Planecraft - Hand planing by Modern Methods [Paperback]

C. W. Hampton (Author), E. Clifford (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Woodcraft Supply Corp (June 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0918036003
• ISBN-13: 978-0918036001
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #667,434 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Plane old woodworking, March 5, 2006

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Planecraft - Hand planing by Modern Methods (Paperback)

Power tools seem to cause amnesia - once someone has gotten used to routers and table saws, they seem to forget the hand tools that did the same jobs for thousands of years. This book comes from the end of that era, not so many years ago. Originally (and still) a how-to book for the tool user, it's also a reminder of how things used to be done.

When someone thinks of a plane today, it's probably a simple block plane or maybe a longer jack plane. This book goes way beyond that, to planes specialized for end grain, ploughs for cutting grooves and dadoes, planes planes concave or convex curves, shapers, rabbeting tools, tools for fiberboard, and lots more, profusely illustrated with photos and line drawings. The drawings are quite legible, but some of the photos have suffered in reproduction - still, I'd rather have this book with poor reproduction than not have it at all.

In order to explain some of the more elaborate contraptions, the authors describe woodworking projects where each feature becomes useful. Much of the book's content is well beyond the introductory level, even though the authors are careful to address the needs of students and their educators. (It seems quaint now that students were always "boys.")

Throughout all that, this is largely a 250-page ad for Record woodworking tools. Except for a few references to planes in history, back to the Greeks and Romans, every tool is identified by its model number in the Record catalog. The writer was careful, though - the only way to get readers to sit through such a long commercial is to give something of real value in return. The authors do that so well that even now, more than 70 years after the original edition came out, the book is still in print and still useful to today's woodworker. Planes aren't as central or diverse an element of the modern toolbox as they once were, but they're still useful and perhaps deserving of more use. This book does a lot to encourage that.

//wiredweird

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Full of good information, December 4, 2009

By 

D. J. (Iowa) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Planecraft - Hand planing by Modern Methods (Paperback)

This book is absoultely full of good information and one without superfluous crap. Everything is laid out such as the parts and why they are so critical, sharpening angles and whether they should have a secondary bevel or not, and great information on plough planes. All types of blades and cutters along with how to effectively sharpen and why thier use makes sense.

I completely agree with the other reviewer in that it covers Record almost as though it were an owners manual, but in order to have non Record people buy it, they had to stock it full of great information - and they did. With all the handtool and specifically plane books that are much larger, this is now my "Go to" manual. As a friend of mine said - you learn something new each time you look through it.