Wooden thumb planes / rabots noisette

My personal build of thumb planes.
Funny enough, thumb plane translates "rabeau noisette" in French, which means hazelnut plane.:rolleyes:

http://www.labellenote.fr/file/Luthe..._noisettes.JPG

They are simply made from a tutorial I found on the Web.
The first ones, I did them using the hard wood I had : chestnut tree, but turned out to be too soft.
For the second attempt, I found in an antique shop an old wooden planer, made out of sorb tree (I dont know if that translation is good, it's "cormier" in french), that red , very hard wood.
It is indeed the traditional wood here for making plane soles.
So, I cut a little length in that maxi plane to make several of my mini planes :p
And they are far better.
The blocks are made of ebony for the first.
I have several width, and some have a flat sole, others round sole.

Tell me what you think !

Thanks Christophe! I've added your Thumb Planes to our Woodworking category, as well as to your builder page: Christophe Mineau's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

<div id="blocks"> <div class="block b1 pngfix"> <div class="bimg"> <div> <a href="/thumb-planes"><img src="/uploads/92328/thumb-planes.jpeg" alt="Thumb Planes" /></a> </div> </div> <div class="head pngfix"></div> <div class="left pngfix"></div> <div class="right pngfix"></div> <div class="blockover b1 pngfix"> <div class="title"> <a href="/thumb-planes">Thumb Planes</a> <span> by <a href="/builder/Christophe+Mineau">Christophe Mineau</a></span> </div> <div class="tags"> tags: <a href="/tag/hand-tools">hand tools</a>, <a href="/tag/finger-plane">finger plane</a> </div> </div> </div> </div>

Beautiful set Christophe. Excellent work.

Hi Christophe, where do you use such a plane?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DIYer

Hi Christophe, where do you use such a plane?

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Hi ,
The curved sole planes are used mainly to carve the plates for archtop instruments (violin, mandolins, jaz guitars), but personnaly, since I have made the wooden ones, I have purchased a set of brass ones.
They are used after roughing with a gouge or possibly a router, and before the scraper (very few sand paper use indeed in the traditional building process)
For the curly maple, you need to use a toothed blade, standard blade for spruce.
Example on this photo (credit : found on the web) :
http://gapyx.com/cmt/2007/05/violin_...icknessing.jpg
The flat sole little planes are useful to shape the edges of the plates and also the braces of top plates, where you need to follow a curve you could'nt follow with a longer sole plane.
like on this photo (credit : found on the web) :
http://filippoprotani.files.wordpres...0062.png?w=480
I still use my wooden planes for the flat soles.

Thanks for the explanation, Christophe! That bit about using little sandpaper in traditional work is interesting.

Yes, and on that last point, to be very traditional, ancient builders and still modern ones use this instead of sand paper.
Japanese craftsmen use also something similar.