron against the work — Bailey-pattern cast-iron bevel-down construction is the dominant modern Western subtype, not the definition of the class. Wooden, transitional, infill, and bevel-up bench planes are all real variation within the same family (see variations, below). (Fix 7 — broadened beyond one Bailey configuration.)
• one-line: A handled body (the stock) that holds a bevelled iron at a fixed angle, with a flat sole and a narrow mouth that together register the cut so the blade can only remove a controlled, even shaving — turning a freehand cutting edge into a self-limiting surfacing machine. [P1][P17]

✦ how NOT to use it

The heaviest section. The bench plane's signature is that a good share of its misuse lives in the SETUP, not the stroke. Get the preparation wrong and a perfect stroke still tears the wood. Get it right and the tool nearly uses itself.

not-for (jobs it should never do)

• Painted, dirty, or reclaimed lumber with unknown coatings, IF you have not first assessed the material. Beyond the tool-damage risk (grit, nails, and staples nick or dull the iron on the first pass — check with a metal detector on reclaimed stock [P54, LOWER]), old coatings and composite materials can carry lead, asbestos, or silica-bearing fillers. Do not plane unknown coatings or suspect building materials until their hazards have been assessed — hand planing can release chips and dust and can expose buried layers; when material identity is uncertain, stop and use an appropriate hazardous-material procedure before treating this as a blade-damage problem alone. (Fix 9 — added; the earlier draft treated this purely as a tool-damage issue.)
• MDF and particleboard, IF fine surface quality is the goal — the resin binders dull an edge quickly and the surface is abrasive and dusty; forum consensus is to avoid it except where unavoidable, and to expect frequent resharpening if you do [P54, LOWER forum].
• Hogging large amounts of stock with a smoother — a smoother's short sole and near-straight iron are built for the last, thin pass, not bulk removal; that is the jack's, then the jointer's, job [P-amateur, MEDIUM; forum corroboration].
• Jointing a long edge with a short smoother — the short sole is more likely to follow local dips than a longer plane's sole, which references a greater length; use the No. 7/No. 8 jointer for long glue-up edges [P50].
• Taking a scrub-depth cut with a plane set up as a smoother — a straight, un-cambered iron and a tight mouth clog, stall, and tear under a heavy cut; a scrub wants a heavily cambered iron and a wide mouth for exactly that work [P51, forum].

dangerous (injures the user) — the hand plane's own hazards, self-contained

(Round 2, Fix 8. The earlier framing — hand-plane injuries "minor and few by comparison with power tools," and Fine Woodworking's "there isn't much that can go wrong" — is withdrawn. A hand plane is lower-energy than a powered machine, but its iron is a sharp edge that can cut seriously whether the plane is moving or sitting still, and the stroke itself can slip, pinch, or throw the user off balance. The controls below stand on their own; the powered jointer is a separate note at the end and plays no part in this rating.)

• Inspect the plane before forceful use. Check the tote and knob (cracks, looseness), their fasteners, the body or casting (cracks, especially at the mouth — see damaging), how the iron is seated, and lever-cap tension; set lever-cap tension by the maker's instructions rather than by force [Veritas low-angle jack plane instructions — manual, relayed: The reviewer's 2026-07-31 review cites them for lever-cap tension and blade/toe clearance; the PDF could not be fetched this pass]. Break unexpectedly sharp machined edges: "Use sandpaper to break the sharp machined edges on new planes" [P34]. On a plane with a movable toe, the blade must never contact the toe plate [Veritas instructions, manual, relayed].
• Secure the work. "Secure the workpiece before planing, either with a vise, clamps, a bench stop, or a bench hook" [P34]. Work that can shift under the stroke is where a slip starts.
• Small or narrow pieces go in a fixture, not the free hand. Hold them in a stop, vise, shooting board, bench hook, or other controlled fixture so no hand sits in the plane's path (fixture list from [P34]; the "never in the free hand in the cutting path" rule is a reviewer recommendation from the reviewer's 2026-07-31 review, not a quoted maker rule). Haft judgement, flagged: [P34] also describes holding the plane and moving a small piece across the blade; this entry does not adopt that as beginner guidance, because it puts the hand holding the piece beside the iron.
• Hands and stroke path. Fingers: "be very careful to keep fingers clear of the blade" [P34]. Keep both hands on the tote and knob (or the plane's own grips), outside the mouth and out of the path ahead of the iron. Plan the end of the stroke: when resistance drops as the plane leaves the board, you should not be carried off balance or into a vise, clamp or bench edge (reviewer recommendation, the reviewer's 2026-07-31 review).
• Clearing a jam. IF you are clearing a packed mouth, THEN retract or remove the iron first and use a brush or non-hand implement — never a fingertip. Consequence, as texture not instruction: a forum account of a finger sliced clearing a clogged mouth bare-handed ("don't turn it over and pull them out with your fingers… a nice little slice on my finger tip") [P52, LOWER forum].
• Iron handling and storage. When the iron is out — sharpening, honing, adjusting, setting the cap iron — carry it and set it down so the edge cannot be touched or fall, and put it back in the plane or in a guarded place when you are done. Store the plane with the edge protected (on its side or iron retracted — see damaging), not where an exposed edge meets a reaching hand; a forum account of a knuckle opened on the exposed iron of a plane laid on its side [P52, LOWER forum] is the consequence. Footwear: a reader comment on [P34] (not the article's editorial list) advises "Never sharpen or remove a blade in open-toed shoes, sandals or bare feet." (The earlier draft quoted [P34] that a dropped blade "can do serious damage to an exposed foot"; that wording could not be found in the article's editorial list this pass and is withdrawn pending a re-check.)
• Sharpness and force. "Keep the plane iron (blade) sharp. You won't have to push as hard" [P34]. Blunt tools "not only compromise safety but also increase (sometimes by a factor of ten) the effort needed to use them" [P-ccohs]. A dull iron gets forced, and forcing is where a slip starts.
• Stance and wrist. "Plane at the right height for you" [P34]. Keep a balanced stance with your weight able to follow the stroke, and keep the wrists straight: choose a grip that lets you "keep the wrist straight or in a neutral position" and "bend the tool, not the wrists," and "Reduce excessive gripping force or pressure" [P-ccohs].
• Chips, dust and coatings. Wear eye protection where chips fly (reviewer recommendation; [P34]'s list does not mention it). Unknown coatings and suspect building materials stop the job before planing begins — see not-for (Fix 9).

related machine, different hazard class — the powered jointer (separate note, not part of the hand plane's rating)

• Powered jointers and planers are separate machines with their own procedures, controls and citations; their risk is not the hand plane's risk turned up, and none of it belongs in the section above. A stationary spinning cutter-head is a different kind of hazard from a hand-held edge, with kickback as a second failure mode [P35][P36][P37]. The one injury-rate study on file — Becker, Trinkaus & Buckley (1996), roughly 4.9 injuries per 1,000 hours for a combined "jointer-planer" category [P58] — does not separate hand-plane use from powered-jointer use, so it is not used here to rate either tool. See lineage-misuse for the electric hand planer.

damaging (ruins the tool or the work)

• Letting the cast sole rust — cast iron oxidizes fast in a humid shop or a moisture-trapping leather/foam case; keep it lightly oiled or waxed (Lie-Nielsen recommends jojoba) [P38].
• Dropping a cast plane — cast iron is brittle, not tough; cracks are usually down into the mouth at the front, the weakest point [P-crack, LOWER; P20]. (Lie-Nielsen uses ductile iron specifically to fight this.)
• Over-tightening the lever cap — can crack the casting at the tapped boss, or break the lever cap where it pivots [P20].
• Storing the plane resting on its iron — pressing the edge to a hard surface dulls it; sole-down on wood, or iron retracted [P52, consistent with all tool-care guidance].
• Planing into a knot or against the grain without reading it first — tear-out that ruins the surface; a test pass shows the grain direction, and reversing direction when it "tears and jumps around" usually clears it [P42].
• A nicked iron leaves a tramline down every pass — one nick (from grit, a staple, a silica-laden knot) scratches every shaving until you regrind past it [P41].
• Lapping the sole too aggressively — over-pressure can flex the sole hollow during lapping, or remove enough metal that the frog seat is no longer flat; starting too coarse means chasing your own scratches for hours [P43].

beginner-trap (looks fine until it isn't)

• A dull iron — the #1 trap. With a dull blade, no plane works well: it tears instead of slicing, needs far more force, skips and chatters — and convinces a beginner that planes just don't work. A dull plane feels like labour; a sharp one feels like nothing [P-fund; P34].
• On a bevel-down plane, cap iron set too far back allows tear-out (no breaking action); set with a gap to the iron's back causes an instant clog (shavings wedge under it). The cap iron needs to seat flush and sit close — and beginners often skip lapping its face flat first [P39][P40].
• Mouth set wider than the task needs — removes fiber support right at the cut; a smoother generally wants a tighter mouth, and opening it to "fix" chatter without addressing sharpness or grain direction usually makes tear-out worse, not better [P-woodtreks].
• Not checking the sole of a new, inexpensive plane before serious work — budget planes can arrive convex, hollow, or twisted; IF the plane performs poorly and the sole tests out of flat against a straightedge under real use conditions, THEN correction may be warranted — but treat this as a diagnosis to make, not an assumption to start from, since aggressive unnecessary lapping causes its own damage (see damaging, above) [P-bailey; P-small].
• A dead-straight smoother iron can leave plane tracks — the corners of a perfectly straight edge can leave ridges (tramlines) at the shaving's edges; a slight camber (or relieved corners) feathers them out [P41].
• Uneven pressure through the stroke → a convex board — weighting the front knob at the start and transferring to the rear tote at the end helps keep the sole in full contact; otherwise the plane can dive off each end of the stroke [P-woodtreks; P27].

lineage-misuse (treating it like an ancestor, descendant, or sibling)

• Using a jack where a smoother is needed, or vice versa — wrong length, wrong iron camber, wrong mouth width for the task; matching the plane to the stage of work (see correct use) avoids this. [P-amateur, forum]
• Pushing a kanna, or flattening a kanna's sole dead flat — the kanna is pulled, and its dai is deliberately tuned to specific bearing points rather than a uniformly flat sole; a Western "make it flat, push it forward" instinct can destroy its geometry [P44][P45]. The mirror error — a Japanese pull-reflex applied to a Bailey plane — over-corrects the other way. (The fork the Gennou entry named, felt in the hands.)
• Treating a bevel-up plane as if it has a chipbreaker to open or close — it doesn't; its tear-out control is the multi-factor set described in correct use, so the bevel-down reflex of "open the mouth to cure chatter" removes one of the bevel-up plane's few available controls without addressing sharpness, shaving thickness, or grain direction [P30a].
• Driving an electric hand planer like a hand plane — they do not share safe technique; the powered tool can kick back and its cutter-head can maim. Comfort with the hand plane can breed dangerous underestimation of the machine that superficially resembles it [P37][P35].
• Setting a modern double-iron plane's cap iron as if it were a single-iron wooden plane (i.e., ignoring the cap iron and running it well back from the edge) — this gives up the cap iron's tear-out control without gaining the wooden plane's own steep-bed-angle compensation: worse than either configuration alone [P39].

correct use

(Brief — the workbench holds deep operation. This is the shape of right use, so the misuse below has something to be measured against.)

• What each plane is genuinely good at: the scrub/jack hog and rough-flatten across the grain; the jointer's long sole averages hollows and high spots over a greater reference length than a short plane can, helping true a face or edge and joint edges for glue-up — flatness still depends on technique and checking with winding sticks and a straightedge, not the sole length alone; the smoother, last, takes tissue-thin shavings (~.001–.003", offered as an example of fine smoothing shavings, not a universal threshold) for a surface that "equals or surpasses sandpaper" — and did so back when sandpaper was costly [P50][P-smooth]. A sharp plane leaves a sliced surface that reflects light differently than an abraded one. (Fix 6 — scrub → jack → jointer → smoother is a common hand-preparation progression for rough stock, not a required sequence: stock condition, board size, available tools, reference surfaces, and technique determine which stages are actually needed, and stages are routinely combined or skipped.)
• Setup facts that matter, on a bevel-down plane: (1) sharpness — a plane is only as good as its edge; (2) the cap-iron distance — setting the chipbreaker close to the edge is an advanced, operation-specific technique for difficult figured grain, not a universal beginner setting. A commonly cited starting range for close-set smoothing work is roughly 0.1–0.2 mm (about 1/128 in.) from the edge; setting it this close increases planing force substantially and demands a cap iron whose front face is itself lapped flat and true. This traces to Kawai & Kato's chipbreaker research (Yamagata University; the finding circulated in video form around 2012 and is referenced in Japanese woodworking literature) [P32][P33] — held MEDIUM: the underlying mechanism is well corroborated in trade-press coverage, but the full primary citation (volume/year) could not be confirmed in English-language sources this pass, an honest gap carried forward from the original entry.
• Bevel-down vs bevel-up, and what actually controls tear-out on each: the standard Bailey plane is bevel-down with a chipbreaker. Bevel-up planes (block planes, and the Veritas/Lie-Nielsen low-angle bench-length planes) have no chipbreaker, and tear-out on them is controlled by several interacting factors together, not a single setting: a sharp blade first, a fine shaving, a closed-up mouth so the toe plate supports the wood ahead of the cut, sometimes a higher honed bevel (which raises the effective cutting angle), and — underneath all of it — planing in the prevailing direction of the grain [P30a]. (Fix 3 — the earlier draft called a tight mouth the bevel-up plane's "only" tear-out defense; Veritas's own troubleshooting guidance, read in full this pass, lists it as one factor among several.)

✦ matching

• does: removes controlled, even shavings from solid wood to true a face or edge, bring a board to thickness by hand, fit a joint, or leave a finished surface — the family spans rough dimensioning through final smoothing depending on which member is in hand.
• suits: hand-tool stock preparation and joinery fitting at any stage — rough flattening (scrub/jack), long-edge jointing and glue-up prep (try/jointer), and final surface finishing (smoother) — plus one-handed trimming and chamfering (block plane) and figured-grain finishing where a scraper isn't reached for instead.
• kit-fit: pairs with winding sticks and a straightedge (checking flatness the plane itself doesn't guarantee), a sharpening setup (the tool is only as good as its edge), and a shooting board for square edges and end grain. Substitutes for a powered jointer/thickness planer on smaller work or where shop power isn't available; does not substitute for a scraper on reversing figured grain, where a plane can tear regardless of setup — see Stanley No. 12 (Veneer Scraper) for that failure mode and its answer.
• not-for (project-keyed): IF the stock is unknown-coated, painted, or reclaimed and unassessed, THEN stop and assess the material before planing (see how NOT to use it → not-for). IF the grain reverses direction within inches (crotch, curly, bird's-eye, burl figure), THEN a scraper is frequently the better-matched tool regardless of how the plane is set up.
• access: the smoother and block plane are approachable early with instruction in sharpening, grain-reading, and basic setup (cap-iron distance, mouth width); the jointer's long-sole technique and the scrub's aggressive camber both require additional instruction in reading a board's actual flatness rather than trusting the sole alone.
• revival: worth picking up the moment sandpaper and a random-orbit sander stop producing the surface quality a project calls for, or when a board needs truing rather than merely smoothing — the plane slices rather than abrades, which changes how the finished surface takes light and finish.

anatomy

Named parts, Bailey/Stanley metal pattern, then the wooden plane's different bones. Anatomy from the Virginia Toolworks bench-plane dictionary [P15], the Handplane Central wooden-plane guide [P16], cross-checked to Hack [P17].

Metal (Bailey/Stanley) bench plane:

• Body / stock — the cast frame (cast iron; ductile iron or steel on premium modern planes). Top is the bed, bottom is the sole.
• Sole — the flat bottom that rides the work; must be substantially flat to function. Toe (front), heel (rear), cheeks (sides — a known fracture point when dropped).
• Mouth — the sole opening the iron protrudes through; its width is one factor among several governing tear-out (tight for a smoother, wide for a jack) — see correct use for the full picture. Throat — the passage above it that the shaving travels.
• Iron / cutter / blade — the cutting steel; flat-backed, bevelled ~25° (often a 30° micro-bevel), bevel-down on a bench plane (bevel-up on a block plane and on the bevel-up bench-length planes noted in lineage).
• Cap iron / chipbreaker — screwed to the iron's flat face on bevel-down planes; stiffens the iron, carries the slot the adjuster engages, and curls and breaks the shaving to help control tear-out. One of several consequential settings on a bevel-down plane (see how not to use it). Bevel-up planes have no cap iron — see correct use.
• Frog — the angled casting the iron assembly beds on; sets the bed angle (~45° standard). Frog adjuster screw (introduced with the Bedrock design, standard on mainline Bailey planes by around 1907 per secondary sourcing) moves it to open/close the mouth; frog locking screws must be re-tightened after, or the frog creeps.
• Depth-adjusting nut (Bailey brass adjuster) — the wheel that, through the threaded rod and the brittle cast-iron yoke (Y-lever), raises and lowers the iron — the mechanism whose patent history is corrected in history, above.
• Lateral-adjustment lever — skews the iron to square the cut; traces to Traut's patent lineage of the 1870s–80s (US 306,877, 1884, and an earlier, not-yet-independently-verified 1876 patent), not to Bailey's 1867 US 72,443.
• Lever cap — cams the whole iron assembly tight against the frog; "the snap" tells you it's seated. Tote (rear handle) and knob (front), historically rosewood/cocobolo.

Wooden bench plane (different bones):

• Stock (beech/hornbeam/fruitwood), sole/face, bed (the wooden ramp the iron rests on — 45° common, 50° York pitch, 55° middle pitch).
• Wedge — driven against the abutments (the thick projections of the inner cheeks) to lock the iron and steer the shaving up the throat/escapement.
• Strike button / strike — the metal-or-hardwood insert you tap to release the wedge (a wooden plane is adjusted by hammer, the ancestor of the kanna's tap-adjustment and the opposite pole from the Bailey/Traut screw-and-lever system). Tote, chamfers.

trades (where it appears, with notes)

• Joinery / cabinetmaking — the core trade; flattening, thicknessing by hand, jointing, final smoothing.
• Timber framing / shipwrightry — the heavy jointers (No. 7/8) for long timbers and planks.
• Patternmaking — exacting foundry-pattern work to thousandths [forum, LOWER].
• Lutherie — finger/violin planes for arched plates [MEDIUM].
• Cross-trade honest edge: the metal-trades use of planes (e.g. the engineer's/bullnose work) and the powered-shop jointer/thicknesser are noted but not built out here — breadth for later runs.

lineage

A plane is a point on a line, not an island. What makes the bench plane unusual in this corpus is where its line STARTS — late, and already needing two materials at once.

• ancestors:
  • The adze — the body-less surfacing ancestor. An adze shaves and levels wood, but its depth of cut lives entirely in the swing and the wrist; nothing constrains it but skill and fatigue. The plane is the adze's depth-of-cut failure fixed by enclosing the blade behind a sole and a mouth so the wood itself limits the cut. [P2]
  • The drawknife and the spokeshave — pulled blades that smooth axed or adzed stock. The drawknife has no sole and rides on the operator's tilt; the spokeshave adds a short sole for curved work. The bench plane is their straight-stock, long-soled sibling — the same "register the blade against the work" idea taken to a flat surface. (Spokeshave in print by ~1510; earliest survivor ~mid-16th c. — held MEDIUM, Wikipedia synthesis.) [P2]
  • No confirmed pre-Roman plane. Egyptian and Greek joinery produced beautifully finished surfaces, but with adzes, chisels, scrapers, and abrasives — not with a body-plus-constrained-blade plane. The earliest securely dated surviving planes currently known are Roman-period. [P2][P59] This is an evidence horizon, not a claim about the moment of invention — the absence of an earlier surviving example is not proof no earlier tool existed, and the record from before Roman times is genuinely thin. (Fix 4 — this section previously argued the plane "could not exist before cheap iron" and treated Britannica as endorsing that reasoning; that categorical claim is removed. Fewer than twenty planes have been discovered from the entire Roman world [P59], which is itself worth stating plainly rather than papering over with a confident origin story.)
• descendants / siblings (the living family — built out on later runs):
  • Scrub / fore plane (Stanley No. 40) — narrow, heavily cambered iron, wide mouth, for hogging stock across the grain. [P51]
  • Jack plane (No. 5, ~14") — the general-purpose first-flattening plane; Schwarz's "coarse" tool. [P28]
  • Try / jointer plane (No. 7 / No. 8, 22–24") — long sole that averages hollows and high spots over a greater reference length; flattens over length and joints edges for glue-up. [P50]
  • Smoother (No. 3 / No. 4 / No. 4½, ~9–10") — short, tight mouth, near-straight iron; the final surface. [P28][P50]
  • Block plane (No. 60½, low-angle bevel-up) — one-handed, ~12° bed, for end grain and chamfers; a bevel-up cousin, not the sole endpoint of bevel-up development — see the modern bevel-up bench-length planes below. [P30]
  • Bevel-up bench planes (e.g. Veritas/Lee Valley and Lie-Nielsen low-angle jack, smoother, and jointer-length planes) — full bench-length tools built on the bevel-up, no-chipbreaker principle rather than the block plane's compact one-handed form. [P30a]
  • Infill plane (Spiers / Norris tradition) — metal shell infilled with dense hardwood for mass and damping. [P22][P23]
  • Powered descendants: the electric hand planer (a spinning cutter-drum wrapped in the plane's sole-and-depth logic) and the stationary powered jointer and thickness planer / thicknesser, which take over the operator's hardest job — holding tool and work true at once — by feeding the work past a fixed cutter. The conceptual terminus is CNC surfacing (a jointer plane with infinite repeatability and no fatigue — see CNC Machining Center). These are a separate hazard class from the hand plane, not a scaled-up version of the same risk (see how not to use it → dangerous). (Honest edge: the powered/CNC end is thin in this pass — breadth for a later run.)
• contemporaries (do a similar job differently): the cabinet scraper (refines a surface a smoother tears, no sole), the kanna (the same surfacing job, pulled not pushed — the cultural fork, below), and the belt/random-orbit sander (abrades to a surface the plane slices — and leaves a duller surface for it).

Petroski lens — form follows failure, running both ways. The bench plane's whole anatomy is a stack of failure-fixes: the sole fixes the adze's runaway depth; the mouth fixes the chisel's inability to limit its own bite; the cap-iron/chipbreaker fixes tear-out on bevel-down planes; the Bailey/Traut adjuster lineage (below) fixes the wooden plane's tap-and-check blade-setting. And it runs forward too — the powered jointer exists to remove the bench plane's demand that a skilled hand read and flatten a board; the machine reads nothing and never tires. The history layer and the misuse layer are the same story: nearly every way the tool bites you is a failure an earlier or later plane already solved.

The cultural fork — the kanna

This entry closes a loop the Gennou entry opened. The kanna is the Japanese bench plane: wooden-bodied, pulled toward the user, its laminated iron bedded bevel-down (around 39°) in tapered bedding surfaces cut into the dai (body), and adjusted by tapping — with light hammer blows, not a screw [P44][P60]. "No separate wedge" describes how the iron is retained (friction-fit against the tapered bed), but it does not mean the tool is a single bare iron in a block: many double-iron kanna also carry a separately adjusted chipbreaker, itself wedged in place beneath a removable pin and tapped to set [P60]. (Fix 2 — the original entry stated the kanna was bedded bevel-up with no separate wedge; both the bevel orientation and the chipbreaker omission were wrong. Corrected against Fine Woodworking's own kanna overview and KAKURI's maker guidance, both read in full this pass.) One surfacing job, two civilizations' answers to how do you move the blade a thousandth of an inch — a dialed mechanism on the Western plane (below), a trained tap-and-check reflex on the kanna.

history

• origin — the earliest known planes, and what that evidence does and doesn't prove:
  • The earliest securely dated surviving planes currently known are Roman-period, including a find from the excavations at Pompeii — described in the scholarly literature as iron elements (now severely corroded), 21.3 cm long by 5.2 cm wide, held at the Naples Museum, inv. 71954, dated to the first century CE [P59]. (Fix 4/5 — the earlier draft cited an unverified accession number, inv. 71964, and called this "the earliest infill plane," a modern-collector category applied by analogy. Both corrected: the accession number above is verified directly against Ulrich's own published plate caption, and "infill-like" is now marked as a construction analogy, not a claim of direct lineage to the 19th-century British infill tradition.) This establishes an early archaeological horizon for surviving evidence — it does not establish the date or place of invention, and it does not by itself rule out an earlier, now-lost form.
  • Roman Britain gives two peer-reviewed plane objects — unusually hard proof for so old a tool. A moulding-plane blade from Vindolanda (Hadrian's Wall) was metallographically shown to be a laminated structure — hard steel welded around a soft iron core, the edge left unhardened for easy dressing (Sim & Ridge, Historical Metallurgy, 2000) [P4]. And the Goodmanham plane (Yorkshire Wolds, found 2000; 2nd–4th c. AD), an ivory stock riveted to an iron sole with an iron blade — "planes made of ivory are extremely rare from any period" — published in Britannia with Raman analysis [P5]. These two carry the proof block; the Pompeii find carries the earliest date. Fewer than twenty Roman planes have been discovered in total [P59] — a genuinely thin record this entry states plainly rather than smoothing over.
• the medieval gap and the wooden bench plane: after Rome the plane largely vanishes from the European record for centuries (used, presumably, but poorly attested — a gap in surviving finds and documentation, not evidence the tool disappeared from use) [P2][P3]. It re-emerges as the wooden-bodied bench plane of the 13th–14th c.; by the 15th c. the Roman cross-bar gives way to a grooved wooden wedge seated against the throat abutments — more precise blade retention. (Both held LOWER — maker-blog synthesis without primary artifacts.) The definitive snapshot of the mature wooden bench plane is the Benjamin Seaton chest of 1797: 76 planes bought new in 1796 from Christopher Gabriel & Sons and barely used, preserved in original condition — the single best "what the kit looked like" object for the late-18th-c. English bench plane [P7][P8].
• key evolutions (the failure each fixed — Petroski lens):
  • Cross-bar → wedge → metal lever cap. Each step held the iron more securely with less fuss; the wedge needed a strike button and a hammer to release, the lever cap snaps down by hand. [P16][P15]
  • Wood body → cast-metal body. The first US metal-plane patent is Hazard Knowles, 1827 (US X4,859 — an "X" patent, reconstructed number after the 1836 Patent Office fire), a cast-iron jack with a wedged iron [P19]. A metal sole stays flat where a wooden one moves with the seasons — but it rusts, and it cracks when dropped (see how not to use it).
  • The Bailey/Traut adjuster lineage — the fix that defined the modern plane. Leonard Bailey's US Patent 67,398 (granted Aug 6 1867 [P9]) covers a hybrid stock — a wooden lower portion and an adjustable iron upper portion, moved lengthwise against each other by a forked lever, nut, and screw arrangement to set the iron's projection. It is an early depth-adjustment mechanism, but it is bundled inside a specific hybrid wood/iron stock design rather than being a freestanding "brass wheel" patent in the form later Bailey planes shipped. Bailey's separate US Patent 72,443 (Dec 24 1867 [P10]) is a different invention entirely — an auxiliary contact point between the cap and a thin plane-iron, added specifically to stop the iron "buckling" and "chattering" under load. It does not disclose lateral adjustment. (Fix 1 — the earlier draft attributed the familiar lateral-adjustment lever to US 72,443 and also self-contradicted by dating the lever to both 1867 and 1885.) The lateral lever instead belongs to Justus A. Traut's patent lineage: US 306,877 (granted Oct 21 1884 [P61]) claims a plane stock and iron together with an edgewise-adjusting mechanism and a pair of stationary fulcrum pins supporting it — fulcrum pins that back the lateral-adjustment lever, rather than a claim to have invented the lever concept outright. An earlier Traut patent (~US 173,177, c. 1876) may be the more foundational one for the lever itself; its text was not independently verified this pass and is flagged as an open gap rather than asserted. Stanley Rule & Level bought the rights to several of Bailey's patents in May 1869 [P13] (a secondary-sourced date, corroborated across two independent tool-history sites but not confirmed against a primary Stanley record); the "Stanley Bailey" bench plane that resulted is still the pattern every maker copies, down to the numbering. Justus Traut's Bedrock frog design is dated April 2, 1895; a separate frog-adjustment mechanism was patented by E.A. Schade (Sept 3, 1895) and, per two independent tool-history sites, became standard on mainline Bailey planes by 1907 — a date corroborated secondarily but not confirmed against a primary patent record for that specific adoption year [P14][P21][P62]. (Sales-growth figures once carried in this section could not be independently verified this pass and have been dropped rather than restated unsourced — see Fix 12.)

✦ human side

The plane is the tool woodworkers get sentimental about — more than any chisel or saw, they call it by a person's name and compare it to a violin. That is the tell that this is a human object, not just a body and an iron.

• traditions & trades: the joiner and cabinetmaker (surfacing and jointing), the patternmaker (foundry mahogany patterns to thousandths — bench, rabbet, and core-box planes) [forum, LOWER], the timber framer and shipwright (the heavy No. 8 jointer), and lutherie, where small brass finger planes graduate arched soundboards — a trade with planes in its iconography by Jost Amman's 1568 Der Lautenmacher [P-lute, MEDIUM]. Lie-Nielsen still makes a dedicated No. 101 violin-maker's plane [maker].
• the violin metaphor, said by everyone: it recurs so often it is itself a finding. James Krenov: "The plane is the cabinetmaker's violin; the instrument that sets the tone of the music" — planing a true surface was "like the music of the violin," the part of the work he loved most [P25]. Paul Sellers: "planes are something we don't just shave wood with but something we sense and feel the wood through… performing in the same way as a violin in the hands of the maestro" [P27]. Two independent masters reach for the same instrument. The plane is the tool through which the hand listens to the wood.
• named hands:
  • James Krenov — the wooden-plane evangelist; A Cabinetmaker's Notebook (1976) [P26] launched a generation of laminated-wood-plane makers, and the school he founded in 1981 (College of the Redwoods, now the Krenov School) still teaches every student to make one [P25]. The made-not-bought plane — a direct echo of the Joiner's Mallet's make-it-as-your-apprentice-piece finding.
  • Christopher Schwarz — codified the "Coarse, Medium, Fine" workflow (jack → jointer → smoother) in Handplane Essentials, the organizing taxonomy this entry's variations block uses, and one common progression among several rather than a fixed law (see Fix 6, below) [P28].
  • Garrett Hack — The Handplane Book (Taunton, 1997), the standard modern survey, "Roman times to the present" [P17].
  • Paul Sellers — the working hand-tool teacher of the internet era; "a #4 first and then a #5… you can achieve everything you need" [P27].
  • David Charlesworth — the "ruler trick" (a thin ruler raises the blade's back ~1° on the stone to polish only the leading edge), "the most innovative technique in plane sharpening in 35 years" [P55].
  • Rob Cosman — named the revival itself in his video The Great Hand Plane Revival [P56].
  • Karl Holtey — the apex of the infill tradition: planes that take 200+ hours each, every part made by his own hand but the heat-treat, £3,300–£10,000 apiece — the plane as a structural object turned decorative [P24]. The living end of the Spiers (Ayr, ~1840) → Norris (London) infill line [P22][P23].
• cultures & the revival: the Stanley No. 4 was the school-shop plane of 20th-c. North America (more No. 4s made than all other bench numbers combined — secondary/collector, MEDIUM) [P51]; when the big makers let quality lapse in the 1950s the tradition nearly died, and was pulled back by Lie-Nielsen (founded 1981, Warren, Maine — starting from a single bronze edge-trimming plane) [P47] and Lee Valley / Veritas (Lee Valley 1978; the Veritas line from 1982) [P48]. The hand-tool revival is, more than anything, a plane revival.

✦ proof of existence

Unusually strong for a tool this old: two peer-reviewed Roman objects, a dated 1797 wooden-plane chest, three verified patents (Bailey ×2, Traut ×1), and a corroborated-but-secondary production history. Held below HIGH by a few dating and citation gaps named plainly below.

• Earliest dated example: a plane from the Pompeii excavations (terminus ante quem AD 79) — iron elements, now severely corroded, 21.3 × 5.2 cm, first century CE. Holding institution: Naples Museum, inv. 71954 [P59]. (Fix 5 — accession number corrected this pass from an unverified inv. 71964 to the verified inv. 71954, checked directly against the published plate caption in Ulrich's Roman Woodworking.)
• Peer-reviewed Roman objects (the proof spine):
  • Vindolanda moulding-plane blade — laminated steel-on-iron, metallographically analysed; Sim & Ridge, Historical Metallurgy 34(2), 2000 [P4]. Held at the Vindolanda Museum, Northumberland.
  • Goodmanham plane (Yorkshire Wolds, 2nd–4th c. AD; found 2000) — ivory stock, iron sole and blade; Raman analysis published in Britannia [P5]. Held by East Riding of Yorkshire Museum Service, Beverley.
  • Silchester (Calleva) Roman iron plane — jack-plane form, Reading Museum [P6]. (Accession unconfirmed; held MEDIUM.)
• Wooden bench plane, dated: the Benjamin Seaton tool chest, 1797 — 76 planes bought new 1796 from Christopher Gabriel & Sons, barely used, original condition; Guildhall Museum, Rochester, Kent; documented in Rees & Rees, The Tool Chest of Benjamin Seaton: 1797 [P7][P8]. HIGH.
• Patents (verified directly this pass): Bailey US 67,398 (1867, hybrid adjustable stock and iron-projection mechanism) and US 72,443 (1867, cap-iron/anti-buckling improvement — not lateral adjustment), both read in full [P9][P10]; Traut US 306,877 (1884, fulcrum pins supporting a lateral-adjustment lever), also read in full [P61] — with an earlier Traut patent (~US 173,177, c. 1876) flagged as possibly more foundational but not independently verified this pass. Earlier Bailey US 13,381 (1855, scraper) and US 21,311 (1858, securing irons) [P11][P12, MEDIUM]; Knowles US X4,859 (1827, first US metal-plane patent — X-series reconstructed number, MEDIUM) [P19]; Traut Bedrock frog design dated April 2, 1895, with a separate Schade frog-adjustment patent (Sept 3, 1895) [P14][P62].
• Production record: the Stanley Bailey bench plane appears in catalogs from 1871; a widely repeated sales-growth figure from the early 1870s could not be independently verified this pass and has been dropped rather than restated — (Fix 12).

references

kind ∈ {book | journal | museum | patent | encyclopedia | specialist | maker | blog | forum | video}. Forum/blog held at lower confidence unless corroborated.

• [P1] "Plane (tool)," Wikipedia — encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_(tool)
• [P2] "Hand tool — Plane," Encyclopædia Britannica — encyclopedia. https://www.britannica.com/technology/hand-tool/Plane
• [P3] "A Brief History of the Woodworking Plane," Handplane Central — specialist blog (MEDIUM). https://www.handplane.com/879/a-brief-history-of-the-woodworking-plane/
• [P4] D.N. Sim & I.M.L. Ridge, "Examination of a moulding plane blade from Vindolanda," Historical Metallurgy 34(2), 2000 — journal (HIGH). https://www.hmsjournal.org/index.php/home/article/download/287/276
• [P5] "The Goodmanham Plane: Raman Spectroscopic Analysis of a Roman Ivory Artefact," Britannia / ResearchGate — journal (HIGH). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229876185
• [P6] "Roman Silchester: A Virtual Exhibition," Reading Museum — museum. https://www.readingmuseum.org.uk/online-exhibitions/roman-silchester-virtual-exhibition
• [P7] Jane Rees & Mark Rees, The Tool Chest of Benjamin Seaton: 1797 — book (HIGH). ISBN 978-0947673079
• [P8] "Benjamin Seaton's Tool Chest," Popular Woodworking — specialist. https://www.popularwoodworking.com/projects/benjamin_seatons_tool_chest/
• [P9] Leonard Bailey, US 67,398 "Improvement in Joiners' Planes," Aug 6 1867 — patent (HIGH, verified directly on Google Patents this pass). https://patents.google.com/patent/US67398A/en
• [P10] Leonard Bailey, US 72,443 "Improvement in Carpenters' Planes," Dec 24 1867 — patent (HIGH, verified directly this pass — confirmed as a cap-iron/anti-buckling patent, not lateral adjustment). https://www.handplanepatents.com/no-72443-improvement-in-carpenters-planes-leonard-bailey-1867/
• [P11] Leonard Bailey, US 13,381 "Plane Scraper," 1855 — Handplane Patents Database (specialist). https://www.handplanepatents.com/no-13381-plane-scraper-leonard-bailey-1855/
• [P12] Leonard Bailey, US 21,311 "Securing Plane Irons to the Stocks of Bench Planes," 1858 — Handplane Patents Database (MEDIUM, verify direct). https://www.handplanepatents.com/patents-by-year/patents-by-year-1851-to-1860/
• [P13] "Stanley vs. Bailey — A Short History," Virginia Toolworks — specialist (secondary; the May 1869 date is corroborated across two independent tool-history sites, not confirmed against a primary Stanley record). https://virginiatoolworks.com/2012/04/23/stanley-vs-bailey-a-short-history/
• [P14] "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Stanley Bed Rock Planes," Virginia Toolworks — specialist. https://virginiatoolworks.com/2015/04/12/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-stanley-bed-rock-planes/
• [P15] "Dictionary of Bench Plane Parts," Virginia Toolworks — reference (HIGH). https://virginiatoolworks.com/reference/dictionary-of-bench-plane-parts/
• [P16] "Parts of a Wooden Plane," Handplane Central — reference. https://www.handplane.com/47/parts-of-a-wooden-plane/
• [P17] Garrett Hack, The Handplane Book, Taunton Press, 1997 — book (HIGH). ISBN 978-1561587124
• [P18] "Stanley Works for New Britain," Connecticut History — institutional (HIGH; catalog-presence date only — sales-growth figure dropped, see Fix 12). https://connecticuthistory.org/stanley-works-for-new-britain/
• [P19] "Birdsill Holly — the first metal block plane" (Knowles X4,859), Working by Hand — blog (MEDIUM). https://workingbyhand.wordpress.com/2024/04/22/birdsill-holly-the-first-metal-block-plane/
• [P20] "Patrick's Blood & Gore" (plane casting/lever-cap failure), The Superior Works / supertool.com — collector reference. https://supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan2.htm
• [P21] "Bedrock plane," Wikipedia — encyclopedia, discovery aid only, not treated as a HIGH-grade source for exact claims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedrock_plane
• [P22] "Stewart Spiers," Wikipedia — encyclopedia (HIGH). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Spiers
• [P23] "Wood Infill Metal Planes," Traditional Tools Group Australia — specialist. https://tttg.org.au/article/Wood_Infill_Metal_Planes
• [P24] "The Hand Planes of Karl Holtey," Lincolnshire Life — journalism (HIGH). https://www.lincolnshirelife.co.uk/lifestyle/the-hand-planes-of-karl-holtey/
• [P25] The Krenov Foundation, "Hand Planes" / Fine Woodworking, "James Krenov on Handplanes" — maker/journal (HIGH). https://www.thekrenovfoundation.org/krenov100/hand-planes
• [P26] James Krenov, A Cabinetmaker's Notebook, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976 — book.
• [P27] Paul Sellers, "Which Bench Plane?" / "Not All Planes Are Created Equal" / "Paul's Plane Strategy" — maker blog (HIGH). https://paulsellers.com/2017/07/which-bench-plane/
• [P28] Christopher Schwarz, Handplane Essentials (Coarse/Medium/Fine), F+W/Lost Art Press — book (HIGH), presented here as one common workflow, not a mandatory sequence. ISBN 978-1440349508
• [P30] "Bevel-Up vs. Bevel-Down Planes," Fine Woodworking — trade magazine (HIGH). https://www.finewoodworking.com/project-guides/handplanes/bevel-up-vs-bevel-down-planes
• [P30a] "Bevel-Up Bench Planes: Troubleshooting & Techniques," Lee Valley / Veritas — maker (HIGH, quoted directly this pass; the multi-factor tear-out account). https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/discover/bevel-up-bench-planes/troubleshooting-and-techniques
• [P31] "Important Differences Between Bevel-up and Bevel-down Planes," Popular Woodworking — trade magazine. https://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/important-differences-between-bevel-up-and-bevel-down-planes/
• [P32] Y. Kawai & C. Kato, Yamagata University — chipbreaker/tear-out research; video circulated ~2012, referenced in Japanese woodworking literature — video/journal (MEDIUM; formal citation unconfirmed in English, honest gap carried from the original pass).
• [P33] "Chipbreaker: Theory & Use," Popular Woodworking — trade magazine. https://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/chipbreaker-theory-use/
• [P34] "Safety Manual: Handplanes," Fine Woodworking — trade magazine (HIGH). https://www.finewoodworking.com/project-guides/hand-tools/safety-manual-handplanes
• [P35] "Jointer Injuries: Machinery & Mishaps," Robson Forensic — safety authority (HIGH). https://www.robsonforensic.com/articles/jointer-expert-witness
• [P36] "Shop Accident Statistics & Woodworking Safety," WoodWorkers Guild of America — trade. https://www.wwgoa.com/post/shop-accident-statistics-woodworking-safety
• [P37] "Powered Hand Tools – Planers," CCOHS — safety authority (HIGH). https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/safety_haz/power_tools/planer.html
• [P-ccohs] "Hand Tool Ergonomics – Tool Design," CCOHS — safety authority (HIGH; fetched and quoted 2026-10-16, round 2: blunt-tool effort, neutral wrist, grip force). https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/ergonomics/handtools/tooldesign.html
• [P-veritas-lajack] Veritas Low-Angle Jack Plane instructions, Lee Valley — maker manual (relayed: cited in the reviewer's 2026-07-31 review for lever-cap tension and blade/toe clearance; fetch failed 2026-10-16, not read this pass). https://assets.leevalley.com/Original/10091/49708-veritas-low-angle-jack-plane-c-01-e.pdf
• [P38] Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, Tool Care / FAQ — maker. https://www.lie-nielsen.com/nodes/4117/tool-care
• [P39] Paul Sellers, "Cap irons or Chip Breakers Do What?" — maker blog (HIGH). https://paulsellers.com/2013/12/caps-chip-breakers/
• [P40] "Setting the Cap Iron / Chip Breaker," The English Woodworker — maker/blog. https://www.theenglishwoodworker.com/setting-the-cap-iron-chip-breaker-video/
• [P41] "Avoiding Plane Tracks: Why (and How) to Camber Your Iron," Melbourne Tool Company — maker/blog (MEDIUM). https://www.melbournetool.com/blogs/articles/avoiding-plane-tracks-why-and-how-to-camber-your-iron
• [P42] "Don't Tear Up Over Tear-Out," Renaissance Woodworker / "Taming Handplane Tear-out," Popular Woodworking — maker/trade. https://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/taming_handplane_tear-out/
• [P43] "Flattening A Plane Sole, Part 2," Popular Woodworking — trade. https://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/flattening-a-plane-sole-part-2/
• [P44] "How to Use a Japanese Hand Plane (Kanna)," KAKURI Tools — maker (verified directly this pass — bevel-down, tap-adjusted, separately-wedged chipbreaker on double-iron kanna). https://kakuritools.com/blogs/how-to-use-japanese-planes/how-to-use-a-kanna-japanese-hand-plane
• [P45] "The Control of the Pull-Stroke," Hugh Miller Furniture — maker/blog. https://www.hughmillerfurniture.co.uk/blog/japan-blog-no2-the-control-of-the-pull-stroke/
• [P46] "5 Mistakes Beginners Make with Block Planes," Popular Woodworking — trade. https://www.popularwoodworking.com/tools/5-mistakes-beginners-make-block-planes/
• [P47] "Lie-Nielsen Toolworks," Wikipedia / "Lie-Nielsen at 25," Fine Woodworking — encyclopedia/trade (HIGH). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-Nielsen_Toolworks
• [P48] "Lee Valley Tools," Wikipedia / "Lee Valley Turns 35," Fine Woodworking — encyclopedia/trade (HIGH). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Valley_Tools
• [P49] "Japanese plane," Wikipedia — encyclopedia, discovery aid only (MEDIUM; no Japanese primary verified). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_plane
• [P50] "How to Choose a Smoothing Plane" / smoothing-plane surface quality, Fine Woodworking / Wikipedia "Smoothing plane" — trade/encyclopedia. https://www.finewoodworking.com/project-guides/handplanes/how-to-choose-a-smoothing-plane
• [P51] Stanley No. 40 scrub / Stanley numbering, oldwoodworkingtools.com — collector/secondary (MEDIUM). https://www.oldwoodworkingtools.com/stanley-no-40-scrub-plane/
• [P52] "Equipment SAFETY tips: The Hand Plane," LumberJocks (clogged-mouth slice; side-laid knuckle; storage) — forum (LOWER). https://lumberjocks.com/topics/27479
• [P54] "Can You Plane MDF and Plywood?", finepowertools.com / Woodworking Talk — blog/forum (LOWER). https://www.finepowertools.com/woodworking/can-you-plane-mdf-plywood/
• [P55] David Charlesworth's "Ruler Trick," Workshop Heaven — maker/blog (HIGH for attribution). https://workshopheaven.com/blog/david-charlesworths-ruler-trick-video/
• [P56] Rob Cosman, The Great Hand Plane Revival / "Secrets of Hand Plane Sharpening" — maker. https://robcosman.com/pages/secrets-of-hand-plane-sharpening
• [P58] T.M. Becker, K.M. Trinkaus, D.I. Buckley, "Tool-related injuries among amateur and professional woodworkers," Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 38(10), 1996, pp. 1032–1035 — journal (verified as a real, correctly-dated study this pass via PubMed; its ~4.9/1,000hr figure covers a combined "jointer-planer" category and does not isolate hand-plane vs. powered-jointer risk — see Fix 8). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8899580/
• [P59] Roger B. Ulrich, Roman Woodworking, Yale University Press, 2007 — book (HIGH; read directly this pass, including the Pompeii plate caption giving Naples Museum inv. 71954 and the "fewer than twenty planes" count). https://archive.org/stream/RomanWoodworking/roman%20woodworking_djvu.txt
• [P61] Justus A. Traut, US 306,877, granted Oct 21 1884 — patent (verified directly this pass via DATAMP's patent record). https://www.datamp.org/patents/displayPatent.php?id=8893
• [P62] "Stanley Bed Rock Planes," pasttools.org — specialist (secondary, corroborating the 1895 Bedrock/Schade dates and the ~1907 mainline-adoption claim). http://www.pasttools.org/articles/Stanley_bed_rock_planes.htm
• [P-lute] "Finger plane," Wikipedia / Tools for Working Wood blog (lutherie planes; Amman 1568) — encyclopedia/blog (MEDIUM). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_plane
• [P-amateur] "Hand Planes for Beginners: Which One to Buy First," woodworkingforamateurs.com — blog (MEDIUM). https://blog.woodworkingforamateurs.com/hand-planes-for-beginners-which-one-to-buy-first-why-most-guides-get-this-wrong/
• [P-woodtreks] "Common Mistakes Using A Hand Plane," Woodtreks — instructional. https://woodtreks.com/common-mistakes-using-a-hand-plane/22/
• [P-bailey] "Hand Plane Success: How to Fine-Tune This Tool," Bailey Line Road — blog. https://baileylineroad.com/hot-rodding-your-hand-plane/
• [P-small] "Bench planes – flattening the sole," Small Workshop — blog. https://smallworkshop.co.uk/2016/06/18/bench-planes-flattening-the-sole/
• [P-fund] "Using a Plane," Fundamentals of Woodworking / The Wood Whisperer "Planes for the Beginner" — instructional. https://thewoodwhisperer.com/articles/planes-for-the-beginner/
• [P-smooth] "Smoothing plane," Wikipedia / The English Woodworker — encyclopedia/maker (MEDIUM-HIGH). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoothing_plane
• [P-crack] "Help for cracked plane?" / "Cast Iron is Fragile," Sawmill Creek / LumberJocks — forum (LOWER). https://sawmillcreek.org/threads/help-for-cracked-plane.138093/
• [REED] Reed Craft Log — plane-calibration material (R539-era plane note and grain-reading heuristics); to be mined deeper for the jack/jointer/smoother operation on a later run.

The reviewer's corrections (12)

• MUST-FIX — 1. Correct the Bailey lateral-adjustment history — Exact claim: “US 72,443, granted 24 December 1867, added the lateral-adjustment lever,” together with the later anatomy citation of the 1885 lateral lever to the same patent.
• MUST-FIX — 2. Correct the kanna blade orientation and qualify its construction — Exact claim: The kanna blade is “bedded bevel-up,” with “no separate wedge,” and the tool is later contrasted with bevel-down Western planes on that basis.
• MUST-FIX — 3. Replace the single-cause account of tear-out — Exact claim: On a bevel-up plane, “the only tear-out defense is a tight mouth,” and mouth width elsewhere is said to “govern tear-out.”
• MUST-FIX — 4. Separate surviving evidence from an invention claim — Exact claim: “The plane begins at Rome (with iron),” no confirmed pre-Roman plane means it “could not exist before cheap iron,” and Britannica is presented as treating the tool as effectively Roman for that reason.
• SHOULD-FIX — 5. Reframe the Pompeii and “infill” claims — Exact claim: The Pompeii examples are “the earliest dated planes in the world” and “the earliest infill planes.”
• MUST-FIX — 6. Stop presenting one four-plane sequence as mandatory — Exact claim: The entry presents scrub → jack/fore → try/jointer → smoother as the required traditional sequence and says a smoother cannot flatten while a jointer is required.
• SHOULD-FIX — 7. Broaden the bench-plane identity beyond one Bailey configuration — Exact claim: The anatomy and identity sections imply that bench planes as a class are cast-iron, bevel-down Bailey planes with chipbreakers and frogs.
• MUST-FIX — 8. Replace the “deferred danger” safety thesis — Exact claim: “The danger is deferred down the lineage to the powered jointer,” supported by an injury-rate statistic for powered equipment.
• MUST-FIX — 9. Add a material-hazard gate for reclaimed and coated stock — Exact claim: Reclaimed, painted, or dirty stock is treated chiefly as “not for” because grit and hidden metal damage the blade.
• SHOULD-FIX — 10. Qualify cap-iron distances and force claims — Exact claim: The cap iron should be set 0.1–0.3 mm (about 1/128 in.) from the edge for figured smoothing and this “roughly doubles force.”
• SHOULD-FIX — 11. Make setup and sole-truing advice condition-based — Exact claim: The owner must “re-true the tool before every serious use,” inexpensive new planes commonly arrive convex, hollow, or twisted and “need lapping,” and aggressive sole lapping is described categorically as damaging.
• MUST-FIX — 12. Regrade and repair the evidence ledger — Exact claim: Several Wikipedia, retailer, forum, blog, and private-consultancy sources are graded HIGH, while numerical, patent, acquisition, production, Bed Rock, and safety claims lack direct primary support.