Wood choice for toolmaking

[Sheffield Tony]

Ash or hickory for axes and hammers.
Ash, beech boxwood for chisel handles.
Beech for wooden planes.
Rosewood for plane handles.
Apple or other fruitwood for saw handles.

Why ?

Ok, I think from my greenwood butchering I can understand the ash for handles - straight grain, can be split easily so that the grain runs along the handle. I can see that boxwood is favoured for wear resistance and the ability to take fine detail. But why beech for planes ? Beech seems to have caused me more trouble by unexpected movement than any other wood. How much is dictated by tradition ?

 

[AndyT]

When you say that beech has caused you trouble by movement, do you mean on planes or on other things eg benchtops?

I have quite a few old beechwood planes and barely one or two that have distorted. I put this down to careful selection of cleft billets and correct grain orientation by the original makers.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

I suspect that the 'real' answers are quite complex, but if it had to be boiled down, it would be down to the pragmatic use of the best available timbers for particular duties.

Being of the greenwood persuasion, you'll probably know in far more detail than I do, but in times gone by timber plantations were much more extensively managed than they are today. Trees were grown and harvested with specific uses in mind. The qualities of different species, and even the same species grown in different ways, were better appreciated than today, too. Straight-grown coppice ash gave a timber better able to take shock loads than most others, hence it's use for tool handles. It helped that it was common almost everywhere in Britain, too. That sort of knowledge goes way back into the mists of time - Lord knows who first discovered that ash made good handles; probably stone-age man with his flint axe-heads.

Beech isn't necessarily the 'best' timber for planes, but it was available in (as AndyT says above) in large enough quantities of big enough straight-grained cleft billets to make the larger planes. Box would be better, but finding large billets in enough quantity to make bench planes was impossible, so ruled it out, except for smaller planes and wear inserts. The smaller available pieces made excellent rules and small tool handles, though.

Saw handles in Apple were an introduction by Disston, I think. Eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw handles were almost always of beech in Britain.

Plane handles in Rosewood is more difficult to determine a reason for - beech would be perfectly serviceable. Perhaps it was a deliberate choice to give the new-fangled iron planes a bit of cachet and make them stand out. Perhaps even a deliberate attempt to put them in the same bracket as the infill metal planes that had been around for about a generation or so.

Interesting question, though! Thanks for that!

 

[AndyT]

That sounds reasonable - availability must have been a big part of the choice of beech in England. Look elsewhere and you see different choices such as hornbeam, cormier and birch used for planes. Planes made entirely of boxwood were - as far as I know- always a premium option, and still are.

 

[Vann]

Plane handles in Rosewood is more difficult to determine a reason for - beech would be perfectly serviceable...

I've been, ..err.. gathering mostly Record planes. The pre-WW2, and a sprinkling of later ones, have rosewood handles. Almost every rosewood tote is broken where plane totes always break. While beech totes break too, the percentage is much lower.

I wonder if rosewood is not really a good timber for plane handles - and like CC says, was only "...to give the new-fangled iron planes a bit of cachet and make them stand out."

Cheers, Vann.

 

[tobytools]

You can use any wood for chisels just depends what you want in try way of looks and uses of chisels for mortices and ruff chisels a hard wood, paring chisels and precision tools can be anything you like with in reason, I've only used hard woods, I don't fruit wood to be very good, apple,pear,cherry ect.
Another good hard wood is white beam (service tree) the French used it to make there planes.

With the axe, adze, frow ash or hickory every time.

Have an experiment and note your finding
I've done a few and learnt a lot,
Enjoy

TT

 

[Corneel]

Beech has some other traits. It's quite hard, yet easy to shape. Fine grained, so the bottom will be smooth. And a strong ray structure, which helps to stabilise the wood.

In this article from old street tools you can find some ideas why beech was favorite for planes. It's a theory of course.
http://www.planemaker.com/articles_beech.html

 

[Sheffield Tony]

I was mulling on this topic at the weekend whist re-handling a French (Goldenberg) felling axe. I went with the traditional ash - at the moment I can get green ash easily because at Wimpole where we have our greenwood meetings, they are thinning out a lot of ash to make space for other species in anticipation of ash dieback arriving.

When you say that beech has caused you trouble by movement, do you mean on planes or on other things eg benchtops?

I was thinking of other things I've made - some panelled doors for a bathroom cabinet twisted before even making it to the bathroom (I think I released some kind of internal stresses when ripping the stiles from a wider board), a chest lid which I had to add breadboard ends to to keep it flat. I haven't had a problem with the few woodie planes I have though, so maybe the care in selection (and the 100 years of seasoning !) help.

I've not made many tools yet, but I rather enjoyed the process.I don't tend to get much beech, so I was wondering what were good alternatives.. Wimpole has oak and elm as well as ash, and I can sometimes get fruit woods from a local tree surgeon. So far I've made planes and a bowsaw using elm, and I've used cherry and some apricot for small handles for turning tools etc.

Being of the greenwood persuasion, you'll probably know in far more detail than I do, but in times gone by timber plantations were much more extensively managed than they are today. Trees were grown and harvested with specific uses in mind.

My greenwood experience is relatively small and quite recent ! But you are right here. In Sheffield where I grew up, we had a lot of silver birch as a residue of the steelmaking industry - lots of birch twigs were used to release scale when rolling steel plate. Here in Bedfordshire we have poplar plantations, due to Bryant & May, which were planted for matchstick making !

 

[Richard T]

The thing about Beech is .... they are massive. I have never seen an old Beech plane made from a dodgy piece of wood. They are all quarter section and beautifully stable. With massive, straight trunks you get loads of wood to quarter and choose from.

I remember reading what Konrad S said about Rosewood being very stable when dry (oily?) and that makes it perfect for infills ... no movement. So I suppose once you've had Rosewood handles you might not want to go back. Earlier infills used other wood of course, Walnut etc and soaked in raw Linseed to stablise it.

Springy Ash for tools to wield ... Hickory is better but we don't have it here because (as Roy Underhill will tell you) European mountains were arranged in the wrong configuration when the last ice age came.

 

[AndyT]

Tony
I think you are in an enviable position of being able to get small quantities of less commonly traded woods. For a commercial plane maker, beech had the extra advantage that he could buy great quantities of it - but you don't need to. You can exploit even hedgerow timber to make one offs.

 

[Tony Spear]

I was mulling on this topic at the weekend whist re-handling a French (Goldenberg) felling axe.

Very subtle gloat there Tony!

 

[chipmunk]

I've had trouble with beech moving too but mostly I think because it has such a high initial moisture content and takes ages to dry properly - certainly many times longer than ash in my experience.

It seems to dry about as slowly as fruitwoods.

Jon

 

[Evergreen]

I used to have a weakness for vintage chisels and must have rummaged through hundreds of them in junk shops, car boot sales and flea markets over the years. I seem to remember that split or badly damaged boxwood handles were every bit as common as bashed up beech handles. This suggests to me that boxwood is no stronger than beech and yet it was, I believe, more expensive and usually reserved for "best" chisels.

Is there any scientific information that boxwood has superior strength or was it used just for cosmetic purposes?

Regards.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

Very subtle gloat there Tony!

What ? Me, axe gloating ? I was pretty pleased to spot it on e-bay, I thought I recognised the shape, and the maker's mark was just readable in the photos. Happily nobody else seemed to want it. It's the big one at the top.

4lb Goldenberg No 20, 2.5lb S&J, small Goldenberg, Gransfors carpenter's axe.

 

[chipmunk]

Is there any scientific information that boxwood has superior strength or was it used just for cosmetic purposes?

Take a look at these two...

http://www.wood-database.com/lumber-identification/hardwoods/boxwood/
http://www.wood-database.com/lumber-identification/hardwoods/european-beech/

Janka Hardness: Boxwood = 2,840 lbf (12,610 N), Beech = 1,450 lbf (6,460 N)
Modulus of Rupture: Boxwood = 20,960 lbf/in2 (144.5 MPa), Beech = 15,970 lbf/in2 (110.1 MPa)
Elastic Modulus: Boxwood = 2,494,000 lbf/in2 (17.20 GPa), Beech = 2,075,000 lbf/in2 (14.31 GPa)
Crushing Strength: Boxwood = 9,950 lbf/in2 (68.6 MPa), Beech = 8,270 lbf/in2 (57.0 MPa)

So in every respect it seems that boxwood is stronger, harder and tougher than beech.

Especially important if you're using a beech mallet :wink:

HTH
Jon

 

[AndyT]

Sampling a few prices from the hundreds of options in the 1938 Marples catalogue - ash and beech handled chisels were the same price, boxwood were 10 to 20% dearer. So the buyers must have believed they were worth the extra.

 

[Evergreen]

Jon and Andy

Thanks for the information.

Regards.