A Buyers Guide to Stanley Bailey Planes // Woodworking

[Music] welcome back everyone in today's video we're going to talk about how to date your stanley hand plane now i'm still collecting stanley hand planes i'm still on the lookout for a few numbers that i'm missing i'm on a quest constantly for the numbers one through eight in the process i will probably end up with several number fours because they are the easiest to find this one that i just acquired a few weeks ago is a number six yes it's the dreaded number six stanley bailey four plane it almost is the length of a number seven it's longer than number five a good plane to use perhaps before you actually use your jointer plane i personally find that this works very well as a all-around jack plane and that's definitely what i use it for i think it's a great all-around plane and when i saw this and the condition that i was in i couldn't pass it up i had to get one the other thing that was curious about it was that it had the corrugated soul a corrugated souls were kind of controversial back in the late 1800s the corrugated souls were patented many manufacturers used different versions of these this plane does glide pretty easily this plane has not been fully restored yet i still have some work to do to it without even adding any wax to it it actually glides really well this plane is what i would call a mid restoration condition and i can still use it to do some edge jointing tasks if i need to that said i'm still on the hunt for a number seven and number eight if they are the right age now if you know anything about stanley as a company it's changed quite a bit i think stanley only produces the number four maybe the number five and the number seven if you can find them the number four is definitely the most common plane that's still in production today and still follows the same design spec of the stanley bailey in this video i'm going to use the number six as an example i'm going to point out some of the features that you need to look at to date this plane correctly i'm also going to talk about some of the surprises that you can get when you start shopping for used stanley bailey plane now before i point out all the details that will get you the age of the plane i'm just going to do a quick run through on the history of the parts the kidney-shaped lever cap hole was patented by earl higby in 1933. the lever cap was patented by leonard bailey in 1858 the cap iron was patented by leonard bailey in 1867 the pivoting forked lever and knob adjustment was patented by leonard bailey in 1867 you will find them in a couple of different sizes they'll be the smaller size and then the one in one quarter inch size which has become the standard since the 1920s the rosewood handles were a trademark of the stanley bailey planes up until 1948. for the cast iron body the first american patent was filed by hazard knowles in 1827. the first place to look is at the back of the frog where you see the adjustment knob you want to look down at the plate and you want to count how many patent dates you see in my case i see three patent dates so that is the first clue to the age of this plane some of the planes will have one patent date some will have two patent dates my plane has three patent dates stamped into the cast iron top of the plain body behind the frog and just below the adjustment knob so that's where you want to look for that so the first patent date i see is march 25th 1902 the second one i see is august 19 1902 and the third patent date i see is april 19 1910 we can definitely ascertain that it was made after 1910 the second place you want to look is the brass adjustment nut at the back of the frog and we're going to measure that and it's indeed one and one quarter inch diameter the adjustment knob is either going to be a one inch knob or it is going to be a one one quarter inch knob so just based on the patent dates that were found here and the size of the adjustment knob and the style of the front knob we can ascertain that this was made between 1919 and 1924. at least that is the information that i have so far now here is where the plot thickens so a few historical tidbits for you on the stanley bailey planes leonard bailey left stanley in 1875 a lot of woodworkers know that fact and therefore will not touch a stanley plane that was made after 1875 however what they might not know is that his contributions did not stop after 1875. he actually set up a new company and was involved in design of a new set of planes under the victor trademark stanley acquired that company in 1880 and took over the victor planes for a time eventually the victor planes went away and any innovations that leonard bailey came up with for the victor planes went into the stanley plains even though leonard bailey left the company in 1875 his innovations still ended up in the later designs and contributions that you see in the stanley bailey planes of the 1900s so basically if you're a woodworker and you're looking to buy a vintage stanley plane and you want the original stanley baileys you're pretty safe if you can get one that was made before world war ii anything made after world war ii can be kind of questionable stanley as a tool company went through a few things a few experimental phases and kind of messed up the design of even some of their hand planes to the best of my knowledge they produced the stanley bailey in much the same way as they do today and they didn't really deviate from this design all of these features can be found in the brand new stanley baileys other than some coding and finish some differences in choices of material the planes have been designed and manufactured in very much the same way that they always have been so don't be afraid to buy a brand new one they've actually gone back to staying faithful to the true design because they know that's what woodworkers want i hesitate to call it a replica because it's still made by stanley and they still own those past so this is most definitely a plane that was made between 1919 and 1924 the interesting thing about this is it has the lever cap with the kidney-shaped hole as opposed to the keyhole design from the research that i've compiled the kidney-shaped hole was implemented on the lever cap as of 1933 which is curious given that this plane was probably at least made in 1924. now a couple of things could have happened this lever cap could have replaced the original lever cap so somewhere along the line somebody got a part from stanley and decided to upgrade the lever cap so that is a possibility or most of the data that i'm finding right now based on this being a 1933 invention is wrong in either case i'm going to go mostly with the age of the plane body that concludes dating your stanley bailey plane now hopefully when you go to the antique dealer or the flea market you'll have a better idea of just how old the plane is that you're looking at and whether or not it's worth buying or if you should just move on and find your plane elsewhere some of these can go for quite a bit of money i've heard quite a few people say you can pick these up for ten dollars or you can pick them up for five dollars that might be true but also keep in mind that if you're picking it up for cheap there might be a reason for it i.e it's probably missing parts if it's a good hand plane in every other way except for a couple of missing screws you might be able to get a better deal on it however five bucks is five bucks and if you're buying it for five dollars you really can't go wrong these bigger planes the number six number seven number eight can go for as much as a hundred dollars easily an antique dealer they are getting more expensive and they are getting more rare if you want to help me continue to make and edit these videos head on over to my donation page right over here please remember to like share and subscribe if you haven't done so already there are a couple more videos on this side you can watch until next time thanks for watching and have a great day you

Channel: Eric Sorensen

Views: 6,993

Rating: 4.881041 out of 5

Keywords: Stanley Bailey Hand Plane, Date Your Stanley Hand Plane, How old is your hand plane, Dating Old hand planes, Stanley Bailey No.4, Jack Plane, Scrub plane, Stanley Bailey No.6 Fore, Stanley Tools, Stanley Vintage hand planes, Jointing planes, Leonard Bailey, Hand Plane Type, Lever Cap, Cap iron, Smoothing Plane, Antique hand planes, Flea market deals, How to, Wood Shop, woodworking, carpenter, maker, maker space, a buyers guide, shopping guide, product review

Id: yP7qseWf0jY

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/MinnesotaTech]

I’d rather keep it a professional relationship...