EAIA

History

A Field Guide For Leonard Bailey’s Victor Block Planes

by Paul Van Pernis After a series of ever more contentious disputes, Leonard Bailey left The Stanley Rule & Level Company in 1874 to strike out on his own in the tool-making business. Within weeks, he set up shop in Hartford, Connecticut, as Leonard Bailey & Co. and started to produce his Victor line of …

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Irons

From the The Chronicle Volume XIV, No. 4, December 1961 by Charlotte Woodhull Judging from accounts of the home life of our early ancestors, they were not particularly fastidious about laundering. Their garments, furthermore, were not usu­ally made of washable materials. Considering the scarcity of implements for the job and the crudeness of those a­vailable, …

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Stanley Model Shop Tools: Stanley No. 87 Cabinet Makers Scraper Plane Prototype

The subject of this piece is a prototype for the Stanley No. 87 cabinet makers scraper plane (Figure 1). It will be described and compared to the production model No. 87 (Figure 2). John Wells and Chuck Wirtenson [1] have done a type study of the Stanley No. 85 cabinet makers scraper plane which includes …

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Ben’s Mill

This post comes our way from board member Sally Fishburn, http://www.safishburn.net/ Sally’s company, S.A.Fishburn, Inc. is dedicated to helping individuals (home owners, municipalities, non-profits, etc.) maintain the historic spirit and materials of their buildings though hands-on preservation, consulting, and design work.-Marc Sitkin For years, well, for over a decade, I was involved with Ben’s Mill …

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There is a Stanley No. 145!

The “combination plane” was developed to create a woodworking tool that would perform multiple functions and free a workman from having to own a large number of individual planes.  Over a 50-year time span in the second half of the 19th century numerous inventors patented and produced a broad array of combination planes.[i] Many of …

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WHAT A TIME WE HAD!

We came, we were busy, we saw and learned a lot, and we had a great time! That pretty much sums up the 2019 Early American Industries Association’s Annual Meeting in Lowell, Massachusetts.  After a Spring filled with rain and cold weather the clouds finally broke, the sun appeared and tailgating started in earnest on …

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Rule Collectors Rule!

The first yearly antique tool auctions bring tool collectors out of their winter hibernation as surely as the vernal equinox marks the coming of Spring. One of the highlights of this “Rite of Spring” is Martin Donnelly’s “Live Free or Die” spring tool auction.  This long-standing tradition rekindles friendships young and old, provides a chance …

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