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 …
A Field Guide For Leonard Bailey’s Victor Block Planes Read More »
The following is excerpted from The Chronicle Vol. VI, No. 2, April 1953 By W. Parker Crutchfield “The man who built that must have been a bachelor ” announced a lady tourist who was seeing the eighteenth century cabinet· maker’s tool chest on exhibition at the Ayscough Shop in Colonial Williamsburg. She looked admiringly and …
By John Verrill, Executive Director, Early American Industries Association One of the pleasures of working in the EAIA office is getting frequent requests to identify tools whose purposes are unknown to the inquirer. We call them “whatsits” for obvious reasons, i.e. “what is it?” I have several sources in the office to look through including …
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 …
Stanley Model Shop Tools: Stanley No. 87 Cabinet Makers Scraper Plane Prototype Read More »
By Harry Baer Reprinted from The Chronicle, Volume XVII, No. 3, September 1964 We are all normally accustomed to thinking of tools as implements wholly beneficial to man’s welfare. Unfortunately, this is ndt always true. Tools used for a positive purpose have been, and can be, used for a negative purpose. It may, therefore, be …
Thanks to board member Sally Fishburn, here are some links to short videos at the Arnold Zlotoff Tool Museum.The museum is located on the grounds of Apple Island Resort in South Hero, Vermont. https://zlotofftoolmuseum.org/Contact Info:Phone: (802) 349-9236Email: joyner@together.net Videos can be found here: https://zlotofftoolmuseum.org/trade-crafts-videos/
In an April 2017 blog entitled “Justus Traut’s Bull-Nose Plane” I discussed a delightful little bull-nose plane from the Stanley Model Shop that was the product of Justus Traut’s inventive prowess (See Figure 1). The plane is based on patent No. 291,815 granted to Traut on January 8th, 1884(See Figure 2). I wrote at that …
Justus Traut’s “Bull-nozed” Convertible Block Plane Read More »
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 …
As part of the overall initiative to bring woodworking and cabinetmaking back to prominence at Old Sturbridge Village, the Village is hosting an all-day Woodworking Forum “Tools, Techniques and Traditions” on Saturday, October 19. The Forum is one of the activities leading up to the construction of the new Cabinetmakers Shop on the OSV Common. …
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 …