Specialty planes usually signal that you’ve ascended from amateur tinkerer to serious craftsman. Alternatively, they signal that your tool chest is quietly staging an intervention. In my case, I bought a Veritas miter plane. Let us now examine the specimen with entirely appropriate solemnity.
I’m generally a friendly man and I rarely hold grudges. “Love thy enemy” seems like a good rule to me — if people actually tried to live by it, we’d probably all be a bit easier to get along with.
But I have no intention of cultivating warm, fuzzy emotions toward the act of shooting end grain. No, sir. I work a fair bit with white oak, and until now I’ve not enjoyed the luxury of a dedicated shooting-board plane. The mighty Stanley #51 sits proudly on my wish list, but in Norway they are rarer than polite comment sections — and priced accordingly. Lie-Nielsen makes a beautiful version, but it would set me back NOK 10.000,-. That is a generous sum for a tool with a single, very specific talent. It does one job, and one job only: trimming end grain on a shooting board.
Alas, I’ve had to make do with what I have—setting a regular plane on its side, gripping it in whatever awkward fashion the situation demands, and getting on with the job. Functional? Yes. Elegant? Not even close. And since we’re talking about hands, that improvisation has left my right one sore and occasionally bruised.
Newton was not exaggerating: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When the blade meets the wood, that initial percussive force runs straight back through the body of the plane and into my hand. Most often, it’s the trapeziometacarpal joint—the base of the thumb—that takes the hit, along with a few other contact points that make their displeasure known afterward.
Whether the shooting session is brief or prolonged, the effect is the same. The force has to go somewhere—my right hand.
It works. But it’s wearing thin.
A couple of weeks ago I was idly window-shopping at Rubank Verktygs when I noticed a plane I’d seen many times before without ever really seeing it: the Veritas miter plane. In my mind it had always been filed under “just another bevel-up plane, probably with an optional side handle for shooting boards.” Since I didn’t particularly need a bevel-up plane in that size, I had graciously ignored it.
Until now.
The store had labeled it a “mid-sized plane for shooting boards,” which made me hit the brakes with both feet. Add to that a price roughly NOK 1,000 lower than the dedicated shooting-board plane — and less than half of Lie-Nielsen’s — and suddenly this was no longer an indulgence. It was, quite clearly, a financially responsible decision. Or at least a defensible one.
Hands down, I should say.
Then I looked a bit closer and realized this was no one-trick pony. What I actually had in front of me was a bevel-up plane with an adjustable mouth that could serve perfectly well as a regular bench companion too.
At that point the internal debate concluded with remarkable efficiency. Sold.
A week later, and a package arrived at the post office.
Unboxing
Let’s start with the data on this plane:
- Weight 2,3 kg (approximately 5 lbs)
- Length: 26,7cm (10 1/2”)
- Width: 6,7cm (2 5/8”)
- Material: ductile cast iron, wooden knobs and shooting horn, brass and steel.
- Blade: O1 or PMV-11 (I chose PMV-11), 5cm (2”) wide and 5mmm (3/16”) thick
- Bed angle: 12° (combined with a 25° bevel angle, we end up at 37°)
- Norris style adjuster
- Adjustable throat with set screw limiter
Veritas certainly knows how to pack a plane. This is a fairly hefty chunk of metal, so it’s reassuring to see they treat the packaging with the same seriousness as the tool itself. No plastic in sight — only recycled paper. Nicely eco-friendly, just the way we like it. The box sports a single large sticker for graphics and nothing more. Clean, simple, and refreshingly free of marketing fireworks.
Inside the box: the plane, the manual and the shooting horn. The blade came separately; they don’t ship the planes with a blade, giving the customer the choice of preferred alloy.
The blade surprised me a little – it has the same shape as my shoulder plane blade. Why they chose this design, I do not know. And it does not matter either. I’m sure this thing will outlast me, and then some – it is not as if I’m going to sharpen this so much it wears too far down!
On the next page, we’ll take a closer look at the blade – and make it ready for work.
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