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Using Early Style Plane 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.
Early metal
planes look like what we would call a “miter plane.” Miter planes are characterized by an iron pitched at 20° to 30° or so and the cutter being secured with the bevel up. This “bevel up” configuration allows the user to maintain the tight mouth of the tool as the iron is sharpened back, even if the iron decreased in thickness (which was common among early cutters). It also
allowed the user to change the cutting characteristics of the
tool by whetting (sharpening) a higher pitch on the iron. While
I don’t know of any reference to early craftsmen changing the
pitches on the irons of their miter planes, they certainly were
aware that different pitches produced different results, as
evidenced by the early wooden tools that have showed up with
different pitches. For my own experiments, I examined a number of historical examples of miter planes (both cast and dovetailed examples) and worked extensively with three planes: The cast Lie-Nielsen reproduction of the Stanley No. 9 and two custom-built miters from Wayne Anderson: an “improved” dovetailed miter plane, and a metal tool that was based on very early examples of European tools that resemble miter planes. The plane, shown here is a small tool, 7” long with an 1-1/2”-wide cutter. The sole is proud of the brass cladding on all four sides and the brass is piened through holes in the sole to secure it. What is interesting about this tool (and other European examples like this) is that the mouth of the tool is located farther back from the toe than most users are familiar with. The mouth on this one is located almost centrally between the toe and heel of the tool. This changes the cutting characteristics of the tool significantly. It is far easier to begin a cut with this tool than it is with similarly sized modern bench planes, such as the Stanley No. 2. It also excels at trimming joints flush. The oversized toe is easy to balance on the proud section of the joint before the trimming cut. It also is easier to plane edges with this tool than with a block or chariot plane because the longer toe directs the plane into the cut. I’ve long thought that one of the functions of the adjustable mouth on a block plane was to prevent the corner of your work from catching in the mouth. With this old-style miter plane, this was never a problem. I even used it as
a small-scale smoother and found it a great tool for planing out
the occasional hollows missed by a try plane and jointer. Ironically, the one task I couldn’t use this miter plane for was
shooting miters.
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