I’ve been starting to use more hand tools in my woodworking and have been discovering the joy of hand planes for various tasks, not the lease of which is helping to mill lumber.

To help with milling, I got a small six-inch jointer from a friend for $60 and, despite it’s small size, it’s been really helpful in speeding up the milling process for smaller boards. I still have to use my planer sled for anything wider than six inches, but any board that fits onto that jointer, goes on that jointer!

My planer, however, has a nick in one blade (not big enough to warrant changing out the blades), so there’s always one thin line down my boards, but having the hand planes takes care of that problem in seconds. Between the jointer, nicked planer, and hand planes, my milling process has gotten so much quicker and easier… and I get better results.

There are two downsides to this arrangement. One is that, even though I don’t have all that many hand planes (only five right now), I didn’t really have a place to put them. They were always on my bench (or on the shelf under it) where they’d be in the way for anything else. So… it was time to build a plane till, which I did today.

It’s pretty basic and, built from half-inch plywood and some oak strips, and it holds my planes now, with room for one or two more. I assembled it with a combination of glue, screws, and brad nails, so it’s not going to win any beauty contests. I’ll eventually hang it on my wall or integrate it into a wall cabinet to protect the planes from shop dust. At least for now, though, they’re protected from getting banged around on my workbench, which was more or less the main goal of the project today.

It’s currently just sitting at the end of my workbench and every time I see it, I hear the siren song of a Lie-Nielsen #4 smoother beckoning me… calling to me… tempting me to give it a home.

I mean… you can’t just leave a slot empty in a plane till, right? Right?!?

(Oh… and the second downside to the arrangement is that having a small six-inch jointer really makes me want a much larger, eight-inch jointer)