Page 3 of 5 FirstFirst 12345 LastLast
Results 31 to 45 of 62

Thread: No. 1 Stanley Plane-- Useful or Paper Weight?

  1. #31
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Kyogle N.S.W Australia
    Posts
    245
    Find it odd that people can afford to consider using such a pricey tool in anycase.

    Miiiiiiiiiiike .... don't get nasty mate. Whose to know what the truth is entirely anyway. Time distorts.

    I wouldn't be surprised that many purchased the #1, on 'advice' from stanley or whoever, who had a formed an opinion on how it may sell......and used it thinking it to be the ideal plane for their use based on that advice alone.

    I'd imagine those who could afford to practise using a multitude of planes, including #1,s, found other planes of more use. or easier to use.

    I mean, there'd be a lot of possibilities, yes ?....nothing to get nasty about in anycase.

  2. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by Jake Darvall
    Miiiiiiiiiiike .... don't get nasty mate. Whose to know what the truth is entirely anyway. Time distorts.
    I mean, there'd be a lot of possibilities, yes ?....nothing to get nasty about in anycase.
    Jake, I think this is a case where the written word may not convey things properly. I absolutely did not make any of my posting to be "nasty" - in fact, I tried hard to be polite and to stick to logic and facts.

    If you (and anyone else) read my posts as being nasty, please be assured that I absolutely did not intend them that way.

    I don't really know how I can change my future posts, but I'll keep in mind that they can be read in a way that I did not intend - and will try to make sure they will not be taken wrong in the future.

    Mike
    Last edited by Mike Henderson; 10-20-2006 at 10:38 PM.

  3. #33
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    SE PA - Central Bucks County
    Posts
    65,685
    Mike, if for some reason there is something in any of your posts at SMC that you want to change at any time and for any reason, you have full capability of editing them. Just click on the Edit button at the bottom of any of your own posts.

    Jim
    SMC Moderator

  4. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Becker
    Mike, if for some reason there is something in any of your posts at SMC that you want to change at any time and for any reason, you have full capability of editing them. Just click on the Edit button at the bottom of any of your own posts.

    Jim
    SMC Moderator
    Thanks, Jim. I could review my posts, but I don't think I want to change anything. I'm more concerned about being seen as "nasty" when I absolutely do not intend to be.

    I don't know what to change in my posts that will make them "better".

    Mike

    P.S. Oh, I see, you saw my comment "I don't really know how to change my posts..." What I should have said was, "I don't really know how I can change my future posts..."
    Last edited by Mike Henderson; 10-20-2006 at 10:37 PM.

  5. #35
    Mike,

    I think the reply may have been intended for Mark, as I certainly didn't see your post as being nasty at all, not like Mark's, and more so I felt you bent over backwards to be polite in responding to him. For that you should be commended, if anything.

    Not that anyone cares for my $0.02, but since when has that ever bothered me enough to keep me from posting???
    --
    Life is about what your doing today, not what you did yesterday! Seize the day before it sneaks up and seizes you!

    Alan - http://www.traditionaltoolworks.com:8080/roller/aland/

  6. #36
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Kyogle N.S.W Australia
    Posts
    245
    Sorry Mike....wrong guy.....I mean't Mark. Bit embarrising on my part.

    Probably should know better anyhow and not get involved.

    Have a good weekend fellas.

  7. Quote Originally Posted by Jake Darvall
    Sorry Mike....wrong guy.....I mean't Mark. Bit embarrising on my part.

    Probably should know better anyhow and not get involved.

    Have a good weekend fellas.
    Ah Jake--no worries!

    Probably were thinking about that bloke in Oregon when you were reading the thread and the book he was suppose to send you--and forgot... ...but will get it out Monday. It's been all packaged up and I had thought it made the trip to the post office...

    I've done good staying out of this thread.

    I think there are many tools various manufacturers made for long periods of time and there are so few found, or there is no compelling company evidence as to the market they were intended for, or even how the market chose to use them. The #1 may be one of those.

    Take care, Mike

  8. #38
    Jake,

    Not to worry, if that's the last time you become embarrassed on the inet, consider yourself more fortunate than myself! Actually nothing much to be embarrassed about, I see Mark's reply as being the most embarrassing in this thread.

    Have a good weekend also, toss a cold one and chalk it up to life!
    --
    Life is about what your doing today, not what you did yesterday! Seize the day before it sneaks up and seizes you!

    Alan - http://www.traditionaltoolworks.com:8080/roller/aland/

  9. #39
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Location
    St Thomas, Ont.
    Posts
    553
    Quote Originally Posted by Philip McKinney
    I'm looking at the Studley tool chest on my desktop picture and isn't that a no. 1 in the arched cubby with the columns? So you may use them to make pianos?
    The smallest bench planes I have are no. 2's ( Stanley and Ohio tool) and they are more comfortable to use than a block plane. I've only held but never used the no. 1, it is small, astonishingly small but if it was good enough for Studley......
    That post got me thinking, never a good thing, and I have a theory that might help explain the anomalys surrounding it.

    First we know for sure A) Stanley made no 1's from 1869 to 1943, B) other manufacturers willingly took up the making of these things.

    Philip good eye, I checked an inventory of the Studley chest and yes that is a no 1, now I think it would be a given if Studley had it in his famous chest going to the trouble of making a cubbyhole specifically for it, he must have used it.

    In doing some internet research I found that by 1896 the five largest piano makers in the world were in the US. In 1909 they made 374,000 pianos that's a lot of pianos but by 1919 there was a decline to 156,000 pianos with an additional 150,000 player type pianos.

    During the 1920's as radio increased in popularity piano making and more importantly piano makers started declining steadily but not quickly, until 1929, after then they went down real fast. and when world war two started for the US the making of pianos aparently stopped for the duration.

    So what I think is that while as the article that Mark Miller showed states that there were uses for the no 1 that we may not have considered I think that perhaps owing to their specialized form of woodworking that for piano makers, doing specific tasks the no 1 may have been the tool of choice.

    The rise and slow decline of piano making in the US coincides fairly closely to the production period of the No 1, also when Ohio Tool started making metal planes around the turn of the twentieth century, piano making was at its hieght and they chose to include this size in their line. We know Studley had one and so more than likely used it.

    Why do we not find very many now, well they stopped full production in 1943, but probably slowed down production prior to that date. Also according to Patrick Leach he used to see quite a few of them fifteen or twenty years ago. I do not know if a lot of piano makers were in New England but I bet that a number were.

    I doubt they were used in schools despite what some may say because as Mike Henderson rightly points out none of the ones that do turn up have school board names or numbers stamped in them like some others.

    I think maybe a number could have ended up as scrap in the second world war, as they would probably be considered anachronistic at best or perhaps useless by woodworkers at the time, so chuck them in the pile for the greater good.

    I was thinking of the small hand thing to, and it would have to be a real small hand to get around the tote on those things, and young adolescents would probably lack the wrist strength to use them like a block plane, so I think maybe schools are unlikely users.

    One other place they might have found homes would have been for use by patternmakers in foundrys those guys are fascinating in the tools they did use and how they used them I wish I knew more about them, but interestingly again foundrys were in decline during the depression as well.

    Perhaps another niché market might have been model builders, the professional ones that is.

    Patrick Leach also noted that many of the planes he has seen have the sort of damage that comes from use, ie chipped soles around the mouths missing nobs that sort of thing. I am sure that they were used.

    Anyway what do you think?

  10. #40
    Join Date
    Jun 2006
    Location
    Sydney, Australia
    Posts
    63
    James, your piano making theory is an interesting one. The dates certainly seem to fit. The cubby hole for the No. 1 in the Studley chest kind of highlights it more than a lot of the other tools, perhaps suggesting that Studley himself regarded it as an important tool.
    Regards,
    Ian.

  11. #41
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    Albuquerque, NM
    Posts
    446
    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Miller
    Greetings,

    Sometime ago I had a friendly arguement with a friend of mine concerning the usefullness of a Stanley No. 1 plane. He said he had spoken to Lie-Nielsen about it years ago & he said that they had no real practical use. When I contacted the staff at Lie-Nielsen they gave me the same response. Yet I have found the plane very helpful to get to those hard to reach areas or when you need a small plane with a higher pitch than a block plane to plane some squirrelly wood on a fragile piece. Am I alone in this thinking? It seems hard to believe the Stanley Bailey Company would have produced a plane for 75 years that had no practical value! They weren't collector's items back then, they were either used or they not made.

    Fine Tool Journal also had an article (although I can't find the issue) some years back that described the uses of the No. 1. In one example, an entire lot of original Stanley No. 1's were found in a teacher's workshop for his students. He taught how to make bamboo fly rods.

    So I am just wondering if I am full of beans or if there are other believers about?
    The current issue (Dec 06) of Popular Woodworking has an article by Clarence Blanchard on the uses of the #1; very similar to the FTJ info posted by Mark Miller above.

    James

  12. #42
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Hampton, NH
    Posts
    185

    Stanley #1

    It just so happens, there is an article about the #1 in the latest issue of Popular Woodworking. It gives some of the uses for the plane.

  13. #43
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Modesto, CA
    Posts
    2,364
    I was just reading through the thread and while reading about the No.1 being in the tool box a thought poppoed into my head........


    Has anyone actually stopped and thought about "making a piano"? Holy beans and fruit!!!! Going down to the local hardwood supplier and finding the material (or milling your own material), designing each of the hundreds of pieces (do you get ebony and ivory via cargo ship from Africa or what?), and don't forget, everything has to work together and sound perfect too......................What a TREMENDOUS undertaking.

    I'm just working on some silly, old cabinets today and this was a very humbling thought.

    Sorry to interrupt.
    Mark Rios

    Anything worth taking seriously is worth making fun of.

    "All roads lead to a terrestrial planet finder telescope"

    We arrive at this moment...by the unswerving punctuality...of chance.

  14. As was mentioned previously, others made #1-sized (5-3/8" to 6-7/16") iron bench planes, including:

    * Baily-Boston No. 1
    * Birmingham No. 1
    * Chaplin No. 1/2
    * Ohio No, 01
    * Union No. 0

  15. #45

    Lie-Nielsen must have had a change of heart ...

    If the No 1 plane is useless, why is Lie-Nielsen making one?

    See: http://www.lie-nielsen.com/catalog.php?sku=1

Similar Threads

  1. Mini Plane review, Mujingfang Smoother??
    By Gene Collison in forum Neanderthal Haven
    Replies: 17
    Last Post: 02-11-2012, 5:59 PM
  2. Plane definitions from my research ?
    By harry strasil in forum Neanderthal Haven
    Replies: 11
    Last Post: 09-24-2006, 7:50 PM
  3. "high dollar tools..."
    By Ian Gillis in forum Neanderthal Haven
    Replies: 49
    Last Post: 08-01-2006, 7:53 PM
  4. Veritas Medium Shoulder Plane Reviewed
    By Brad Olson in forum Neanderthal Haven
    Replies: 4
    Last Post: 12-07-2004, 4:04 PM
  5. Woodcraft Rosewood Plow Plane review (long)
    By Marc Hills in forum Neanderthal Haven
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 04-06-2004, 11:59 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •