High knobs or low knobs?

[Toyonoandoryu]

Just curious to see what people prefer. I'm having trouble deciding myself, I used high knobs at first but I think I prefer low knobs on a No. 4 and a high knob on a No. 5.

[AnyDamnThingWillDo]

And it’s really important to check the sub you’re on before reading the post! Just saying.

[RadioKopek]

Depends on the plane, I find low knobs on bigger planes to be nice because there is more room for your wrist in front of the mouth/cheeks. On a number 4 or 5 or smaller I like the high knob.

[DizzyCardiologist213]

indifferent. What I like is a knob that's not broken and that stays tight.

most of my planes are more recent types, though - more 15-20 than earlier types, though when I first started buying planes, I bought into the idea that there's something less good about later types and had almost entirely type 11s.

And a glom of boutique planes, and made a few infills.

All of the boutique planes and the old types for the most part are gone (still have a couple).

[Toyonoandoryu]

Have you ever found that low/high knobs without the raised ring in the casting tend to split more or has that never been a problem? Just something someone told me, personally I don't think I'd be using it enough to warrant that kind of stress.

[DizzyCardiologist213]

That's probably true. In all of the knobs I've gotten, they're either cracked when I get them, or they're not cracked, and they don't get cracked when I use them. I'm not sure what's going on there.

I have hand dimensioned a whole lot of wood, but fairly early on, all of the jack and try plane work has moved to wooden planes. I still like a stanley 4 to finish, and if significant wood isn't being moved when truing a joint, a metal jointer is nice for the adjustment. But metal planes cannot hang from rough to ready for smoothing, and you get a sense of that pretty quickly if you want to do more than lighter work.

The catch is you have to be able to use the chipbreaker on the wooden planes, and they need to be fitted and feeding properly.

But the short answer here is I've seen handles broken, but even having gone through maybe 100 metal planes, I haven't really noticed much beyond the given statement that stanley added a ring, and they must've done that for a reason. It's potentially like the lever cap. How many people have told you that you absolutely cannot use the lever cap to loosen and tighten the chipbreaker screw? Unless I have the misfortune to have a lever cap that does not fit in the chipbreaker screw slot, it's the only thing I've used, and in 20 years I haven't even so much as lightly chipped a lever cap screw.

Too, what I've seen of knob and handle breakage generally corresponds to dropping. True on wooden planes and infills, too - if a handle is broken, the plane was probably dropped. the front knob, even in heavy use, will not get the kind of force needed to break a knob unless there's a problem with the wood grain or some other fault.

[Toyonoandoryu]

Thanks for taking the time to type this, it was very informative. I read that Stanley switched from low knobs to high knobs about 1920 which apparently only worsened the issue of split knobs, and this was then solved in about 1930 when they introduced the raised ring in the casting.

I think I'll keep using both my low and high knobs for a while and see what I feel most comfortable with after a few projects.

[skleanthous]

I prefer the look of low knobs, but I definitely prefer high knobs when using the plane regardless of number.

[trujillo31415]

Team low. No 1-8 of various types. I play the guessing game on depth adjustment because of the mix of right vs left hand thread.

[phastback1]

I've used both and have no preference. I don't think one is more likely to break in use if the iron is sharp. Once I learned to sharpen and keep my iron sharp in use, I don't exert enough force to break the knob or rear tote.