When we apprentices started making our suite( pronounced suit) of wooden planes. We had a whole nights discussion and a show and tell on the whys and why nots of previously made wooden planes.

We were shown a varied collection of wooden planes made by shipwrights and donated to the school. Unless made of some really hard wood like Greenheart or Lignum Vitae most all had infill pieces in front of the mouth. The reason for the infill was quite simply to replace a worn area. In that time if a fellow wanted a different mouth opening on a plane he would not mess around with one of his good working planes. He would make a new one with the narrower mouth opening and use the blade from another plane.

Realize that all our apprentice planes were made from Rosewood, Ebony, Lignum Vitae. Those woods being very hard and very brittle it was the bane of us all to be ' almost there' with the mouth opening and just take that last stroke with the 'float' and have that Ebony chip out! Since these were our Apprentice Planes and would be presented for inspection to the Journeymen at the Hall, this was unacceptable and the block was either put in the work box in the hopes that it could be salvaged for some other plane or it was assigned to the firebox. Next winter, in the Pacific North West, whilst the heat from the old pot bellied stove was welcome on that barge, it was painful to think of the fine wood used to fill it.

In the yards most bench work was done with metal planes, Stanley and Millers Falls mostly,whilst out in the yard the outboard joiners used their wooden planes in smoothing off the hull and the inboard joiners used their wooden planes on the bulkheads, bunks etc..

As a practical matter most 'used' planes were made of odd ball scraps found in the yard or of fruitwood from home or nearby farms. Those 'prentice planes were too pretty and too expensive to be used, especially on some rough Halibut Schooner.