Veritas Small Plow Plane — and What Amazon Has Instead
A plow plane cuts a groove along the grain with a fence. Nothing on Amazon really does that, so here is the honest workaround.
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A plow plane cuts a groove parallel to an edge. It has three things a bench plane does not: a fence that runs along the board’s edge, a depth stop, and a narrow iron sized to the groove you want — typically a set of irons from about 1/8 in up.
That combination is what makes it fast. Set the fence, set the stop, and plow until the stop bottoms out. Drawer bottoms and cabinet backs are the everyday reason to own one.
Veritas’s small plow plane is made by Lee Valley and sold direct. There is no meaningful Amazon equivalent — a few decorative reproductions turn up, but nothing with a proper fence, depth stop and set of irons. If grooving by hand is part of how you work, order it from leevalley.com.
The workaround, honestly described
The tool scored here is a router plane. It cuts to a set depth below a reference surface, which is the depth-control half of the plow plane’s job. To get the position half, you clamp a straight batten along the line and run the plane against it, or knife the walls of the groove first and clear the waste between them.
That works. It is slower, and the walls are not as crisp as a plow plane’s, because a router plane clears the bottom rather than cutting the sides. For a couple of drawers it is fine. For a run of twelve, buy the plow plane.
The other honest option
If the groove does not need to be cut by hand, a table saw with a rip blade, or a router with a straight bit and an edge guide, will cut a cleaner groove in a fraction of the time. Plow planes are worth owning because they are quiet, need no setup for a one-off, and work on a board already assembled into something. They are not the only way to make a groove, and pretending otherwise does nobody any favours.
What works
- A router plane will cut a groove to a controlled, repeatable depth, which is the half of the plow plane's job that matters most for drawer bottoms
- With a straight batten clamped as a fence it will follow a line accurately enough for hand-cut grooves
- It is a tool worth owning anyway for tenon cheeks and hinge mortises, so the money is not spent on a workaround alone
What doesn't
- It has no fence and no depth stop of its own, so every groove needs a batten clamped and referenced — slower than a plow plane by a wide margin
- It cuts across the width of its blade rather than plowing continuously, so a long groove is a series of passes and the walls are less crisp
- For a true grooving plane with a fence and interchangeable blade widths there is genuinely no Amazon equivalent