Plough and Rebate plane advice

UKworkshop.co.uk

Help Support UKworkshop.co.uk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

yan89

Established Member
Joined
25 Jun 2022
Messages
80
Reaction score
11
Location
Yorkshire
Morning folks

Looking at buying a plough plane and a rebate plane to add to my toolset, but just seen prices on new items are fairly steep and wondered if anyone had any advice about more entry level kit that might do a job in the short term?

I found this for instance, but have no idea whether it’s in good working order or not?

Plough plane set

Thanks in advance
 
Best value rebate plane by far is the Stanley 78. They often turn up without all the bits - fence, scriber etc but are still really useful. Will do as a shoulder plane too, if sharp enough, also as a general purpose block plane e.g. for adjusting tenons
Old woodies are also very usable and cheap.
Best value plough is the Stanley 13-052. Not as fashionable as others but very practical and cheap.
 
Last edited:
With regard to wanting a plough plane, I have a complete but disassembled one. The body is toast and I was going to get a nice block of something with character and use the old body as a template to make a new one. However as I already have one it has sat in a drawer in the wksp for about 5 years. If you feel you have the ability to get a decent chunk of wood and make a few rebates and a couple of holes for the fence arms, very happy to send it to you including the old body & fence and I think 5 or 6 irons if you can cover postage. The old body is one of these sorta things:


1659537950285.png
 
With regard to wanting a plough plane, I have a complete but disassembled one. The body is toast and I was going to get a nice block of something with character and use the old body as a template to make a new one. However as I already have one it has sat in a drawer in the wksp for about 5 years. If you feel you have the ability to get a decent chunk of wood and make a few rebates and a couple of holes for the fence arms, very happy to send it to you including the old body & fence and I think 5 or 6 irons if you can cover postage. The old body is one of these sorta things:


View attachment 140961
Hey Droogs - many thanks for the offer but I’m actually going to collect a couple planes tomorrow. I would have loved that as a project too!

Thanks again
 
Best value rebate plane by far is the Stanley 78. They often turn up without all the bits - fence, scriber etc but are still really useful. Will do as a shoulder plane too, if sharp enough, also as a general purpose block plane e.g. for adjusting tenons
Old woodies are also very usable and cheap.
Best value plough is the Stanley 13-052. Not as fashionable as others but very practical and cheap.
Hi Jacob - managed to pick both these models up yesterday at a good price (I think!). Is there a prescribed methodology when setting them up / fettling? Wondering if there's any consensus on trustworthy youtube guides out there, although both of mine seem in reasonably good condition.
 
What you're going to buy or use has a lot to do with how you intend to use it (them).

If you're going to cut a lot of rebates, a boxed moving fillister plane is not going to be bettered by anything modern. Find a good one and pay what it costs - it's a lifetime plane. For all planes with nickers like that, set the iron proud of the body and the nicker a bit more proud than the iron (like a hair) as the nicker is what establishes the rebate and keeps the plan from pushing itself toward the edge. the very corner of the iron never quite touches the wall.

A cheap single iron skew rebate plane to clean things up, especially if there is reversed grain, is a nice add on. I'm sure these were 5 pounds all over the place (or 1). but not sure at this point. In the US, the going rate for one worth having was $10 five years ago.

Moving fillisters are cheaper there than they are here if quality matters.

----------

For a wooden plough plane, get something good and in good shape and with matching irons.

And if you can find a used record or marples plastic handled plow with a set of irons, add that on for smaller work. Some wooden ploughs will have a fence stopping short of the very edge for a number of reasons - mine (matheison) contacts a wide footed depth stop, making it clear that mathieson didn't expect anyone to be using a plow plane as a do-all cutting rebates.

-----------

I went with modern tools for all of this stuff the first go around and eventually dumped them. The advice is always about how well they're milled or how precise they are, but none of that really comes into play. You set a moving fillister off of the iron and not with a micrometer, and same with a plow, and parallelism by eye or with a block if you have something critical. The friction from all metal boutique planes is incredible and they are not remotely in a class with boxed moving fillisters for rebates and the add on irons for the combination planes will cost more than an entire good used record plane.
 
Hi Jacob - managed to pick both these models up yesterday at a good price (I think!). Is there a prescribed methodology when setting them up / fettling? Wondering if there's any consensus on trustworthy youtube guides out there, although both of mine seem in reasonably good condition.
Shouldn't any fettling they are pretty simple devices but the user instructions could be handy. Should be out there on the net somewhere!
 
What you're going to buy or use has a lot to do with how you intend to use it (them).

If you're going to cut a lot of rebates, a boxed moving fillister plane is not going to be bettered by anything modern. Find a good one and pay what it costs - it's a lifetime plane. For all planes with nickers like that, set the iron proud of the body and the nicker a bit more proud than the iron (like a hair) as the nicker is what establishes the rebate and keeps the plan from pushing itself toward the edge. the very corner of the iron never quite touches the wall.

A cheap single iron skew rebate plane to clean things up, especially if there is reversed grain, is a nice add on. I'm sure these were 5 pounds all over the place (or 1). but not sure at this point. In the US, the going rate for one worth having was $10 five years ago.

Moving fillisters are cheaper there than they are here if quality matters.

----------

For a wooden plough plane, get something good and in good shape and with matching irons.

And if you can find a used record or marples plastic handled plow with a set of irons, add that on for smaller work. Some wooden ploughs will have a fence stopping short of the very edge for a number of reasons - mine (matheison) contacts a wide footed depth stop, making it clear that mathieson didn't expect anyone to be using a plow plane as a do-all cutting rebates.

-----------

I went with modern tools for all of this stuff the first go around and eventually dumped them. The advice is always about how well they're milled or how precise they are, but none of that really comes into play. You set a moving fillister off of the iron and not with a micrometer, and same with a plow, and parallelism by eye or with a block if you have something critical. The friction from all metal boutique planes is incredible and they are not remotely in a class with boxed moving fillisters for rebates and the add on irons for the combination planes will cost more than an entire good used record plane.
Cracking detail here D_W - thanks very much for going to the effort.
 
Shouldn't any fettling they are pretty simple devices but the user instructions could be handy. Should be out there on the net somewhere!
Worth checking that the irons haven’t been butchered. The sides should have a slight angle to them - just acute of square. If they have been sharpened square (or fractionally obtuse as I had on a couple) they can cause the plough to wander in the cut and leave a horrid ragged wall to your groove.

I’m probably not explaining it very well, but I honed all my irons as I would a chisel - flat the backs, bevel the sides - and they all now cut true and clean.

HTH
 
What I found was that although 78 has the nicker, depth stop and fence what you find in practice is that these are less useful than they look. Start a rebate with them all set if you want to, but once there is enough depth then take them off and proceed as you would with an ordinary woody; work to lines, use the cut side to guide you down to the line, finish off the side to the line with the plane turned on its side.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top