A jack plane is the general-purpose bench plane, used for general smoothing of the edges, sizing of wood and jointing edges. Jack planes are about 12-15 inches long, and the blade can have either a slightly circled edge for smoothing stock, or a curved edge for jointing stock.
In preparing stock, the jack plane is used after the scrub plane and before the jointer plane and smoothing plane. The name is related to the saying "jack of all trades" as jack planes can be made to perform some of the work of both smoothing and jointer planes, especially on smaller pieces of work.
A jack plane came to be referred to as a "No. 5" plane or a "Bailey pattern No. 5," at the end of the 19th century. Prior to that, all but the blade was made of wood in bench planes. The "No." nomenclature originally used by Stanley Tools to label its Bailey pattern plane products continues to identify planes made by various manufacturers. Not all manufacturers of the era had the same number scheme for their planes. Millers Fall and Sargent had different numbers to refer to the same planes.
Famous quotes containing the words jack and/or plane:
“I hope you ain’t going to blow up my boat, Mr. Johnson. Like my wife, she’s not much, but she’s all I have.”
—Martin Berkeley. Jack Arnold. Lucas (Nestor Paiva)
“At the moment when a man openly makes known his difference of opinion from a well-known party leader, the whole world thinks that he must be angry with the latter. Sometimes, however, he is just on the point of ceasing to be angry with him. He ventures to put himself on the same plane as his opponent, and is free from the tortures of suppressed envy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)