This is my Raubank, or jointer plane. It’s 600mm (about 2 feet) long. We don’t use this sort of thing in the carpentry industry today: we have machines that can plane wood almost as well as by hand in a fraction of the time, so it would be too expensive to pay a carpenter by the hour to hand plane wood any more.

I prefer hand tools to power tools because they are simpler, easier to maintain and last longer. In the UK and USA, hand planes are usually metal, but in mainland Europe still use these simpler wooden planes, where the blade is positioned by tapping it with a hammer and secured with a wooden wedge, which I prefer as there are no moving parts to go wrong.

I’m slowly building up a set of basic carpentry tools, and I’m trying to get as many as possible second hand, partly because it appeals to my inner tree hugging hippy (Less damage to the environment and no money to the evil corporations, et c.) and partly because I’m broke. I got this plane for a fraction of the price of a new one, even though the base is Guaiacum wood, instead of the usual (and much cheaper) beechwood. Probably it looked a bit too tatty (It was described by the seller as ‘Looking like the Titanic’) for most people to be bothered with it.

The Real Carpenters at work think I’m very strange to be excited about a tatty old jointer plane, but as I repeatedly turn up to the workshop on a Bakfiets, it’s just another eccentricity to add to the list.

Besides, when the inevitable collapse of civilisation comes, I’ll at least be able to make nice shelves.

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