Okay, my cool FIL paid for more than half of this thing through a very generous giftcard from Woodcraft... Thanks Pops! There's no way I could have justified this without subsidization.
What is this shiny wood and bronze contraption? Why, its a Lie-Nielsen #4 smoothing plane in manganese bronze, of course! Pretty, ain't it?
-An abbreviated but still boring interpretation of the history and impact of hand planes follows. Not for the faint of heart-
Back in the day, before all of those noisy, electron-consuming, finger-eating power tools that build today's crappily constructed houses and mass-produced furniture, craftsmen used hand tools to smooth, shape and join wood. As tools and construction techniques evolved though the 1800's and the first part of the 1900's, tool designers at the Stanley Level and Rule Co. reached what is pretty much considered to be the perfect balance of precision/functionality vs. cost for tools that were to be used by a craftsman that relied on his tools to put food on his table (but beat them up toting them around in a toolbox). They were available, weren't prohibitively expensive, and they worked. Stanley sold scads of the "Bailey" patent plane in several sizes and an improved version of the Bailey plane termed the "Bedrock". The fancy new plane I bought is pretty much a copy of the "Bedrock" design from the 1910's-1940's.
As power tools became more prevalent after WWII, nearly all hand-tool manufacturers died off or changed product offerings to stay afloat. Handtools that required a certain amount of skill and effort to operate were replaced by measure once/cut twice power tools and Chinese made junk intended to pass as handtools. Woodworkers who wanted to cling to old-school methods of work were stuck with trying to source antique tools from flea markets and yard sales.
As of the last 10 or 20 years, modern toolmakers such as Lie-Nielsen, Lee Valley/Veritas, and a few others started manufacturing quality hand planes and other handtools. The quality of these tools often exceeds what was produced back in the day, but production volumes are orders of magnitude lower. That means they're stinking pricey....
All you ever wanted to know about Stanley hand tools can be seen here: http://www.supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan0a.html
-End boring handtool diatribe-
Over the past couple years, as my woodworking obsession has grown, I've been accumulating a small fleet of hand tools, including Stanley hand planes in various shapes and sizes. These planes range in age from 75 and 120 years, so needless to say they've seen their share of abuse.
Yeah, its a pretty sorry shelf to put all those nice tools on:
The old planes all require "fettling" to some extent to get them to work as intended. I always thought it would be grand to have a plane I wouldn't have to fuss with to get to work correctly. Even if it cost an arm and a leg.
As it turns out, I'll have to keep looking.
You'd think that paying $350 for a tool originally designed 100 years ago would be a sufficient penance to the tool gods to reach smoothing plane Nirvana out of the box. This time it wasn't the case. Don't get me wrong, it didn't take more than an hour or two to get the thing functioning flawlessly, but my first experience with it was a bit dissappointing. It just wouldn't cut well.
To work properly the iron needed honing, the mouth needed to be filed square and the frog bed needed to be cleaned up. The end result is one sweet-working plane. Just took a bit of effort. And 350 bucks.
The iron honed:
Before:
After:
Out of square mouth... I couldn't set the mouth very tight without the blade impacting the short corner in the picture. I was pretty surprised that this one got shipped like this. Before filing the mouth square:
New and old:
And to reward your willingness to suffer through the tale of the handplane, here are a couple cute Norah pics.
