Fig. 623.
If you use an old-fashioned wooden plane, take the handle in your right hand, laying your left over the top and side, just a little in front of the iron, with the thumb towards you and the fingers on the farther side, as shown in Fig. 624. This position allows you to bear weight on the fore part of the plane when necessary and to control the tool to the best advantage. This applies to the old-fashioned wooden planes. If your plane is iron, there is a handle or knob for the left hand which you simply grasp in a natural way.
Push the jack-plane forward steadily an arm's-length. Then stop and start afresh for another arm's-length stroke. When drawing the plane back tip it on the farther edge. The cap or break-iron can be set quite far back from the edge for rough work, about one eighth inch, but much nearer for finer work.
Fig. 624.
In these days when almost everything is planed by machinery with greater or less smoothness, you will probably not have much use for a jack-plane unless you find you have a good deal of rough planing to do yourself.
Fig. 625.
The fore-plane or trying-plane is longer and larger than the jack-plane. Eighteen to twenty-two inches is a good length. It is used to straighten and level the surface after the worst roughness has been taken off. The surface having been roughed off by the jack-plane, the fore-plane is not required to take off such heavy shavings and the iron is therefore ground squarely across like a chisel, but very slightly rounded at the corners (Fig. 625). It is held in the same way as the jack-plane, but the stroke should be long and steady, for the fore-plane, which is long, will straighten the surface, and smooth it also. The iron can project more for soft and loose-grained woods than for hard, and the cap or break-iron should be nearer the edge for hard woods.