As it is today, however, the toothing plane did not always look. Johann Samuel Halle describes it in 1762 the same as the scrub plane, i.e. with a normal cutting angle (approx. 45 degrees), but with a slightly less rounded cutting edge than the scrub plane. The steeper plane iron position seems to have been reserved for the “hard plane” (hence also called “steep plane”), which was used with a normal iron to work hard, knotty, or flat sawn wood very finely.

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(Note: With single plane irons without chip breakers, it is a tried and tested method to achieve a finer material removal by the steeper position of the iron in the plane body and at the same time to avoid tear outs. This is more of a scraping effect than a cutting, similar to a scraper. This principle was already known to the Romans. It works better for hard woods than for softwood.)

The description is almost the same with Peter Nathanael Sprengel (1778), only the cutting edge of the iron is straight, not curved.

Johann Georg Krünitz also describes the toothing plane in 1789 identical to the scrub plane, but adds that the “hard plane” is used with both normal iron and toothing iron.

The invention of the double iron (see also my article about the smoothing plane by Weiss & Sohn) in England in the middle of the 18th century made the “hard plane” redundant, the use of a chip breaker allows tear out free planing even at a normal cutting angle of 45 degrees.

The description of the toothing plane with Georg Altmütter (1825) is somewhat contradictory. First he describes it identically with the double plane (a roughing plane with double iron) and gives a description of the English double iron. A paragraph later, however, the toothing plane appears with almost vertically standing iron. The “hard plane” does not occur with Altmütter, but later again in the "Atlas of Austrian Tools for Woodworkers"  by Johann B. Weiss 1861 (The version with metal sole has been produced by Weiss & Sohn until the 1890s.)