Nicholson on Cutting a Rebate

If Lloyds had odds on cutting rebates, what Nicholson says here would be high odds for anyone who has cut a hundred feet or more of rebates and worked by hand, and very low for people who buy boutique tools or use a table saw most of the time.

Why? Cutting rebates is best done with a moving fillister plane, and a wooden one at that – not a Stanley 78 and not a Veritas Skew Rebate or whatever else. Everything other than a wooden moving fillister is slow at this and the perception of metal accuracy is misplaced. The moving fillister works accurately, but not generally to finish accuracy – it’s set to cut and the rebate is finished with a separate rabbet plane – the skew kind that you’d find with no other fixtures at a flea market for about $10. There’s a reason they’re everywhere. From experience, you will get to this pair on your own, along with a marking gauge and anyone describing setting a metal plane “precisely” without marking the joint instead and doing the fine work with a second plane will seem a bit dippy.

So, let’s get on to what Nicholson says. Page 139.

Click to access mechanicscompan01nichgoog.pdf

Nicholson mentions the wood needs to be tried on two sides – those would be the ones that you’re cutting the rebate into. The first discussion is rebates less wide than the plane, which you will find yourself doing, anyway.

The discussion immediately goes to setting the plane short of the final width of a rebate and the depth stop foot short of the final depth. If you’re thinking this sounds like more steps and it will take longer because you can find an “accurate boutique plane that can be set perfectly”, you’ll find that not to be true as all of the speed of the moving fillister is lost in this process and the short front foot and issues of your own technique will never be as accurate as finishing to a gauge line.

Which gets to the next point – the joint should be gauged (marked) both in width and depth. Do this first so that you can easily set your plane off of the marking. Again, if you are thinking this sounds like an extra step, if you’re cutting many rebates, you’ll gauge them all at once. it gives you a perfect indication end to end on the stock you’re rebating and when the lines are gone, you’re done. You set the mark, don’t get lulled into believing that the feet and fence on a plane will do it for you – you’ll have no clue where you are and if you’re over a mark – how will you check, with a dial caliper? No thanks.

Nicholson goes on to mention setting the moving fillister relatively rank and equal depth across the plane. The rest of this paragraph is my words: Do this by eye sighting down the sole and also use the ability to do this as your indication for honing bias when you freehand hone the iron, which is how you should sharpen a moving fillister iron – if the iron doesn’t want to project evenly, you’re going to both have a strange out of square bottom, but also a plane that favors cutting toward the heavy side. Each time you hone, you’ll inspect this and it’s very easy to prevent. if you hone with honing guides and fixtures, you’ll drive yourself crazy here. Most fillister planes are steeper than common pitch, so if you’re pretty gross at freehand honing, you’ve got plenty of clearance and this is a good place to learn.

The rank set part is important – you are not taking smoother shavings, you are taking something between jack and try plane shavings, tending more toward jack if the wood allows. Set the rankness based on what the wood tolerates. you have but one mission, remove most of the wood inside of the gauge lines and don’t break out any wood past them.

Nicholson goes on then to describe a great deal of something simple – where your hands go. your front hand goes on the side of the plane with the thumb over the top, and your back hand pushes. Your job is to keep the plane in the cut evenly – the fact that the shavings are rank will allow you to get done pretty quickly, and it’ll also stretch out the volume of rebate cutting substantially vs. taking thin shavings. Sharpness is always important, but you’re going beyond fine shaving cutting here and you need to go back to the stones only when the plane tells you to.

Job number one for you at this point is to keep the plane relatively vertical – just look at it vs. your marks if you need to, especially at the far end of the board once you cut. Efficiency here leads to pleasure, and that means accurate work, not hurried, but in rhythm. You must use the front hand to keep the plane against the work – if you don’t, you’ll cut pyramid side like things into the wall of the rebate and leave yourself a chore with the rabbet plane. If the wood is good, the shavings will be thick enough to look broken.

Nicholson’s nod toward efficiency then goes into planing sectionally on the board and not walking the length of the board with one shaving after another. I think if the plane is rank set, if you’re an amateur, it probably won’t be that big of a deal. The more the wood dictates backing off of shaving thickness (if it’s poor grain orientation) the more you get out of planing sectionally and then moving.

Finish by taking a few through shavings as you work just shy of the marks. personally, if the wood is planing really nicely, you can probably plane right to the marks for all but the finest of work, but pay attention. The long through shavings will lead to the plane communicating all kinds of things to you – high spots, terrible wood, whatever. Use your judgement to make sure you’re not feeling any remaining high spots or skips.

Nicholson then goes on to say what I guess I jumped the gun on – you need to be able to feel vertical, and hold the plane vertical and keep the cut close. This isn’t a burden or tedious – it is the same sense of feel you will develop everywhere, it’s not as if it’s a skill that’s attributed to a moving fillister in isolation. Just don’t lose track of being close to vertical. Nicholson then says to use a skew rabbet plane (the kind open on both sides and with no fence) finely set to plane to the final mark.

You will be shocked how much faster this process is than trying to use one metal plane or one anything to cut the whole rebate right to the mark. You remove material, then you finish to the mark. It’s not the same idea as “use the plane like you would a rebate router bit”. I think the insane discussions about set screws and this or that on boutique metal planes (which have enormous friction in the cut, too – it’s really unpleasant) comes out of the idea that you can turn a fillister into a routerman’s dream. Poo.

What about the nicker?

Note there’s little discussion about the nicker and its relation to the side of the plane and projection of the iron from or equal set to the side. That’s because the role of the nicker is to establish a crisp edge across the grain. For long grain cutting, this kind of thing isn’t that critical and the nicker can be set up out of the way, pointing back to having a finely set skew rebate.

This pair instead of one is so dominant for another reason – it eliminates the idea that you need to have fillister planes that go in two directions. You don’t. The rebate plane (not the fillister) makes the finish cut – you just use it in whatever direction the wood prefers.

Wide Rebates

I have my doubts that many people do this by hand, but it’s worth noting.

If the rebate is wider than the moving fillister plane will allow, you will gauge the width of the rebate and plow a groove shy of the gauge line. A good plow plane has a depth stop, so the same rules apply – do the coarse work and leave the fine work to the mark until later.

Then, you use your moving fillister plane to cut some of the rebate on the side toward you, leaving a column of waste in the middle that you can remove any number of ways. A firmer chisel is fine, as would be planes if you have the means to use them. If the waste is relatively wide, you can groove several plowed grooves, chisel and then pare or rebate what’s left and work to the mark.

The text goes on to mention that if the groove is really wide, but a sash fillister can be used to cut from the opposite side of the board to finish with width, then that is also fine. For the uninitiated, a sash fillister is a plane that cuts the rebate to the width of the waste (it cuts on the far side away from you gauging off of the side toward you, much the way a router fence attached to a base establishes the width of the uncut wood, not the width into the cut).

If the rebate is very large, you can plow both sides of it leaving a solid bit of waste in the middle.

And while it’s not mentioned here, if there rebate gets so large the planes won’t work to depth or plowing becomes unruly even with a wide plow plane blade, you’ll be sawing the waste out so that you have less work to do. Same care is needed – cut short of the marks, discard the “stick” that you end up with, and then finish planing to the mark with something finer. You can do this sawing with a carpenter rip saw easily and safely if you proceed with the start of the cut slowly.