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...
Category: Woodworking Tools
Craftsmanship and Art in an Early Tool Chest
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...
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...
Justus Traut’s “Bull-nozed” Convertible Block Plane
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)....
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...
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...
Colonial Homestead: A Midwest Tool Mecca
In almost every woodworking class I teach in Covington, Ky., there’s at least one student who has driven through Ohio to get there who has stopped at Colonial Homestead in Millersburg. Every one of...
Sargent Model Shop Tools: Prototype Successor to Shaw’s Patent Planes?
Here it is at only the second post of this blog and I’ve gone off the subject of Stanley Model Shop tools in my collection to discuss a Sargent prototype plane that joined the...
Who Gets The Credit?
The Stanley No. 97 Cabinet Maker’s Edge Plane In late 1869 or early 1870, shortly after Leonard Bailey started working at the Stanley Rule & Level Company, he produced the “chisel plane” shown in...
Leonard Bailey’s Last Vertical Post?
Leonard Bailey appears to have begun experimenting with and manufacturing vertical post planes sometime in 1860. These planes are called “vertical post” planes because of the two vertically positioned threaded rods located behind the...