Preparing to Make Wooden Planes

Over the last few years, I've acquired a few wooden handplanes.  Several of them are older planes that I've not yet restored to working condition and they are basically sitting on the shelf for display.  But I also purchased a pair of planes--a smoothing plane and a 16" jack plane--from Scott Meek and I'm finding them really lovely to use.

Scott Meek jointer (rear) and smoothing planes

Scott offers plane-building classes in his Asheville, NC, workshop and in a few weeks I am scheduled for a week-long class to build three planes:

• A smoothing plane
• A jack plane
• A jointer plane

To get ready for the class, I've been reading and watching DVDs.  There are some good resources available.  In case you are interested in learning about making wooden planes, here's what I've found so far:

•  David Finck's Making & Mastering Wood Planes -- an excellent resource on making a Krenov-style smoothing plane; he also has a DVD set on making and using wooden planes
• John Whelan's Making Traditional Wooden Planes -- a brief description of how you can make not only a smoothing plane but also many other specialized types of planes
• David Perch and Robert Lee's Wooden Planes and How to Make Them -- similar to Whelan's book in that it covers many types of planes, but not the same ones as Whelan
• Scott Meek has a DVD set that shows his method for making Krenov-style planes

The books are mostly available from Amazon.com or Highland Woodworking.  Perch and Lee is sold by Lee Valley.  The Meek DVDs are available from Popular Woodworking.