Page 134 bottom of the above link.
Nicholson splits what most people will think of as edge jointing. There are two types, with the latter probably being assumed to be the standard method – striking a board’s edge or using the term “shooting”, which people now often think of as planing end grain.
However, this entry is the first – we’ll visit the second later as I think it’s not practiced that often for typical edge jointing these days unless the edges are thin. Which does lead into one condition for today’s entry – it’s not for very thin boards, which you would trouble to plane or feel squareness on if they were in a vise.
This type of planing is similar to what we refer to now as match planing, where two boards are planed at once in a vise, and the result is checked against itself. When done properly, you start with a rough edge and then plane the edge until the joint is matched and can be glued as a rub joint or with very little clamping pressure. Much different than the more common idea of every joint being sprung. I don’t think in the days of accurate hand work, there was a need for significant edge spring, but I haven’t read all of this text yet, either, so I could be proven wrong.
The Process
The text is short, so you can read it really without referring to what I say and follow it easily.
Take two boards, install them in the vise and knock off any high bits. This is done by eye, and my comment to you is that the sole of the plane will also tell you a lot if you allow it to. If your plane is running straight across an edge, it will have a feel. If the wood is peaking just a bit and you run a plane over it, even if it’s a very small amount, you’ll feel the effect – the slight loss of security and support. Nicholson refers to starting and working sectionally with a jack plane vs. walking the length of a board, and this is definitely true. No need to plane a long edge through if there are one or two small peaks in it to start, or uneven roughness to remove.
Step two, still with your jack plane, is to plane through a couple of strokes. There is something perhaps assumed here, and that is that you have at least one jack that’s not drastically rank, and if I had a suggestion on two planes to set up – it would be two jacks. One set rank and one set much less so, but just a bit more radius than the try plane. I typically use one and rely on the try plane more as the ability to remove material with the jack is nice courtesy of getting standard rough lumber that’s not going to be cut by a sawyer catering to hand toolers.
At any rate, you follow the jack work by walking through the board’s length (added comment from me – attempting to feel and remain square. A matched joint will line up with some lack of squareness due to offsetting errors, but it’s bad policy to do anything but attempt squareness and learn to develop the skill of feeling square, too). You do this second walk through with the try plane, and the text mentions again that if the edges are long, finishing with a jointer is good policy. That’s true, though in cabinet or bench type work, it may not be too common that you have to resort to a plane longer than 22-24″ long.
If you plane through and the boards aren’t a good match, you must continue on until they are. If you have a good feel for your planes, you will come to expect there isn’t much of an issue with matching, just support the front of the plane entering the cut, make sure the cut entrance is clean and then support the back of the plane as the front is going off of the opposite end. With a flat or slightly convex sole, this will create a straight edge and you should expect you won’t have open gapped ends when you lay one board back on top of the other.
Also implicit in this advice is that the soles of your planes are flat and not concave. The method will not work with plane soles even a bit concave, and though I haven’t read it, one would expect that the precision required for basic hand planing and rub joints assumes that you are caring for the tools and not dealing with substandard sole shapes.
Lastly, Nicholson refers to the fact that you must have a clean shaving end to end and left to right covering the entire territory that you’re planing. Though it’s often said on the forums that there’s no information in plane shavings, nobody with any competence would believe that. Shavings that are not continuous suggest that you are either dealing with tearout or planing areas unevenly because perhaps some part of your edge is low. From experience, having not read this passage before the last couple of days, if you match plane panel edges often, you’ll well know this already – it’s pointless to check a joint if the shavings aren’t continuous.
This work is also territory for the cap iron, and it’s not automatically territory for tissue thin shavings. If the try plane or jack plane provide a joint that will be rub joint quality without tissue shavings, take that gift and move on.
Too, this type of match joint may require some facing of boards if they are uneven and will not clamp together, but if you have pretty good quality rough wood that is also flat, you can do this work on an edge without addressing the faces. It’ll be necessary at some point to joint edges, and with this process, you will be doing the rough work and getting a top quality edge joint at the same time with no doubling of efforts or checking.
The only thing you need to do other than checking for gaps – and check both sides of the joint – is lay one board atop the other and check them with a straight edge to make sure that the faces are relatively flat with no tension on the joint.
We often clamp things, and at this point when match planing joints, I will often lay glue on the joint, rub and then put clamps on before taking anything out of the vise. The whole thing leads to joints you won’t match with power tools only, and from rough to the joint, you are talking a matter of a couple of minutes and not a lot of fiddling, as well as not much use of measuring tools to check square or flat, etc. The wood tells you everything you need to know.
Of Making by Hand with Wood and Steel 
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