Anthony Seo wrote:

~  Seems plausible as a lot of other species of woods made their way across the
~  pond.  I do remember reading someplace that the English planemakers did feel
~  that the American beech was an inferior wood to the English beech, that the
~  English product was denser.  Hard call from what I have seen, although
~  (warning, highly inflammable personal opinion approaching), in the planes
~  that I have handled many of the English planes do seem to have made it
~  through the ages  better than their American cousins of comparible age.

I'm no timber expert, but the English Beech I have bought has been
mostly white, with darker streaks and pretty hard to work. However, I
don't have much experience of it since I've mostly ordered Steamed
Beech which is pinkish in colour and often of continental origin.
Danish and Northern European said to be harder and denser than
Yugoslavian or Roumanian. It looks to me as though this is the
material from which most planes were made.

One reference GS Boulger (1902), gives American Beech, Fagus
ferruginea, as considered inferior to English Beech, Fagus sylvatica.
 
~  Now I realise that there are environmental factors at work here as well, but
~  also consider the fact that (and this is based on my readings to date and
~  maybe Jeff can shed some additional light on this), that the manufacture and
~  use of wooden planes in England went on far longer than it did in this
~  country.  (almost all the wooden plane makers were shut down by the early
~  1920's for the US of A vs. post WWII for England.)

When I went to college in 1945, my father bought me a new wooden jack
plane, and I recall wooden jacks being readily available for sale for
some years after that. I was given an English made Stanley #4
smoother. Some better-off chaps had steel jacks as well.

Jeff

-- 
Jeff Gorman - West Yorkshire
jeff@m...