When I need to work any recessed area – from a hinge mortise to a stopped groove to a dado – with precision, I like to use router planes. These joinery planes allow you to easily create or clean up recesses to a repeatable and fixed depth.

Unlike bench planes or block planes, the learning curve for a router plane is mercifully short. It goes something like this: Sharpen the cutter as best you can (it doesn't have to be able to split an atom), place it in the tool to take a thin cut. Work the recess until the plane won't cut anymore. Set the tool to your final depth and repeat.

Router planes are simple tools with few adjustments; there's little that can go wrong and they have many uses. Until recently, however, router planes were available mostly on the vintage tool circuit. But that's changing. Veritas introduced its full-size router in 2005 (I reviewed it in the February 2006 issue of Popular Woodworking). St. James Bay Tool Co. recently started offering two small router planes and a larger one (all loosely based on the Stanley No. 71). And now Lie-Nielsen Toolworks has introduced a small $75 router plane that I have been using since the summer and am ready to talk about.

The Lie-Nielsen Small Router plane has some nice curves to it and a wider footprint than the now-defunct Stanley No. 271 small router plane – which looks like a metal Triscuit with a cutter. The Lie-Nielsen looks a lot more like a vintage Phelps Manufacturing Co. router I saw at a Mid-West Tool Collectors Association meeting a few years back.

The Lie-Nielsen is 4-1/8" long, 2-3/16" wide and weighs 7-1/2 ounces. The cutter is ¼" wide, and two additional 3/32"-wide cutters are in the works.

The shape of the body is key because the cutter can be used in two positions. The cutter shown above is good for general all-purpose work, with decent visibility and considerable bearing surface all around the cutter. Turn the cutter around and you are set up for jobs where you need lots of visibility, such as when cleaning up a tricky patch for inlay or when cleaning up a stopped groove or dado. The two squarish wings projecting in front of the cutter are perfect for riding on the edge of a ¾"-wide door stile or rail.

Setting up this router plane for the first time is easier than setting up a bench chisel. The back of the iron was dead flat from the factory and polished up with only five minutes work. When I sharpen the bevel, I don't use a micro-bevel. I sharpen the entire bevel. There's not a lot of metal to remove and sharpening the entire bevel makes it easy to keep the angle consistent. Re-sharpening the cutter is easier as a result.

The tool is pleasant to hold. The curved thumb grips allow you to pivot the tool into the cut, which is how I use it when cleaning out hinge mortises. The wide footprint of the tool is nice (compared to the smaller Stanley version) because you can reach into places with the confidence that your tool is indeed sitting flat on a reference surface. The downside to the big footprint, of course, is that there might be places where you cannot sneak the tool into because the base will get in the way. I haven't had this problem in six months. Get back to me in a few years and I'll have an answer.

The cutter depth is set by a knurled thumbscrew. The thumbscrew has a slot for a screwdriver, which is not necessary to use to lock the cutter in place. The knurling is enough.

If you own a powered router, why would you want this cordless version? Easy. The downside to using an electric router is the round cutter. Inside corners are going to have rounded corners that you'll need to square out with a chisel or (irony ahead) a router plane. Plus, the router plane is easier to balance on the edge of a door or face frame to cut hinge mortises. Electric routers can be tippy when balanced on a thin ¾" edge.

— Christopher Schwarz

The "I Can Do That" manual has been updated with a new chapter on Material Selection, and with information on the latest tool in the kit – the circular saw. You can download the latest version now at the "I Can Do That" web site (it’s available in both high and low resolution).

In case you’re not familiar with “I Can Do That," it's a column in every issue of Popular Woodworking that features projects that can be completed by any woodworker with a modest (but decent) kit of tools in less than two days of shop time, and using raw materials that are available at any home center.

The free manual (in PDF format) explains all the tools and shows how to perform the basic operations in a step-by-step format. Learn to rip with a jigsaw and circular saw, crosscut with a miter saw and drill straight with the help of our manual.

Our hope is that beginning woodworkers will build skills and confidence as they learn to make the most of that basic kit of tools, and complete projects they can be proud of. And, we try to present projects that are interesting and attractive so that advanced woodworkers will want to build them, too (perhaps with modifications to suit their tools and aesthetics).

An “I Can Do That” book is in the works right now; look for it this autumn. In the meantime, check back regularly for new updates to the manual, and the latest ICDT project. (Here’s a peek at the Shaker Creamery Shelves featured in the April issue – on newsstands at the beginning of March.)

One of the best parts of my job is meeting talented woodworkers, getting to know them and seeing some amazing work. I first met David Mathias by e-Mail. He got in touch with me through my website with some questions about a bow arm Morris chair he was building. He shared some pictures of the finished chair, and I was impressed. After I landed here at Popular Woodworking, I kept running into him at the Greene & Greene group on Yahoo!

This is a pretty interesting group, started by furnituremaker Darrell Peart, author of "Greene & Greene: Design Elements for the Workshop" If you're a fan of Greene and Greene, you'll want to get the book, and be sure to check out the rest of Darrell's website, furnituremaker.com

David's table turned our very well, so well in fact that I encouraged him to write about it for the magazine. Here's a brief excerpt from the article, along with some pictures that we didn't have room for in the magazine. Be sure to check out the February issue for the entire story.

The dominant feature of this table is the finger-jointed drawers, as shown above. Greene & Greene finger joints share little more than the name with more common versions. There are two major differences: First, the fingers are quite large. Where fingers in a typical joint are about 1⁄4", here they are variable in size ranging from 15⁄16" to 1 1⁄4". More important, the fingers stand proud of the adjoining surface and are decorated with ebony pegs. The result is beautiful, unusual and challenging joinery. The drawers hang from ebony runners attached to the tops of the drawer sides with mating receivers attached to the underside of the tabletop. The top edges of the drawer fronts are also capped with solid ebony.

Due to the variation of finger sizes on the drawers, it wasn’t obvious how to best cut the joints. I considered a table saw jig but couldn’t think of a design that would give accurate, repeatable results for fingers with sizes 1 7⁄32", 1 1⁄4", 15⁄16" and 1 3⁄32" from top to bottom. Ultimately, I settled on using the router table.

Ebony pegs are synonymous with Greene & Greene designs. In some cases the pegs are functional – hiding a screw or pin that reinforces a joint. In other instances they are purely decorative. While this table includes both types, the pegs in the drawers are functional; each conceals a screw that strengthens the joint.

Virtually all edges on Greene & Greene furniture are rounded, sometimes heavily.To round the drawer fingers I needed to work the edges without affecting the fit of mating surfaces. The pegs are also slightly rounded, or pillowed, on the exposed end. This effect is critical to achieving the right look. Gaps will result from rounding too much at the corners. In addition to pillowing it is important to polish the face of the peg to a warm glow.

Ebony caps on the sides of the drawer overhang the drawer and serve to hang the drawers from above. The runners meet ebony caps on the fronts with a half dovetail. Caps and runners are attached with brass “pins” giving a striking contrast in materials. The caps and runners are attached to the drawers with 1"  x #6 solid-brass screws. Part of each screw head is removed giving the appearance of a brass pin.

It is important that all countersinks are the same depth so that the “pins” have a consistent diameter. At the drill press, set the depth of the countersink so that the entire slot in the screw head is above the surface of the runner.

I considered several options for trimming the screw heads – nervous work since correcting any mistakes would be difficult – and I settled on the router table . . .


Congratulations to David for his superb workmanship and for an excellent first article for Popular Woodworking.

Robert Lang