Lie-Nielsen Joinery & Planemaker's Floats
Joinery Floats are sized with cabinet making and furniture building, rather than planemaking in mind. - Floats can cut more aggressively than rasps, yet leave a finely finished surface for either exposed work or a glue bond. They're also sharpened with a file, and hardened and tempered to around RC 50, like a good hand saw.
Planemaker's floats are traditional tools used to cut, flatten, and smooth (or float) the critical surfaces of a wooden plane, such as the bedding of the blade, the mouth, and the wedge abutment. They are capable of extremely precise work.
These floats are also useful around the woodshop for lots of jobs besides plane making, and if you have never used one you will be amazed at how quickly they will produce an accurate, smooth surface. Try one for flattening, chamfering, smoothing flat and curved surfaces.
1. Lie-Nielsen Small Cheek Float - Cheek floats allow easy sizing of the mortise to match standardized wedges, and are useful for a number of other fitting and clean-up jobs. The pull float cuts on the pull stroke, which is handy for some jobs. 1/8 in. thick.
2. Lie-Nielsen Face Float - Face floats are available in push or pull. They're 1in. wide and designed for accurately trimming tenons, tongues or other such surfaces. The cranked-neck design gives good access to recessed surfaces.
3. Lie-Nielsen Side Float - Side floats work the sides of wedge mortises to open them from the initial sinking. 1/8 in. thick.
4. Lie-Nielsen Bed Float - Bed floats are used for fitting the iron to the bed of the plane. The 1/8 in. is best for this, the 3/16 in. is great for trimming and final surfacing of chamfers and other work.
5. Lie-Nielsen Edge Float - Edge floats are used to open and size molding plane wedge mortises. 1/8 in. for the narrowest wedges, and 3/16 in. for the thicker wedges. The 1/8 in. edge float also serves as a mouth and abutment saw in making bench planes
6. Lie-Nielsen Large Cheek Float - Large cheek floats are available in push or pull. These are ideal for working recessed areas like mortise cheeks. Large cheek floats are 1 in wide at their widest taper to allow seeing past the handle when working corners.
7. Lie-Nielsen Mortise Floats - Available in 5 sizes: 1/2, 3/8, 5/16, 1/4 and 1/8 in. They're excellent for squaring up mortise ends, fitting wedges in tusk tenons and other trimming jobs. All have 1/4 in. thick bodies.
Lie-Nielsen floats are made in USA from S-7 tool steel, hardened and tempered to RC 50-52 for edge life and resharpening ability. 8tpi, 80° rake angle, maple handles.
Additional Info (PDF Format): Use and Care Instructions
Additional Info (Video:) How to Sharpen Floats
Additional Views: - Numbers correspond to descriptions above.
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