Offcuts: Italian Pull Planes and Inuit Planes From the Canadian Subarctic

Offcuts are short posts that I occasionally include at the ends of the newsletter.

Left: Detail from August by Leandro Bassano, c. 1595. Right: Detail from Building the Ark by Francesco Bassano with Jacopo Bassano], c. 1590.

There is one supposed truism about how planes are used around the world: They’re designed to be pushed, not pulled (with Japanese planes being the exception). But look at these two carpenters painted by members of the Bassano family in Northern Italy in the late 16th century. They’re holding their Roman-style planes in a curious way. Are they starting to plane from the left, and will rotate their body as they push the plane down the workpiece with the left hand? Or are they pulling the plane with their right hand and guiding it with the left?

Our knowledge of plane making in the Middle Ages is based almost entirely on artwork from that era. The Bassanos (who also used the surname dal Ponte) are known for their accurate portrayal of period hand tools. In 1999, Britain’s Tool and Trades History Society published an analysis of the woodworking, coopering and blacksmith tools found in the family’s paintings. The article came to the conclusion that the planes were indeed pulled. Was this a weird corner of Europe that developed its own planing style?¹

St. Thomas Guild's Roman-style Italian plane.

The artisans in the Dutch medieval reenactment group St. Thomas Guild were also intrigued by this type of plane. In 2011, they made a beautiful replica, 13 inches long, by 3 inches wide and 2.7 inches high. So, enough speculation, let’s ask the people who have hands-on experience with these planes. Marijn, the group’s guildmaster, agrees that the Bassano paintings are ambiguous. As it turns out, the answer to how the planes are used is: it depends. “I use it mostly on the push, but sometimes on the pull,” he explains. According to Marijn, “These type of planes were still in use (and for sale) in the early 20th century (I have a picture of a sales catalogue with these ‘Venetian planes’). They probably can still be found at Italian flea markets.”

One more pull plane. A few years back, Vic Tesolin came up with his own version; plans are available at Fine Woodworking.

Interested in more Offcuts?

• Offcuts: Plane Murders and a Brass Ribbon Plow Plane
• Offcuts: Italian Pull Planes and Inuit Planes From the Canadian Subarctic
• Offcuts: Modern Laminated Plane Irons and How Our Work Speaks Through Time
• Offcuts: More GIANT Planes and the Jointer That Tied a Town Together

Inuit planes from the Canadian subarctic

Photos: The British Museum

During his travels in northern Canada in the 1890s, the English explorer David Hanbury acquired two wooden planes from the Inuit people he traveled with. In his writings on his travels, Hanbury doesn’t say what those specific planes (which are now in The British Museum) were used for, but it may not have been for wood. Hanbury describes how the Inuit would coat the runners of their sleds with a layer of mud and let it freeze: “It is then planed quite smooth, and water is poured on it, which forms a thin sheet of ice on the bottom. It is not the frozen mud which slides so easily over the crushed snow, but this thin layer of ice.”²

Did Inuit peoples develop the idea of a plane on their own, or did they learn about it from outside sources? The direct ancestors of modern-day Inuit were in contact with Europeans, starting with the Norse (who were also plane users) about a thousand years ago. But they were also adept toolmakers on their own. Some small groups of Inuit were known for the chisels, knives, arrow heads, and harpoons they made out of locally occurring copper.