How to Make the Mouth, Abutment & Wedge For A Wooden Bench Plane

The hardest part of a wooden bench plane to wrap your head around is with out a doubt also the soul and heart of the very plane itself. It is where all the good stuff happens. It is the parts you can't see but that matters the most.

No online picture of an antique bench plane would ever give you the details that you need to make the critical functioning parts. You would be too timid to probably dissemble one if you were to even happen upon the exact one you wanted to duplicate while at flee market or vintage tool shop.

Well no need to now. Even though this post won't go into step by step how to form all the critical parts at least you will see what they are supposed to look like which is half the battle, or more.

While in the process of making a demo plane for a post to show the inter workings (and I had actually already cut it in half in order to show off the inter workings) Doug Moulder came along and drew up my jack plane plans in a 3D model. Great work Doug! So there is a nice plane cut in two parts if anyone wants one. I may or may not get around to photo graphing it to show how the inter workings come together. Funny thing is that after all that I realized that I could have just cut the parts into the side of a block of wood without doing it the hard way and then cutting it in half. Sometimes I wonder...

Anyhow here is the good stuff you have been waiting for. Enjoy!

Also I have a real interesting project in the works. Tapered plane blades. More on that to come!