Author Topic: Hand Planes  (Read 321343 times)

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Offline Bill Houghton

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1095 on: December 04, 2019, 10:04:41 AM »
Thanks for posting that link regarding Defiance planes.......Again!  I noticed you previously posted it back on page 45, reply 663, almost three years ago.
I do seem to be approaching the stage in life when I'd better pick my favorite book, because I'll be able to read it over and over again, and rave to people every time about this new book I found.

Offline p_toad

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1096 on: December 08, 2019, 06:21:42 PM »
Got an Anniversary plane (Defiance from what i've read) in the Restore the other day.   Marked "made in usa" and "anniversary" on the blade, but otherwise, nada.   Pretty decent shape overall.  somewhere i took pictures.   :tongue:

Online Jim C.

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1097 on: December 08, 2019, 07:23:07 PM »
Got an Anniversary plane (Defiance from what i've read) in the Restore the other day.   Marked "made in usa" and "anniversary" on the blade, but otherwise, nada.   Pretty decent shape overall.  somewhere i took pictures.   :tongue:

Yes, pictures would be helpful for identification.
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Offline Bill Houghton

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1098 on: December 08, 2019, 09:47:45 PM »
Got an Anniversary plane (Defiance from what i've read) in the Restore the other day.   Marked "made in usa" and "anniversary" on the blade, but otherwise, nada.
That would, I suppose, be an 11th anniversary plane, since 11th anniversaries get steel.  I couldn't find "tools" or "hand tools" listed in the various anniversary gifts by year, although the annual gift designation seems to fall off after year 15, and it becomes every five years; so I suppose you could select a year - say, the 49th year - for hand tools.  51st year for power tools.  Or you could just say every year that wasn't a fifth year, starting with year 15, gets tools.  I'm sure, if we tried this, our brides/lifemates would believe us.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2019, 10:16:43 PM by Bill Houghton »

Offline p_toad

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1099 on: December 09, 2019, 06:36:05 PM »
Found them.   did a partial tear-down and put it all back together.   had to tighten down that tote a bit.

Online Jim C.

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1100 on: December 12, 2019, 10:05:57 AM »
Hey P,

Thanks for the photos!  It’s not a plane I’m familiar with and I can’t say that I recall ever seeing one.  I also can’t claim much knowledge when it comes to Defiance planes, but I’m learning and that was one of the reasons I started this thread.  Good stuff!

Going back to Alvin Sellens’s book as mentioned earlier on page 73, reply 1090, I’d guess that the plane you depicted is either a #1203 (#3 size) or #1204 (#4 size) smooth plane.  The #1203 was available between 1939 and 1953, while the #1204 was offered between 1932 and 1953.  I couldn’t find anything about the word “Anniversary” being stamped on the iron.  I have no idea if it’s a rarity or not. It’s certainly interesting and unique.  If I find any more information I’ll be sure to post it.   

Jim C.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2019, 12:28:25 PM by Jim C. »
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Offline Bill Houghton

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1101 on: December 12, 2019, 11:07:56 AM »
Some place in heaven, there's a couple who occasionally reminisce about the year Gladys gave Max a new hand plane that she had specially stamped in honor of their anniversary.

Online Jim C.

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1102 on: December 12, 2019, 12:18:36 PM »
Hey Bill,

I’ll go with that since I don’t have a better explanation!   :smiley:

Jim C.
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Online Jim C.

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1103 on: December 24, 2019, 07:40:59 AM »
I hope everyone enjoys a great holiday season and a very Merry Christmas with family and friends!

Jim C.
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Offline Downwindtracker2

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1104 on: December 24, 2019, 02:15:21 PM »
Merry Christmas everybody.

Irons migrate . I once picked up an English #5 1/2 or #6, I've forgotten both the brand and the  #, for parts. But it came with an Swedish Anchor iron ! It just so happened that I had an Anchor  brand plane with a Stanley aftermarket iron. Anchor brand is the brand used by Sweden oldest and largest chisel maker, Jernbolaget. BTW, the parts were too crude to be useful.

Offline p_toad

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1105 on: December 24, 2019, 05:22:15 PM »
Got an Anniversary plane (Defiance from what i've read) in the Restore the other day.   Marked "made in usa" and "anniversary" on the blade, but otherwise, nada.   Pretty decent shape overall.  somewhere i took pictures.   :tongue:

That plane didn't sell so i ended i buying it myself and bringing it to its new home.   :tongue:
If anyone wants more detailed breakdown pictures just let me know.   Probably won't get to them right away; it's already
lost in the garage (or hiding, not sure which :grin:).

Merry Christmas to all.   :smiley:

Offline Bill Houghton

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1106 on: December 31, 2019, 05:30:00 PM »
Sitting here, waiting for plumbers to come by and get the information to bid on a job...time to add to this thread with several topics.

Duplex rabbet planes:

We've talked about these before, Jim about the Stanley No. 78 in reply #220 (http://www.papawswrench.com/vboard/index.php?topic=9443.msg68501#msg68501), and John (of johnsironsanctuary) about the Sargent No. 79 in Craftsman clothing in reply #36 (http://www.papawswrench.com/vboard/index.php?topic=9443.msg63056#msg63056).  But I wanted to bring them up again to offer a couple of ideas.

Here's a picture of mine, a Stanley of England item identical to the U.S.-built plane:

Most of us who gather planes from the wild have noticed that planes often come dotted with white paint, for reasons unknown.  Mine apparently belonged to a maintenance worker in a Barbie factory, since mine is dotted with pink paint, not much visible in the picture.

It appears that Stanley originated this design, with Stanley's production starting in 1885, before any of the other major manufacturers (Sargent: 1910; Millers Falls: 1929; Record of England: 1932).  It was clearly a carpenter's plane, and equally clearly developed at a time when that carpenter would be carrying the toolbox to the jobsite on his/her shoulder; so it offered both standard and bullnose positions.  I find it a much better plane than you would expect: with no chipbreaker and a fairly wide mouth, it should produce more tearout than it does.  But it's an awkward bullnose plane, mainly because of its length; when I need to work a closed rabbet, I find a bullnose shoulder plane, about 4" long, far superior.  And the bullnose position makes for awkward gripping when you use it without the fence, as is at times appropriate; I find my finger wedging down uncomfortably into the mouth.

John showed his Craftsman-badged, Sargent-made version of this plane (link above).  It's a later version of the plane.  Much of Sargent's production was very clearly oriented toward people on a budget.  The Sargent No. 79 has no adjuster for the cutting iron; Stanley adopted an adjusting lever about the same time Sargent started making their version.  The handle on the Sargent is built in a way that would have been much easier to cast than the hollow handle on the Stanley.  But Sargent did two very nice things with the early No. 79:

First, it's an absolutely lovely, graceful thing.  The swoopy curve was probably intended to strengthen the body, since the mouth is open on one side, but dang, it's sexy!

Incidentally, note the depth stop on the right; this is standard on these rabbet planes, which were designed to be used right handed.  The depth stop will encounter the face of the stock being planed when the rabbet is at its correct depth.  This location will be important to remember later on/lower down.

Second, they added a little horn to the front of the plane, to make gripping it when working without a fence easier.  Some Sargent collectors call it the "rhino horn," for obvious reasons:

This picture also shows the absence of any adjustment mechanism besides your own fingers and skill.

Sargent held onto the lovely floral designs on their planes longer than Stanley, before eventually making less entrancing tools; I'm not sure when that change occurred.

Record produced a clone of Stanley's No. 78, in the No. 078, but they upped the ante in 1959, improving the Woden W78, which had featured a full-length fence with two rods (everyone else had a fence on the front half of the plane, held in place with one rod), and adding adjustment with a knurled nut:

Incidentally, I'm missing the depth stop on this; if anyone has a Record 078/778 depth stop and screw, I'd sure like to talk.

Dado planes:

One topic we haven't addressed before is that of dado planes.  A dado, for those just catching up to the terminology, is a groove running cross-grain on a piece of stock.  Imagine building a bookcase with shelves fixed at a particular height.  A dado is one way, probably the best, to locate those shelves.  There are numerous hand-powered ways to cut dadoes (saw and chisel, saw and router plane, etc.), but the plane manufacturers didn't want to be left out of the party, so they developed dado planes.  I suspect the design is fairly old.  I own two wooden dado planes, not pictured here (I forgot them when I was taking the photos).  Dado planes are distinct in a couple of ways: the iron is skewed, so that the cutting action presents as a slicing action across the grain; they have cutting spurs on both sides of the body of the plane, since the plane winds up buried in the stock; and the plane is designed to be used against a batten on the right side of the plane, so the depth stop is on the left (as opposed to the rabbet planes discussed above).  Stanley and Sargent made dado planes; I don't know who else did.  Patrick Leach, in his extensive "Blood and Gore" essay on Stanley planes, describes Stanley's No. 39 plane as very uncomfortable to use, because the depth stop is exactly where you'd place your hand on the front of the plane.  Sargent, in developing its dado planes, adopted the rhino horn, as seen earlier on its duplex rabbet plane, so, when I decided my life would be nicer if I owned some dado planes, I decided to get Sargent planes:

Sargent cleverly numbered its dado planes in a way that includes the width of the plane body in eighths.  Thus, the No. 32 dado plane is 1/4" (2/8") wide; the No. 33 is 3/8" wide, and so on, up to the No. 38, 1" wide.  I own Nos. 32, 33, 34, and 36.  I doubt I'll ever need other sizes.  Here are two pictures of my No. 36, showing the features I mentioned:




and here's a sample board with a dado, which came out with a surprisingly smooth floor, considering it was cut in tearout-prone pine:

(The spurs on this plane need work; one's locked closed, the other needs sharpening - so I didn't use them.  I think the edges of the dado would have been a lot cleaner if they'd been working).  And yes, that rhino horn definitely improved the ease of gripping the front of the plane; so I was smart, something that's a rare occurrence.

A bit more on the Stanley 190/192:

When I posted my excitement about acquiring a Stanley 190 for $2 this summer, I included a picture with its buddy, a Stanley 192 I acquired some years back.  I recently realized something about these two planes, to do with the handle shapes.  The Sweetheart era Stanley 192 has a handle with top and bottom horns, like the handle commonly found on a handsaw:

It's smaller than a handsaw handle, and, although it fits my large hands (I wear XL in gloves), it would be tight on hands wider than mine.  The pressures on a plane handle differ from those on a handsaw handle, and the bottom horn does not really have a function.  Stanley may have been thinking about people with big hands in later iterations of these planes, or they may have just been eliminating non-essential features to save money, but the handle on my later No. 190 is sure not a thing of beauty, as functional as it is:


I hope everyone has as boisterous or quiet a New Year's Eve as they want.  We're having dinner with friends, and then music will break out; and we'll declare it midnight when we get tired - after all, it'll be midnight somewhere in the world.
« Last Edit: January 02, 2020, 02:39:31 PM by Bill Houghton »

Offline p_toad

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1107 on: January 08, 2020, 03:08:10 PM »
I had some deja vu the other day when another Anniversary plane came into the Restore.   Not quite as nice of condition as the first one (rusty and dirty), but i still only see "Made in USA" and "Anniversary" on it.  Starts to make me wonder how many of these things they sold. 

Offline coolford

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Re: Hand Planes Box for Stanley No. 193A
« Reply #1108 on: February 11, 2020, 02:45:57 PM »
I traded Jim C. for this plane and when I saw the number of parts I realized it needed a box.  Took awhile, but finally got around to it.  The box is 14 1/2" long, 8 1/4" wide and 7 1/4" deep.  It has two levels, the second level floor is removable and it has a sliding top.  I kept it as small as possible while not having to pile parts on top of each other.  It is made of odds and ends laying around my shop.  First picture is the box, second picture looking down is the top level and last picture is the lower level with the floor removed.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2020, 02:47:32 PM by coolford »

Offline Bill Houghton

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Re: Hand Planes
« Reply #1109 on: February 11, 2020, 03:21:34 PM »
Here are some pictures, from the Internet, of the cabins we used to stay in that used fiberboard extensively:


They even used it in the bathroom!  A heavy coat of paint helped the fiberboard stave off moisture.


Inspiration for your projects with your fiberboard plane!