An Unusual Retirement

In Conversation with Plane Maker Karl Holtey

- By Kieran Binnie

In 2015, acclaimed hand plane maker Karl Holtey announced his impending retirement and was working on the 984 panel plane: what he intended to be his final production run of hand planes and the last word in a career that resulted in a reputation for an unwavering focus on perfection and the development of several technical innovations that had an impact far outside the boutique world of high-end hand planes. Karl and I spent several days that autumn in his workshop in rural Scotland talking about plane making and his journey to becoming widely recognized as one of the greatest plane makers in the world, an interview that can be found in the April 2016 issue of Popular Woodworking.

Now it is 2020, much of the world is several months into lockdown as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, and Karl recently announced his latest design— the 985 smoothing plane. Wait a minute: surely he retired in 2015? Apparently not, and in late December 2019, Karl quietly appeared on Instagram under the handle @karlholtey, offering an insight into his manufacturing process. Word soon slipped out that Karl Holtey was still making planes.

An Unusual Retirement

In the five years since we last spoke, Karl concluded his run of 984 panel planes, and then produced a second run of the 983 block plane. His motivation in revisiting the 983 was that he had sold the final plane from the initial run and did not have one for himself. Instead of making a one-off, he decided to do a full production run, a decision that he would not repeat. “I forgot how much work was involved in a production run,” he explains, “I prefer to do smaller batches now that I’ve retired.” Despite the birthing pains of that second batch of 983 planes, all but one plane has now sold.