Galoots,

Last weekend while laying out a moulding plane blank I noticed that many
of my planes have leaning wedges. After checking all of the planes I
could get my hands on, I'm now sure that it was a common design
technique. I found it on most of the planes up to about 1 1/2" thick and
sometimes thicker. It's common to both American and British planes.

It appears to me that the plane makers usually leaned the wedges about 2
degrees, finial away from the escapement, to get a thicker side opposite
the escapement and a stronger plane.

some bad ascii art of a round:

                                 ||    wedge leans approx 2 degrees ->
                                 ||
                                 ||
----
                               |    |
                               |    |
                               |    |
  wood along side mortice ---__| | slightly thinner here | |
                            |       |
                            |       |
                            |       |
                            |       |
                            |          / wood on mortice side
                            |         / about 1/8" thicker here
                             -___-

Now that I find I shouldn't lay out my planes with a marking gauge, I'm
somewhat confused. (I know, what's new?) It's not as fast but I can
easily lay them out with a straight edge. Cutting the mortice is another
matter; I can cut one parallel to the sides at the usual 90 degrees with
out much trouble. I finished the plane I was making by cutting the
mortice undersized and tapering the sides. That was a pain. It was also
slow and not very accurate. I'd like to get this down to where I can
make a plane in two hours or so.

How did they do it? There has to be an easy way. Any ideas? I'd also
like to know more about the history of these leaning wedges. I know
that it's use spans atleast from the late 1700's to the prision made
American planes.

Larry Williams