If it appears that Dickinson’s 81 planes were far more than any cabinetmaker needed, the number is easily explained by the likelihood that only a few were “bench planes,” the rest being “fitting-planes” or specially shaped “molding planes.”

Then as now the bench plane category included a group of flat-bottomed planes used for smoothing, leveling, and squaring pieces of wood. Varying in length from the smoothing plane of about 6 inches to the jointer of perhaps 30 inches, the group included also the trying plane, long plane, fore plane, jack plane, and strike block.

Fitting planes were those—each designed for a particular purpose—used to prepare pieces of wood for fitting together. This group included planes for making rabbets, tongues, grooves, and similar shapes, and having such names as the plough, match, fillister, and moving fillister. The last was essentially a rabbet plane with an adjustable fence to guide the width of its cut, often an adjustable stop to regulate the depth of cut, and sometimes a routing bit or tooth just ahead of the leading edge of the main blade.

The third and largest group in any eighteenth-century tool collection included the molding planes for producing ornamental trim in an almost infinite variety of shapes. In the absence of machine-made millwork in stock sizes and profiles, the colonial woodworker had to produce his own. In some instances, he may even have made his own molding planes first.

The eighteenth-century plane was a simple but effective device. It had only three basic parts: a body, an iron, and a wedge. The body or “stock” was a rectangular block of beech (or some other hard wood) with a shaped vertical opening through the center. The iron, inserted into this opening, was held at the proper pitch and blade exposure by tapping the wedge tightly into position. Handles were usually attached to the larger planes.

On a bench plane the bottom or sole of the stock was flat, of course, and this was particularly important for a jointer, whose sole had to be perfectly true. But the sole of a molding plane was shaped to fit the curve or angle or combination of surfaces its blade would produce. Since even a simple quarter-round molding might on occasion be needed in several different sizes for different uses, the well-equipped cabinetmaker would need perhaps nine planes right there.

George Washington’s well-known order of goods from London for the furnishing of Mount Vernon in 1759 included in a long list of tools not only a considerable number of bench and fitting planes, but about 50 molding planes: “10 pr Hollows & Rounds, 4 two Square Asticles [astragals], 6 Ogees, 1 Snipes Bill, 4 Quarter Rounds, 4 Sash Plains, 3 Bead Ditto, 6 Ovelos.” To these a cabinetmaker would have added ogive, reed, flute, beaded flute, fillet and fascia combinations, and other molding profiles favored on eighteenth-century furniture. Remembering that a number of these shapes too, might have been needed in more than one size, Dickinson’s 81 planes begin to seem hardly enough.