Essential Planes – Near Miss #2
A second, most useful, “plane” that is adjacent to my Mount Rushmore of planes is the router. Hmm, is it really “a plane?”
Though primarily used for excavating, such as dados and rabbets (if I did more case-building it might be in that pantheon) but I find myself using it more than I would have thought when excavating areas for inlay or excavating joinery where my rabbet/dado plane will not work. I’ve even thought about getting one of the mini-routers now on the market, just for small inlay work.
I have two vintage routers, one “D” style and one platform style, both with no adjustments other that tapping and tightening screws. Both are tool swap/flea market finds, and I found both to be terrific tools so much that I had no problem finding a new home for my NOS Stanley router.
Once again, the only reason they are not ranked higher on my list is that I don’t do enough of the kind of work that makes them reside there. It’s not their fault I don’t have them in my Essential Planes.
In my experience, router planes are not good at excavating (one has to use fine setting). I use it for leveling the bottom of an excavation (done by other means) and in that sense it deserve its “plane” qualification.
Good for final clean up on tenons.Eliminates alot of problems with flat doors/panels and keeping them square.Seems that the more you use routers, the more uses they have.