Norris Smoother

[custard]

Here's a piece of Rippled Sycamore, three planes, and a shaving. Which plane made the shaving?

It was the Woden (an inexpensive British Bailey copy from the 1960's) using the original thin iron, but of course it could have been the Holtey or the Norris. Fact is they all get the job done equally well.

I chose Rippled Sycamore because for most UK woodworkers that's the trickiest planing challenge you'll likely face. Rippled Sycamore is, by a country mile, the most common heavily figured timber you'll find in British timber yards. Unless you make a habit of working in Burmese Teak, original growth Indian Rosewood, or you're regularly planing the edges of plywood smooth (or you're working in those insanely tough Ozzy timbers that Derek favours!), then if you can handle this you're all sorted to crack on and actually make something!

 

[D_W]

Good quality plywood is no problem for a stanley plane. Sharpen more often maybe, but the really good plywood that is nearly all wood and little glue planes just like wood.

Usually, the discussion of difficult wood here includes curly maple, but curly maple isn't particularly difficult to plane. Much worse is stuff like ash that was poorly sawn and that you have to remove a fair bit of wood from.

Anything poorly dried so that the earlywood is crumbly can be problematic until the last smoother shavings.

I have no need for a norris, but I'd still love to have one without having to make a kit. My double iron infill is a spiers panel copy, and I made it without filing the mouth forward inside the casting - something that restricted the use of the cap iron a little bit. A quick fix of that with a mill file and reset of the cap iron (once learned) and the plane is a monster for as long as you can handle thick shavings on a 9 pound plane that has a grippy mild steel sole.

 

[worn thumbs]

If you haven't used a Norris it will take a little time to get used to the grip.Unless you have difficult grain to contend with you won't see much benefit over a sharp Stanley or Record and even then,a Stanley with the frog adjusted forward a touch can work very well.I have Stanleys, a Record and a Norris and they all see use.The one that gets the most use is a Stanley No4 with plastic handles and that might surprise some of the posters here.

 

[custard]

Good quality plywood is no problem for a stanley plane. Sharpen more often maybe, but the really good plywood that is nearly all wood and little glue planes just like wood.

Sadly that's not been my experience! The odd swipe on ply now and again won't do any harm, but if ply or UF glue lamination is a regular task then I think it's worth getting a dedicated hand plane.

A couple of workshops I've worked in have had a protocol for running ply or laminations over the surface planers, in one workshop you were supposed to only use the back inch of the planer knives, and another let everyone know when the planer knives were being changed and you were free to plane up any ply or laminations then.

 

[essexalan]

Difficult to adjust the mouth on one though you can only pack the iron to make the mouth tighter or use a thinner iron which is kind of pointless.

There is something to be said for a slightly thinner blade - it will open the mouth and enable the plane to be used with a chipbreaker. I have a Spier that I restored literally from a shell and levercap. I built the infills and made a new levercap screw. Of course. the aim then - this was about 10 years ago - was to create a fine mouth. The result was a plane that took fine shavings but was not in the league of my high angle planes for coping with tearout in the interlocked woods I use. It went into the shelf, sadly. A couple of years ago I decided to try again, but now I knew how to use the chipbreaker. The mouth is just a touch too tight. Even so, the performance has improved many times over. So, either I find a thinner blade, or open the mouth.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Good point Derek nice to see an old plane come back from the dead. BTW I believe the numbering you mention during the renovation was used to match the parts ready for assembly so all the components for one plane would have had the same number stamped on them. You can get plane irons made to size in the UK including the thickness or of course you can get a length of A2 or D2 and make your own. Both my infills do not have tight mouths, due to their age probably, so the chip breakers work well with a restriction on the thickness of shaving.