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The earliest plane found in Britain was excavated at Silchester. This was a Roman iron plane of much sturdier construction than the Pompeii models. Roman planes of Bronze without the use of wood have also been found on the Continent.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Very interesting.
I stand corrected.

B

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My memory is so good, sometimes I remember things that never happened.

There was a saying I heard in the carpentry trade - The wrong tool in the right hands is better than the right tool in the wrong hands. This is not meant as a criticism to anyone, but some people are better off using a tool they are familiar with, although it is not the "right" tool than using the "right" tool they don't know how to use properly.

while there is certainly veracity to this saying, it has it's limitations and side effects...sometimes the only tool to use is the right tool, and if you don't have it you'd better acquire it before attempting the endeavor...and then there are the times you just have to stand up for reality and tell a supervisor "you want me to do what with that $10,000 door? what drugs are you on because I want to make sure I never take them"

as Harry Callahan would say "a man's gotta know his limitations" and in this case it should be modified to "a man's gotta know the limitations of his tools"

I’ve used many different table saw blade combinations none that could produce a joint that would pass my test holding the plates together with a light behind them. I have used a table saw joint on thick wood non guitar projects with good results. I have hard maple bench top I made over 20 years ago that is still holding just fine. No one has mentioned blades. It is impossible to get good results from even a perfect saw (zero run out measured at arbor, flat table, flat properly adjusted fence) with a flawed blade. Forest are my favorites consitantly great results.
All that being said now working from a down sized shop I use my Festool track saw more and more often. The Festool with a good blade will give me results better then any tablesaw setup I’ve used, still not good enough for a plate joint, but close. A couple of passes with a well tuned #7 and I’m there.

yes, a good true blade that is sharp is a necessity with any power tool...one trick I've figured out when trying to make glue joint cuts (or any cut that needs be true and accurate) is to make a final pass taking off only at most 1/32"...using a featherboard on a table saw and with a track saw making sure the saw has as minimal of slop as possible as it rides on/in the track

I use a router table! The last four or five backs that I've done have candled just fine and are still very much holding together. So whatever works!

I use a shooting board and a low angle jack plane these days, but in the past I used a sanding disc on a table saw that had a flat side and an angled side (maybe 1 1/2 degrees or so--made a cone shape). Using the angled side of the disc and tilting the arbor to make the disc square to the table, there was only a very narrow piece of sanding disc actually touching the material. It worked remarkably well for me before I finally got a jointer. I used it mostly for cabinet work, not instruments, but it worked.

For guitar tops and backs, I used a router and a fence to do the joints--learned that from Charles Fox back at Earthworks in the old days. Works like a champ.

Dave