Abstract
According to a study conducted by the Institute for the Science of Labor in 1943，a professional carpenter uses 179 different tools on average. Among them are types of planes belonging to 18 separate categories. This constitutes the standard set of planes used in modern carpentry.
What types of planes were used from the 17th to 19th centuries?
(1) From the 17th to 19th centrise， at least 26 types of planes belonging to 12 categories were used. They can be roughly classified as those for planing， groove cutting， curved surface cutting， chamfering， and plane body adjusting.
(2) The standard plane for flat-surface planing had a single plane blade fixed to the plane body in the blade groove.
(3) Its length varied from “7 sun” (210mm)to “9 sun#8221; (270mm).
(4) There were three processes : rough cutting， processing and finishing. The mouth of a finishing plane was as amall as the diameter of a hair.
(5) According to documents and pictures handed down from the past， carpenters cut wood with the pulling stroke as early the 17th century.
(6) The documents and pictures also suggest that it was in the beginning of the 19th century that carpenters started to use a bench and adopt a standing stance when working
(7) It seems that upgrading the precision of the cutting mechanism of a plane took place from the latter half of the 17th century to the beginning of the 18th century.
(8) According to documents and pictures， we can infer that both spear head planes and normal planes had been used until the late 17th century and that the plane became the mainstream tool for finishing in the 18th century.
