One of the most prevalent tools you will find in the Madden Tool museum, and Door County’s history in general, is the hand planer.

A hand plane is a woodworking tool used to shape and smooth wood surfaces manually. It utilizes a sharp blade held at a precise angle within a body to shave off thin layers of wood, allowing for precision shaping, flattening, and smoothing of wood pieces.

Hand planers are ancient tools, and their use can be traced back to 79 AD, in Pompeii, Italy. As technology continued to evolve over time, craftsmen generally made their own wooden plane bodies while the village blacksmith made the cutting irons. Once the demand for furniture began to grow, companies started to manufacture wooden planes in large numbers. Many of the planes were made for specific trades that included: Carpenters, Coopers, Shipwrights, Furniture makers, and instrument makers.

After World War II, the introduction of mass-produced powered woodworking tools significantly decreased the manufacture and use of hand planes. Skilled woodworkers and craftsmen were replaced by mass market furniture makers using assembly lines. The only significant innovation in hand tools after WW II was the push to make them cheaper without much attention to quality. Beginning in the 1980’s there was a resurgence of interest among woodworkers for traditional woodworking techniques, including hand planes. This interest continues to this day and can be seen through preserved tools in museums as well as new planers for modern projects.