Stolen infill plane

[Russ Allen]

Hi, I'm an occasional lurker here. I thought I'd surface to pass on a sad tale. It's being repeated on as many hand tool forums as possible. Below is what was originally posted on woodcentral by Wayne Anderson. It's also been posted on the oldtolols list and on woodnet.net. For those who don't know Chris Schwarz, he's an editor at Popular Woodworking and an all around good guy who did not deserve this.

Wayne's message:
This is a painful message to post. A good friend and loyal customer had a very special plane stolen. Chris Schwarz was at a woodworking show in PA recently, and sometime during a demo on plane setup he was called away from his booth to answer a question, and in the span of about thity seconds the plane "vanished". He assumes the whole thing was a scam since the questioner quickly vanished as well. I am posting a pic of this plane. It is one of only two of these I have made. The other belongs to a prominent tool collector in Michigan. The plane has a 2" wide iron and is roughly 9" in length. The infill is ebony and there is a diamond shaped ivory inlay in the bun. Thank you for your indulgence. Best regards, Wayne Anderson

[Pam Niedermayer]

BTW, Wayne said on Woodcentral: "The plane has my signature on the lower left side of the body, with the date 2004. It can be barely seen in the photo. As I said before, it is only one of two like this I have made, and the other is in a large tool collection in Michigan."

Pam

[Tyler Howell]

That is a Crime. Something that beautiful would make a good man go bad.

Sorry for the loss!

[Dave Anderson NH]

Thanks for posting the notice. I had emailed Wayne to offer him the chance to post the "Wanted Poster" here but hadn't gotten a reply yet. The hand tools community has many branches on many forums, but eventually it comes down to the the fact that we are all still a community no matter where we reside. I feel really badly for Chris and will limit my comment to just that statement. My rage at this crime precludes my saying more. It's not fit for a family forum.

[Keith Christopher]

I don't have to words to describe how I feel about this, but top off the stolen property with the fact that it was apparently a planned event. And worse yet, I wonder if the thief realizes what he/she stole ? And if it will be kept or abused, maybe can't find abuyer and tossed or what ever. I have to stop the more I think about it the angrier I get.

[Mike Weaver]

As someone who has been to a few of the WW hand tool meets/swaps and experienced the comraderie (and bought some great user tools!) , this is quite disturbing.

I just wanted to add my $.02 and bump this thread so as many see it as possible.

-Mike

[Ben Knebel]

I can feel for both Chris and Wayne. It is horrible to have something like this done to you.

Doug and I experienced the same thing at A NY show earlier this year when we had a chariot and 1/2" shoulder plane stolen. The 1/2" was particularly painful as it was the first and only one I had built to that point--and it was lovely if I do say so myself.

The circumstances were quite similar too. I had just shown the chariot and shoulder to a customer and put them down and turned to another customer with a question. I turned back to retrieve the planes to show this new guy and they were gone. My heart hit the floor. These guys were slick--I was never more than 3 feet away from the planes.

The value of these planes has nothing to do with money as they mean more to us than dollars and to have something you built stolen is just ugly.

Regards
Ben

[Jim Becker]

Having run a retail store for quite a few years back in the mid 1980s, I can attest first hand at how slick folks can be to steal right in front of you. Most of us can imagine a smaller object like a hand plane being scarfted up through misdirection, etc., but in one case I had a full-sized computer printer (wide format dot matrix) taken from right in front of the counter with three associates behind the counter. It went under a large woman's coat while several folks did the distraction thing...and happened in about, oh...10 seconds. A chase insued, in that case, but they were too far ahead for us (and the nearby department store security folks who actually had the group under surveilence) to catch.

I can feel for the loss of this plane, too...it's disappointing. And if any other show attendees saw it happen and didn't come forward, that would be even more dissappointing...