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Learn How. Discover Why. Build Better. - Christopher Schwarz
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The Mystery of Miter
Planes
by Christopher Schwarz
Copyright
2007. Originally appeared in the
Fine
Tool Journal |
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An
Evolutionary Dead End or
a Misunderstood and Useful Tool?
As a modern user
of hand tools, the so-called miter plane has always been
something of an enigma lurking in the tool chest. After
setting up and using a fair number of these blocky planes it
seems unlikely that these tools were designed solely for planing
smooth a hand-sawn miter.
Except for a couple of trades –
picture framers come to mind – mitering on the large scale that
demands a dedicated miter plane is an infrequent chore for a
cabinetmaker or joiner. Much cabinet- and sash-work
mitering can be handled by a chisel and a guide.
Perhaps, some have proposed, the
name “miter plane” is the incorrect term for the tool. The
Stanley catalog lists this tool as a cabinetmaker’s block plane,
and the tool was particularly favored among piano-makers.
Both facts suggest that the tool
had perhaps more than one function in the traditional shop.
So last year I decided to investigate the history of the tool
and also to try using this style of plane in a variety of
unusual ways in my own shop. I got out the books and put
away my set of bench planes for the time being. It was
time to start looking back.
From an Unexpected French Trade
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Metal-bodied planes have been
traced back to Roman civilization and the 4th
century. And other examples surface from Europe as early
as the 16th century, including some that look like
the miter plane we’re familiar with. But from a user’s
perspective, the most obvious fact about these tools is that
they were unlikely to have been used on a shooting board.
The iron sole is sometimes proud of the sidewalls. Or the
sidewalls aren’t even flat. These planes look to me like
they served a purpose other than shooting miters.
Some solutions to the mystery came
from the Manhattan apartment of Joel Moskowitz, a tool collector
and founder of the
Tools for Working Wood catalog and web site. As
interesting as Moskowitz’s tool collection is, what is equally
impressive is the quantity of printed material on tools and the
trades he has gathered over the years that line the walls of his
apartment.
Moskowitz himself has often
wondered about miter planes, especially the curious way they
appear in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries
without any evolutionary precedent, including their inclusion in
the inventories of Christopher Gabriel & Sons (a planemaker and
tool dealer on Banner Street in London). |
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This early
17th-century metal plane is likely French, is made of
wrought-iron pieces brazed together, and the jury is
still out as to if it had a wooden infill.
However, you can see how it resembles the so-called
miter planes of the following centuries.
Photo
courtesy of Joel Moskowitz. |
Moskowitz points to the French as
the source of this form of metal-clad tool. Three early
sources clearly show metal-clad planes. André Félibien’s
“Principes de L'architecture” (1676); Denis Diderot’s “L’Encyclopedie,”
a collection of 71,181 articles on the state on the arts,
sciences and trades in France between 1751 and 1772; and André
Jacob Roubo’s “L'Art du Menuisier,” a multi-volume treatise on
the manual arts published between 1769 and 1775.
A dovetailed
miter plane made by Gabriel with a beech infill and numbered 309
on the bridge. This boxy tool is typically what we call a
"miter plane" but it's unlikely it was used exclusively for
mitering. |
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What is curious is that the plates
that show a metal-clad plane are not where you might expect
them, which would be with the traditional cabinetmaking and
joiner’s tool. Instead, it is in the marquetry section. Moskowitz speculates that the highly skilled French marqueters
would use the metal-soled planes to smooth the exotic woods they
used in their work. Before the French Revolution, France was a
rich country, and the court could afford to support such
high-end work and the craftsmen and tools that produced it. After the Revolution (1789), there was no such well-heeled
royalty.
However, soon after the
Revolution, these metal planes show up suddenly in
England, Moskowitz notes. The Industrial Revolution made
metal planes easier to build, England was become richer
and perhaps French craftsmen fled to England. |
Of course the demand for marquetry tools would be small, so it’s logical that
planemakers tried to sell the metal plane to the cabinetry
trades, Moskowitz says. In any case, the miter soon became a
mainstay of early planemakers and likely evolved into the
classic bevel-down infill plane that remains desirable to
collectors and users.
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