My crusade to lighten the load continues. I’ve turned my attention to my collection of hand planes. Earlier in the summer I sold off the high zoot stuff–the artisanal specialty planes of recent make, with a ready, rabid market. Planes made by Lie-Nielsen, for instance, may be resold at about 90% of new price. I take that to mean that I can rent a $200 plane for a couple of years for $20. The trap is, of course, that once it’s in my hands, my hands won’t let go.
Somehow I brought myself to sell all the high zoot I didn’t use. Now I’m looking flintily at the hundred-year-old vintages–the Stanley planes made in the 1900s, 10s and ’20s. Starting in my own twenties, I began collecting a reasonable set of the bench planes–the #3 through #8. I called this “reasonable” because the #1 was rare and went for $1000 and up, and the #2 was only a little less so. #3 through #8 were made by the boatload for thirty or forty years early in the last century and are still very common. I wanted only planes I could use. I didn’t mind if they were dirty, chipped, with irons honed like butter knives. I liked cleaning them up, bringing them to a keen edge.
And I did use them–the #4, #5, and #8, plus a couple of little block planes–all the time. The rosewood handles, worn in with the oils of previous workers, fit my hands just right. The old cast iron has heft–and always, somehow, an array of paint splatters.
[Tutorial redirect: the numbers of the planes correspond, in a direct relation, to size. A #1 is 5 1/2 inches long, 1 1/4 inches wide, and weighs just over a pound, a #8 is two feet long and weighs almost ten. The #4, at 9″ and 3 3/4 pounds, is 2″ wide, and is perfect for final smoothing of a surface. It’s known, in fact, as a “smoother.” The #8 is called a “jointer,” because it is most often used to joint edges. The 24″ length of it wants to make stuff straight. The shorter length of a smoother is to let it ride over the not-necessarily-as-flat surface of a table top. The #5 is called a “jack,” because it is jack of all trades–a compromise in length and width and weight. I use it with a rank set to the iron–a course cut–in early stock preparation. The #5 is so common and so widely used that its profile is what everyone thinks of when they think “hand plane”–that is, everyone who thinks of hand planes.]
Over the years I procured four or five #4s (only one, made in 1902, of which I use constantly–the others either parts-suppliers to this One True Plane or misbegotten buys along the way to the OTP), a #5 with a tote sheared and screwed hastily back together 80 or 90 years ago, holding just fine ever since, a #5 1/2 (the 1/2 sizes are a little wider and heavier than the integer just below) that is too new for my tastes and a little rusty–I’ve never bothered to clean it up and put it into service out of disdain for its newness (manufacture date: 1931), a #6, two #7s, and a #8–all from the ’00s and ’10s. From my grandfather I inherited a #4 1/2 with a “Made in Canada” embossment that I would like very much to use, but it was used so long and hard by him and his own ancestors that it is utterly worn out. The knob is broken off, the cast iron cheek was snapped off and rebrazed, and the iron is worn to the quick. I’ve thought to repair it many times, but when the knob broke off the bolt sheared inside the casting, which means boring it out and rethreading, and Stanley used a proprietary thread pattern–no taps are commercially available. When I get my metal lathe one of these days…
I take special joy in having inherited many tools from my grandfather that are all worn right to the end of their usefulness.
All of this is to say, “Isn’t that triple-reeded brass depth-adjustment wheel from the 1919 #7 I’m going to sell way cool?”
Three patent dates cast into the bed means it is either Type 11 or 12. Type 11, made between 1910 and 1918, is considered the perfect vintage, and fetches a premium. The only difference between types 11 and 12 is the size of that triple-reeded brass depth adjuster. If it’s 1.25″, it’s a Type 12. Mine is. I have a smaller depth adjuster in my spare parts bin. I could turn this #12 into a #11, with the twist of my wrist, if you follow me. How do I know some earlier owner did not replace the smaller adjuster with this larger one, after all? Men of stronger moral fiber than I have been hoisted on just this fine petard.
You can still see some paint splatters, though I cleaned off the more Pollackesque work.
In the days when tools like these were thought of as tools, rather than rhapsodized over in blogs, their owners often inscribed them with a unique mark in order to distinguish them from their colleagues’ tools, and thus reclaim them at the end of the work day. One owner of this #7 filed a boxed X into the cheek.
Another owner used a metal punch to stamp an Orion-like figure into the same cheek. I don’t know if the ovals to the right are a third owner’s mark or not.
Lateral adjustment lever over the brass tote-retention bolt, much maligned by screwdriver over years.
V-shaped New Britain toolworks logo (it signifies, like everything else) at top of iron, under cap iron, under lever cap.
Old metal has presence.
The cutting edge, installed, from the bottom of the plane. I reground the iron with a very slight radius, then honed it to 12,000 grit, which is approximately 6X overkill.
Kind of the point of it all: shavings. Though, really, the point of a #7 is to to make joints, from which these walnut shavings were recently extracted.
You can make out the cross-grain striations. The shavings flex and break repeatedly as the iron shears them. These are very thick–five thousandths of an inch, or the same as a dollar bill. I wanted some substance to the curlies.
There’s such a thing as a contest to make the most pristine shaving. You want one the full length of the board (could be 8′ or more), full width of the iron (2″ or more), and uniform thickness in the one-thousandth range. These are 18″ long and 3/4″ wide.
You can deduce the open grain pattern of walnut–that’s what makes the long slits in the shavings. Maple and cherry give a shaving with no voids.
I guess I’ll offer this plane on eBay. A #7 in similar condition, but of Type 11, sold for $186 this week. I didn’t pay more than $30 for any of my elderly Stanleys.
rpdpod 