{"id":1930,"date":"2014-06-02T21:17:25","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T13:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tongtuning.com\/wordpress\/?p=1930"},"modified":"2021-09-17T13:42:55","modified_gmt":"2021-09-17T05:42:55","slug":"planes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tongtuning.com\/wordpress\/1930","title":{"rendered":"Planes"},"content":{"rendered":"
The full range of bench planes were utilized from the beginning of the piano industry until increased mechanization made their use obsolete, or at least, less common. These included smoothing, jack, and jointer planes in transitional, metallic, and wooden forms.\u00a0 The wooden forms were used first, until Stanley and others introduced their line of metallic bench planes after the Civil War.<\/h5>\n
The New York City piano makers and their workers, however, had a need for several specialized planes, which were supplied by New York tool makers, such as Napoleon Erlandsen<\/a>, Joseph Popping, and George Thorested.\u00a0 These included box mitres, shoulder, bullnose, and miniature forms, and were known as New York City infill planes.<\/h5>\n
The famous and sought-after Erlandsen<\/a> mitre plane, shown below, which helped to enable dedicated workers to build many pianos before the days of mass-production panel sanders, thickness planers, and after that for those working for the smaller piano makers.\u00a0 It is my opinion that there is no other specialized plane that can be characterized as a \u201cpiano plane\u201d\u00a0 to the same extent as the Erlandsen mitre. Even recently, surrounded by increased mechanization, this type of plane has remained in use in the Steinway factory to create the crown in the middle of the keybed of their grand pianos. These planes were patterned after the English box mitres, and earlier planes from the European mainland, primarily France, with a low angle blade for cutting end grain and the irregular, difficult grains of some exotic hardwoods. The tall sides of the plane, set square to the sole, enable the tool to be used on its side to shoot mitres and angles, and could also be used with a shooting board.\u00a0 It is actually a very large block plane, and Leonard Bailey\/Stanley introduced the #9 (their version of a mitre plane) before the production of their other block planes.\u00a0 These were also sold as \u201csmooth planes,\u201d as in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog entry shown further down on this page, so there were many uses.<\/h5>\n
A major difference between the Erlandsen<\/a> box mitre planes\u00a0 and the older English box mitre planes was that the main iron body of the Erlandsen plane was cast in a single piece compared to the English practice, where the sides of the plane were dovetailed to the sole, which was a more expensive and laborious process.\u00a0 Napoleon Erlandsen, who was an expert machinist, was able to maintain quality and save expense by using this efficient approach.\u00a0 The front of the sole was cast in a separate piece, though, which provided the user with an adjustable mouth, as well as making the mouth (aperture for the blade) easier to manufacture. A small mouth was\u00a0 necessary for fine cutting and avoiding grain tear-out in this type of low angle plane. These were simple planes that worked very well, and never incorporated the adjustment mechanisms that Stanley\/Bailey used in their planes, but the specialized New York infill planes were often the tools of choice for the piano making workers on the East coast of the United States.<\/h5>\n

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