This post is a bit longer than those I’ve written in the past, but I hope you’ll enjoy the story that’s in here about another interesting plane from the Stanley Model Shop. 1873 to 1879 were tough years for the Stanley Rule & Level Company as well as the rest of the U.S. economy.  The […]

It’s late in the year 1875, and Justus Traut and the men in his shop at Stanley Rule & Level Company are still diligently working on a cutter adjustment mechanism for the Stanley #110 block plane. Traut and Henry Richards, one of the “mechanics” working in Traut’s  shop, produced the block plane prototype shown in […]

As I told you in my last post, Stanley Rule & Level Company introduced the #110 non-adjustable block plane sometime in 1874.  The plane was derived from Justus Traut’s patent No. 159,865 granted on February 16, 1875.  Traut had sent in his patent application on November 13, 1874 at about the time Stanley started advertising […]

On July 6, 1852, Birdsill Holly was granted Patent No. 9,094 for a cast iron bench plane.  In addition to his cast iron bench planes he produced and sold two models of a cast iron block plane.  There are no individual patents for these block planes and they were manufactured for only about 8 years […]

October 29th, 2016, Radisson Hotel, Camp Hill, PA By: John G Wells Prices realized in this article include a 13% buyer’s premium. A 3% discount is available for cash or a good check. Prices enclosed in square brackets are pre-auction estimates taken from the Brown auction catalog No. 49. The condition of all items was […]

Aluminum Block Planes from the Stanley Model Shop In the first couple of decades of the 20th century, aluminum became available to manufacturers at a reasonable cost. Although aluminum comprises 8.2% of the earth’s crust, making it the most abundant metal in nature, it never occurs in its free form.  In 1825, Hans Christian Oersted, […]

In my last blog post I talked about two Stanley block planes with rosewood buttons on their knuckle joint lever caps.  In this post I’m going to discuss two more block planes from the Stanley Model Shop that are variations on that theme.  And these two planes appear to have been made at least a […]

The 48th Brown Tool Auction was held at the Abraham Lincoln Hotel in Reading, Pennsylvania on April 2, 2016.  Prices realized in this article include a 13% buyer’s premium.  A 3% discount was available for cash or a good check.  The condition of the items was taken from the auction catalog and does not reflect […]

By the 1890’s, Stanley Rule & Level Company had become an industrial juggernaut.  They proudly boasted in their pocket catalogs that they had sold 1.2million Bailey planes.  Their 1895 pocket catalog boasted sales of 2.2 million Bailey planes.  “The Rule & Level became by 1900 the largest maker of planes and related tools in the […]

I’ll readily admit it, I’m a “tool collector”.  I’m fascinated with all kinds of tools, but learned early on that I had to focus my energies and tool collecting funds on a narrower field, so I chose  woodworking planes.   I love those early Leonard Bailey, Charles Miller, and Stanley Rule & Level Company planes.  […]