The art and craft of fill-in-the-blank planes

Like many of us, Conrad Sauer was drawn to woodworking as a means of obtaining handcrafted furniture that he could not afford. But he was frustrated with some of his hand tools. “My hand planes weren’t doing what I thought they could do,” he said.

Sawyer’s search for a better plane led him to an antique tool dealer, who asked Sawyer if he had tried a filler plane and convinced him to buy a smoother antique turret, with the classic steel exterior, rosewood filler, thick blade, and solid mechanics.

“There was a noticeable difference in performance and ability,” he added. “The feedback was completely different. With the curly maple, for example, I got a clear, tactile sensation that I was going with the trend, then against the trend. It was like driving a car with really good suspension.”

The smoother box on the side of the coffin had no handle, and Sawyer liked the compact shape. “There were so many options to push, pull, and twist it. It felt like I was pushing a rock that came out with a beautiful shave.”

Sawyer discovered that a woodworking friend, Joe Steiner, owned a filler plane or two and shared his passion for them. Unfortunately, in the late 1990s, as woodworkers began looking for other fill-in models, the collector’s market became hot, fueled by eBay, a brand-new purchasing tool, and vintage aircraft were hard to come by.

Then Sawyer and Steiner had the same idea. The old Norris and Spears stuffing machines were built by hand, so what’s to stop them from making similar planes themselves?

It was very similar to Sawyer’s initial attraction to woodworking, but different. “This was scarier than making furniture, because metalwork was involved,” he said. “So I framed metal as an exotic wood with strange working properties and decided to learn as I went.”

“It was a combination of naivete and youthful exuberance,” he said. “My shop teacher in high school always asked me: What’s the worst that could happen? You have a catastrophic failure and you lose some time and materials.

Making airplanes for fun

Sawyer and Steiner, who live about 90 minutes apart in Ontario, Canada, put their heads together and began studying old planes and sharing designs with a local company, Shepherd Tool, which at the time was preparing to sell gap-fill kits designed specifically for DIYers. Processing at home.

Following in the steps of the original manufacturers, Sawyer and Steiner cut the sides and sole of their first aircraft from flat sheet metal, using a hacksaw, then sawed, cut and taped tight joints to connect the parts. Next came the rosewood insert, with the back piece angled to support the blade.

The two friends handmade the moving parts as well: the lever cap, cap screw, and pivot pin. The thick plane irons came from custom blade makers.

“I entered the code at 3 a.m., and the plane worked fine, as did my turrets,” Sawyer recalls. “That’s what I needed to know.”

Although their ultimate goal was to reproduce the curved-sided coffin smoothers that first captivated them, Sawyer and Steiner began with simpler designs, with parallel sides and a push handle. However, they replaced mild steel with brass in their second plane, and improved some other details as well.

That beautiful, smoother brass insert, manufactured in late 1997, was the instrument that launched their business.

Could this be a business?

While the two friends were demonstrating the use of hand tools at a craft fair in a small town near their homes, a woman wandered over to the bench, watching Sawyer use his beautiful plane to smooth copper. After chatting with him for a while, she asked him if he would make her one just like her.

After the show, Sawyer said, he and Steiner “sat down in a cake shop and wrote down how [plane-making] We might work as a business, what are our costs, our hourly rates, and then what the aircraft prices should be. We came up with a number, both of us breathless.

After calling the customer back and beating around the bush, Sawyer walked out with the number and was shocked to hear the voice on the other end of the line say, “Great. When will it be done?”

“We knew at the time that there was a business idea here that none of us had anticipated,” Sawyer said. It was 2001, and the two friends were officially registered as a partnership, while keeping their day jobs.

Two becomes one

In many ways, Sawyer and Steiner were perfect for this project. Both were enthusiastic woodworkers. Joe Steiner was a technician by profession, and worked in a dental laboratory manufacturing teeth. Sawyer was a marketing and advertising graphic artist who deeply understood the principles of good design and aesthetics, which is part of what makes his world-class custom hand planes so sought after.

One of their first tasks was to find fully processed rosewood, well suited for aircraft construction. Rosewood that has been seasoned for 30 years or so has a unique quality: After being slowly compressed and hardened over many seasonal cycles of movement, it will expand and contract only a few thousandths of an inch.

Sawyer and Steiner made all the parallel-sided padding surfaces they could think of—the panel, the joint, the shoulder—and then learned how to make the untreated coffin sides smoother, which Sawyer fell in love with. “When Joe and I were developing the planes, we didn’t tell anyone, just swore an oath of secrecy with a few trusted people,” Sawyer said. “You only get one chance to make a first impression.”

Sawyer and Steiner’s hunch was correct, and customers supported the company as soon as the two men launched it. Although they never required payment until the aircraft was completed, many early customers sent the full amount up front to help the new company with cash flow. “We had never met these people before and they wanted to support us,” Sawyer said. “I thought: These are the people I want in my life.”

As orders poured in, problems began to arise in the partnership. Although they were working with the same plan and patterns, they were an hour and a half apart, and their planes were slightly different. Also, Sawyer was ready to focus full-time on the growing business, but Steiner was not. “I had spent 10 years in marketing and advertising, and I wanted to reclaim my soul,” Sawyer said. “Joe still enjoyed what he did in the dental lab. He said, ‘I’m happy to get out of the way. You run with it.'”

Sawyer kept the Steiner name in the business, and his former partner still attends tool shows to help out.

A bold new direction

After working with traditional models and molds for 10 years, Sawyer began designing completely original fuel filler planes, which now account for 95% of his business. This bold change in direction reinvigorated him at a time when he was bored and considering walking away from work.

Like the plane that started Sawyer’s journey into the aircraft industry, it was one plane that changed her. A dedicated customer, after purchasing three standard aircraft from Sauer, asked him to completely reimagine the next aircraft. He liked the overall length of the old panel planes but there was nothing else about them – neither the heavy Victorian look or the heavy weight. “He challenged me to rethink the whole thing and make it more modern,” Sawyer said. “There were no time constraints and no budget constraints.”

Ten months later, Sawyer sent the client detailed drawings and a mock-up, and he loved the new design.

The new plane was unlike anything found on the collector’s market: lower and lighter, curvy and comfortable, and undeniably modern. “I wanted it to look like it was moving when it was stationary,” Sawyer said. The new filling level was called K13, adopting the clearer nomenclature of its original designs. The letter K is for Conrad and the number indicates length.

Once the new aircraft arrived on Sauer’s website, orders for more began. A man in New York ordered a K13, then a K9 and a K18, and then asked Sauer to make an original shoulder plane as well. He ordered a set of five 1/4-inch. The width increments, and Sawyer measured the height and length of each one accordingly.

“I knew right away that this was going to be my new direction,” Sawyer said. “I needed to get those first 10 years to be able to handle the challenge, and it came at the right time.”

By creating fill-in aircraft for the modern age, Sawyer brought his career full circle, reaching into his design background to create something completely personal.

To see more of Sauer’s tools, go to his website (sauerandsteiner.com) or Instagram feed (@sauer_and_steiner).

Asa Christiana is FWW’s editor-at-large.

From Fine Carpentry No. 315

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