The History of Mitre Planes - The Marquetry Plane - Part 1

Just my theory - perhaps the mitre plane is called such after a bishop's mitre?
Also, there was an extensive migration of French Calvinists to England and
other European countries in an attempt to avoid Catholic persecution. Many
were weavers and cabinet makers. Given the secrets in the trades in pre-
industrialised England (?and the rest of Europe) perhaps French integration
was low and so the utility of their tools was not quickly known?

Looking forward to part two.

I go along with Paul as the mitre deriving from the form of hat. In textiles, including sail making, the mitre is a term to describe the joining of two pieces of cloth at an angle. It's used in clothing manufacture too.

So, I suspect that the term derives itself from the angular form of the hat, and/or the sailmaker. Here is a link to a decent review of Mitre:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mitre

I think you both miss my point. At some point in the late 18th century or early 19th a plane design that was used for marquetry started to be used for shooting and other woodworking operations and took on the name of the mitre plane after the joint. My point is not where the word mitre came from but how a plane evolved from one purpose to another.

On the word itself, "mitre" probably means "corner" in early English. I think the term Bishop's mitre and mitre as a mitre joint turn up concurrently - but part of that is both are very early words and there isn't much early English reference material.
"The Mitre" is a common name of pubs on a corner in England. Old pubs. what I don't recall from the OED is if the corner means comes from a bishops hat or the other way around. In any case it's about 200 years before the term "mitre plane" appears in print.

The miter plane evolved from the strike block which Richard Neve wrote about in his 1736 Builder's Dictionary. The strike block is bevel down and the miter plane is bevel up but, in early wooden planes, the miter plane was more expensive because it required the stop to close the mouth. Yet the miter plane replaced the strike block and I believe it was because of clearance angle issues. At the time it was trade practice to freehand grind bevels with no tool rest and the critical clearance angles required on a plane bedded at 40º or less and bevel down aren't suitable to casual grinding. The simple fact is the strike block required an accurate grind of about 25º to give the required clearance for even fine cuts. That 15º of clearance holds some interesting messages for those who promote today's bevel-up planes.

Larry,
Neve makes no mention of a mitre plane or a metal mitre plane. The term "mitre plane" isn't even recorded until the 19th century. I would agree that at some point in the late 18th or more probably early 19th century the metal mitre came into the general joinery world for shooting but it came as a fully formed design used for marquetry not an evolution from a strike block. This is the whole point of my post and more on why this happened in part 2. I had thought I has made my case pretty clear. That the metal mitre solves some issues with a strike block plane design (and creates others) does not show any correlation in their development. I am also not aware of any wooden bevel up mitre planes which pre-date the common introduction of metal mitre planes in England in the late 18th century. It seems that the wooden mitre was made as a cheaper alternative to the metal mitre and post dates it.