The Wooden Plane

John M. Whelan

Reviewed by:

Bob Nelson

This book has 503 pages. Of those, most readers will find pages 217-296 (Chapter 11) and 393-445 (Appendices 2 & 3) of limited interest. The rest of the pages provide Excellent information of great value to anyone with even a moderate interest in wooden planes. With very few exceptions, this book addresses the subtitle aspects of all wooden planes made anywhere in the world. It presents this data in both functional groupings (i.e., rabbeting, grooving, etc.) and in trade groupings (i.e., cooper, sashmaker, etc.) These pages that are of more definite interest totally outweigh the waste paper aspects of the other pages. In summary, a definite thumbs up book.

I could go on at length about this book's merits, but I doubt that doing so would add much to the above. My other reviews have rated the readability aspects of the books involved in addition to their reference value. The detailed technical nature of some of Whelan's data adds more to the reference value than to the readability. But it is still a good book to skim thru the highlights of while leaving the more technical parts for when needed for reference use. Chapter 11 and Appendices 2-3 carry the technicality to an extreme beyond even negligible reference value.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will note that Whelan includes this reviewer's name in his list of acknowledgements. I have absolutely no idea why.