Hi All Please find below a description of planes their numbers and at the bottom books explaining more on Planes I, hope you find this interesting. A low angle block plane This is probably the first plane to get for most people. There are a lot of things you can do with a block plane, such as cutting small bevels and fitting drawers. Unfortunately, the low cutting angle can cause tearout in figured hardwoods. But it is superior for softwoods and endgrain of all woods. A version with an adjustable mouth is the most flexible. Both Lie-Nielsen and Veritas currently make them. The Stanley #60-1/2 is the most common version.
A jack plane In terms of metallic planes there are three basic types: smoothers, jacks, and jointers. The jack is Mr. Inbetween. It is almost short enough to do a good job smoothing, and in fact there are those who prefer its heft and length for smoothing. On the other hand, it is almost long enough to do a good job straightening. In fact, you can do just as good a job straightening a face or edge with a jack plane as you can with a jointer, but it takes more workmanship to be able to do it. The #5 jack plane has been the mainstay of carpenters for ages. Many people these days prefer the wider and heavier #5-1/2, but it is less common and more expensive. A large smooth plane The #4 smooth plane is probably the most commonly used plane of all. Personally, I would not select a #4 as my only bench plane because one of its most common uses would be for straightening edges, and a #5 does a better job of that. A low-angle jack or smooth plane Although I do not have much experience with these planes, the favorable things I keep hearing about them from people I respect make them sound like a viable choice. Although Stanley made the #164 low-angle smoother and #62 low-angle jack plane, they are both rare and expensive. Both Lie-Nielsen and Veritas now make these planes. They are mechanically simpler than standard bench planes, making these low-angle versions a little less expensive from those expensive marks. Their proponents say that by equipping them with an additional iron or two with the bevel ground at a higher angle you can make them perform excellently to smooth hardwood surfaces. The stock iron angles are good for softwoods and rough work. If so, one of these planes with two or three blades sharpened differently could well come close to being a universal bench plane. I want to emphasize that I do not have enough personal experience with these planes to be comfortable recommending them myself. Two planes A low angle block plane plus a jack or large smooth plane The jack or smoother can be either regular-angle or low-angle. If it were me I'd choose the jack plane as the sole bench plane. In fact, that's what I did years ago. Dad had only two planes his whole life, a cheap little #102 block plane and a #5 jack plane. Those are the planes I learned on. Three planes A low angle block plane, a #4 or #4-1/2 smooth plane, and a #7 or #8 jointer For this option, where you can have two bench planes, it makes sense to pick one of the smaller ones and one of the larger ones and leave the Mr. Inbetween jack plane out. The difficulty that gives you is that since both smooth and jointer planes are used for fine to medium work, you have nothing to handle rough work and large amounts of stock removal. However, unless you flatten and thickness rough wood by hand, you should be able to do with any roughing planes. An interesting thing to note about this three-plane solution is that you can't get here from the two-plane solution unless you chose a #4 or #4-1/2 as your only bench plane. Five planes Add a #40 scrub and a #5 or #5-1/2 jack plane to the above three-plane suggestion. To save money, an old #3 or #4 can be converted for use as a scrub plane by opening its mouth wide and grinding a pronounced curve on the cutting edge. These additional two planes, especially the #40, are only needed if you are flattening and thicknessing rough lumber by hand. Lie-Nielsen currently makes a scrub plane, and I understand that Veritas will be adding one to their line later. To me, though, the absolutely best scrub plane available is the wooden one still being made by ECE. As a bonus, it only costs about half as much as the Lie-Nielsen and Veritas ones. Plane Numbers And Types The numbers are Stanley model numbers. They go from 1 to 608 and mostly there is little or no rhyme or reason except for three oases of rational thought. The planes usually have the model number on them somewhere, but not always. The importance of the Stanley numbers is that they originated the system and over the years sold more planes than all of their competitors many times over. Over the years their Bailey and Bed Rock planes have been of consistently high quality for the time, so that they are both easy to find used and desirable as user planes because of their trustworthy quality. Stanley has also had several lower quality lines, such as Handyman, that are not good potential users. The three rational oases are: #1 - #8 are bench planes--what most people think of as planes #1 is the smallest, #8 is the largest, and the sequence is by size. In addition, in this range there are fractional numbers for inbetween sizes. #4-1/2 and #5-1/2 are larger than normal #4 and #5, respectively. #5-1/4 is smaller than normal #5. #1 through #4 are smooth planes. #5 is a jack plane. #6 is a try, or fore plane. #7 and #8 are jointer planes. #602 - #608 are the premium Stanley Bed Rock versions of #2 - #8 By the way, the normal #1 - #8 Stanley bench planes are also known as Bailey planes because they usually have both Stanley and Bailey names on them somewhere. Bailey was also a manufacturer of planes before he was bought out by Stanley, so a Bailey plane can also be one made by the Bailey company before the sale. These are very rare, so depending on the context you can sometimes tell the difference between the meanings. In general if a plane number has a fraction, it is a variant of another plane with the same integer number. With bench planes 1 - 8 and 602 - 608 there are also "types" numbered 1 - 18 (I'm not sure about the highest number). The types are not Stanley numbers at all, but numbers collectors use to distinguish small variations between the planes as Stanley gradually modified the design over the century or so of manufacture. There are charts you can use to check the presence of maybe two dozen features on a plane and then determine which "type" it is, and hence the date of manufacture to within a few years. There are collectors who try to accumulate every model number of a particular type. That makes some types more expensive, often with no corresponding superiority of performance. The type number can also be important when buying a plane for use because it tells you whether there is a lateral adjustment lever, high front knob, low front knob, etc., and because some types have better performance qualities. Also after WWII many of the more recent types are considered to be of diminishing quality. A full catalog of all Stanley hand planes with photographs and explanations of all the above plus much, much more is available on the Internet at Patrick Leach's Blood & Gore web site. You can find it by Googling Leach Blood Gore. The bible of plane identification. Some other manufacturers just used Stanley numbers while others, such as Millers Falls and Sargent, used their own. There are charts online cross-references the different model numbers. There is no commonly accepted numbering system for wooden bench planes--they are identified by just their length and width. Books The three best books on planes for users, not collectors, are: img/handplanebook The Handplane Book by Garret Hack, which has beautiful color photographs of unusual and beautiful planes plus a very good discussions of the physics of the way planes work, how to fettle a plane, how to sharpen the irons, and also how to use planes to smooth, flatten, and straighten wood. This book also explains the purpose and often how to use all the different types of specialty planes. Actually, this is not just one of the best books for users, but one of the best for everyone. This has a huge number of beautiful color photographs. It is the biggest, prettiest, and most expensive of the books. Plane Basics by Sam Allen , an out of print book that has good "basic" information on how to use planes. You can usually find a used copy of this book for $8 - $15 at amazon.com or abebooks.com if you search for it for a little while. This book is one of the publisher's "Basics" series of books, so keeps to down to earth useful information. Planecraft: Hand Planing by Modern Methods by C. W. Hampton & E. Clifford. This was originally published in 1934, when hand planes were still an important tool in any woodshop because power jointers and planers were only available in large manufacturing models. It was "revised and enlarged" in 1950 and 1959 and has been reprinted 23 times. An exact reprint has been published by Woodcraft. It is inexpensive and may be available only from Woodcraft. This book is a manual for the use of Record planes, which include nearly copies of most of the popular Stanley planes, including specialty planes and spokeshaves. Usually their plane numbers relate in a direct way to Stanley ones (like 05 for their Jack plane) but sometimes there is no obvious relation. The contents of the book are heavily Record-chauvinistic and continually extoll the advantages of metal planes over wooden ones, evidence that wooden planes were still popular in 1936. This book includes more practical information about exactly how to cut joints, dadoes, grooves, rabbets, and moldings than any other single book I have seen. img/guidetosharp The two best books for understanding how a plane cuts, which has profound implications to fettling and sharpening planes, are Hack's The Handplane Book, mentioned above, and Leonard Lee's The Complete Guide to Sharpening. The latter book is also the best available book for understanding the finer points of sharpening blades of all kinds: chisels, planes, knives, scissors, axes,É. It focuses on what sharp means for different tools used for different applications and explaining the physics of cutting so that you can determine what bevel angle is best to put on a given use of a particular tool. Other books usually give a bevel angle to use; this book explains the significance of the bevel angle and explains how to determine the best bevel angle for each individual tool for maximum sharpness, because the best bevel depends on the qualities of each blade's metal, how the tool will be used, and the type of wood it will be used on. That information lets you understand the more general guidelines elsewhere and therefore helps you understand when it may pay to deviate from them a bit. 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