How to Choose and Use Bench Planes & Scrapers Paperback – Illustrated, April 1, 2010

Bought for my son who is incarcerated. He says it's a great book.

My original plan in reading this book was to compare it to two of the standard texts in this area, Garrett Hack's "The Handplane Book" and C.W. Hampton's and E. Clifford's "Planecraft." As will become clear below, this wasn't necessary, although I will refer to those books from time to time.Mr. English says, in his introduction, "This is a book for the average woodworker. It's a simple, straightforward manual for people who own a few bench planes and would like to know how to use them." (Introduction, page X). This is a worthy goal. Most woodworkers use both power and hand tools, and a book that shows how basic planes can be effective in a powered workshop would be quite useful. I would have liked to see him succeed in what he attempted. Unfortunately, this book doesn't succeed. It's flawed in so many ways I couldn't even finish it.In addition to the usual discussion of plane types, tuning a plane, and sharpening, Mr. English covers four basic operations: flattening a board or panel, jointing an edge, dealing with difficult grain, and milling a rabbet. He does best on the discussion of difficult grain. In the other subjects, he leaves out critical or useful information or makes outlandish recommendations.His discussion of flattening a board, for instance, is barely adequate; it's possible that a new user of bench planes could flatten a board/panel with his instructions, but other discussions, such as the explanation in "The Handplane Book" or indeed the discussions in many general woodworking texts, would serve the newcomer better. He also leaves out critical information. He suggests that, having flattened one face, the woodworker can then put the board through the (power-driven) planer. If it's too wide for the shop planer, he suggests, "...repeat the process outlined above to flatten the second face..." (or go find a cabinet shop with a wider planer or wide belt sander). That's it. No discussion of using a marking gauge to gauge panel/board thickness from the freshly flattened face; no discussion, for that matter, of working the board down to the design thickness, or even that design thickness is an issue.Similar flaws exist with jointing an edge and milling rabbets. Some of his statements are absurd. For instance, he suggests planing a stopped rabbet (using a No. 78 rabbet plane) as follows: 1) clamp stop block 2-1/2" past the end of the rabbet to be cut, 2) with the iron in standard position, plane the rabbet, working right up to the stop on each pass, 3) chisel down at the end of the rabbet, 4) move the iron to the bullnose position and complete the rabbet. I've been trying to picture the operation, and the best I can envision through Step 3 is a rabbet on which the final 6"-9" slope up toward the end. EVERY description I've ever read of planing a stopped rabbet using a regular rabbet plane (not necessarily the most efficient tool for the job) recommends something like chiseling a pocket at the end of the rabbet - in other words, chiseling the rabbet for that last part - into which the plane body can move.These inadequate instructions are made worse by poor organization. He talks a little about an idea in one chapter and then covers it in detail in another; one example is the idea of cambering irons, introduced in the first chapter, then ignored until Chapter 6. Another is his explanation of included angle as a way of thinking about the cutting angle of the plane iron; this explanation, which is not bad, would have served him far better in the very first chapter, in which he does not do a very good job of explaining the cutting angles of block planes. This occurs frequently enough to be very confusing.There is also an apparent lack of focus. Having announced at the beginning that his intent is to discuss bench planes and their application in a (predominantly powered) shop, he devotes a chapter to molding planes, without only a vague discussion of how to use them. He also has a chapter on rabbet planes (focusing exclusively on the Stanley No. 78), shoulder and bullnose planes (listing only the Lie-Nielsen No. 73 and Stanley No. 75), and router planes. In a later chapter, he goes into some detail on the use of the No. 78 (where he suddenly introduces the Stanley No. 190 as an alternative to the No. 78), but he never again discusses the uses of shoulder and router planes, both planes with multiple uses in a mainly powered shop.These larger problems are made still more irritating by smaller failings. He makes statements in one chapter that he contradicts in later chapters. On page 4, he says of block planes (by which he explicitly means the 5"-7" one-handed planes like the Stanley No. 9-1/2 or 60) that they are the "...only bench planes with the bevel of the iron (blade) facing up." In later chapters, he praises the virtues of the Veritas bevel-up smoother and jointer, to a degree of detail that implies that he's used these tools (that, according to his earlier statement, don't exist).Or he makes statements that are directly, or by implication, wrong. On page 5, he says that "Low-angle block planes...usually have adjustable throats." His language in this paragraph implies that this is not ever true of standard-angle block planes, a statement that would hurt the feelings of legions of adjustable-throat standard-angle block planes.He acknowledges, briefly and in scattered locations, that Japanese planes exist; but makes no attempt to discuss their use, nor does he explain why he doesn't do so.In the middle of all of this confusion, someone decided that what the book needed was a little tool porn. So suddenly, in a sidebar on page 16, we're told that "Throughout this book we'll take a look at the makers of the plane." And, indeed, subsequent sidebars give thumbnail histories of the operations of various American and British firms and individual makers, historic and current. While I appreciate good tool porn, it's disharmonious to the expressed intent of this book.Finally, Linden Publishing apparently decided to save some money by not assigning a copy editor to the book. Of the multiple errors that a good, or even mediocre, copy editor would have caught, the most egregious was the properly credited picture of two lovely Sauer and Steiner planes in the thumbnail history of Norris planes; and the most amusing was the sidebar headline referring to Karl Hotley (I immediately pictured a calendar featuring planemakers dressed in nothing by their best products and a smile) followed by the proper spelling of his name in the text of that sidebar.OK...can I say anything nice about this book? Well, I do think Mr. English had a good idea, and good intentions. It's a shame that, for whatever reason - his writing ability, the deadline Linden Publishing set, the decisions made by his editor(s) - he wasn't able to exercise those intentions in the service of his idea.

This book is a real good guide for the usage and maintenance of bench planes and scrapers.It helps to choose the right tool for the work and it shows in a very detailed way how to tune your tools.