In light of a recent thread that's better quietly left alone, I did some research to the economic side of wooden planemaking in the nineteenth century. Maybe one or two readers are interested, so I won't let my work go to waste and post it in this new thread.
Just like all manufactoring in the 19th century, planemaking went from small scale businesses, more or less on the master-apprentice basis, to large scale factories at the end of the century. More so in the USA with big brands like Sandusky and Union. Less so in Britain where small shops just grew a little larger, like the Marples shop with 10 benches in 1909. Sandusky had 36 benches, and a lot of specialised machines. Much of the work was done with special kinds of morticers. Fitting of wedge and blade was still handwork. The man who did this work fitted 200 planes a day, 3 minutes each! At the height of production Sandusky made 70000 planes a year. With 300 working days in a year, that means 7 planes a day per bench. (Data comes from Whelan: Making traditional wooden planes).
In the Netherlands the guild of planemakers dissapeared at the end of the 18th century. Small planemaking shops gradualy dissapeared too. First the company Peter Duesing took over. Later in the 19th century Nooitgedagt was the largest plane making company. Duesing started making planes in 1830. They had a 14 hp steam engine for cutting and sizing the wood, I don't know if they also had morticing machines. Overall it never was a huge factory. In 1894 there were 12 people, producing about 15000 planes. When you assume 10 people doing the actual planemaking ( the other two doing all the other jobs neccessary to run a business) that makes 5 planes being made per day per man. Nooitgedagt was a larger company. Started in 1865. 13 man and 3 children working for him in 1880. And in 1902 about 50 man. They didn't make planes only but also all kinds of other wooden carpentry tools. A seperate line where iceskates. Nooitgedagt had his own blacksmith shop to produce plane irons. (Data from v.d. Sterre, 4 centuries of planemaking in The Netherlands).
So, 5 to 7 planes a day. When you ever made planes yourself this sounds pretty remarkable! To get an insight in the workmanship and type of working environment of these specialists it's allways nice to watch the swiss video from the Raggenbass planemakers in Geneva.
http://www.rts.ch/archives/tv/cultur...s-de-bois.html
What kind of costs are we talking about? We can look at contemporary pricelists. The toolemera website has a nice selection. The oldest one is from Joseph Clark, Newcastle in England from 1816. A single iron smoother is 2 shilling, the double iron variation is 3 shilling. Converting to US dollars, that would be about $0.56 and $0.84. (I used a varied mix of conversion programs on the Internet, so it's probably not 100% accurate). A later catalog, the Arrowmammet Works in Midletown, Conn from 1858, also quotes the prices for plane irons. That's interesting because we now can make a guess about the costs of making a wooden plane.
A simple smoother with cast iron blade. Single iron, $0.45, double iron, $0.70.
When we look at the price of 2" irons, a pretty standard size for a smoother, we find:
Single irons, $2.- per dozen, makes 17 cents each. Double iron $4.125 per dozen, makes 34 cents each.
Interesting to see that a buyer payed a premium when he wanted a double iron plane. The double iron plane is 25 cents more expensive then the single iron plane, while the double iron itself is only 17 cents more. At that time the single iron plane was obviously regarded as an inferior product.
http://toolemera.com/Trade%20Catalog...talog1800.html
When we want to know the labor costs of making a plane. We need to know how much a planemaker earned in these days. I googled a bit around to find wages in the 18th century and compared a few articles. A carpenter could expect to earn about $1.50 a day in 1816 and $1.70 in 1858 (http://www.nber.org/chapters/c2486.pdf table 2, page 462). When we assume such a carpenter, specialised in the planemaking trade, made 7 planes a day in the Arrowmammet Works in 1858, then this makes 24 cents per plane. The wholesale price for a sinle iron was 17 cents, but the works themselves made them somewhat cheaper of course. So how about 12 cent for the iron? Beech was cheap, but needed to be cut and sized. Then the other expenses like energy, rent, interest on loans etc. Another 5 cents? There wasn't really much room for profit.
24 + 12 + 5 = 41 cents for a single iron plane. Selling price only 45 cents.
While the buying power of our current money is usually a lot better then in the 19th century, this seems not to be the case with wooden planes. It is a bit of a niche market of course. The only suppliers of western wedged wooden planes, made in a factory and of reasonable quality nowadays is ECE in Germany (as far as I know). A double iron smoother is 70 euro (http://www.fine-tools.com/putzh.htm). A carpenter in Germany gets around 1500 euro a month, that is 75 euros a day. So, the plane costs almost a full daily wage now, verses only 1/2 in the 1800's.
I hope this was mildly interesting to everyone interested in the history of our tools. I would apreciate comments and corrections, because I am of course no historian, nor especially knowledgable in financial matters.