A Closer Look At The Stanley 55 and What It Can Really Do

hey y'all I'm James right who open my shop I've had a video recently put out about the sale a number 45 in the Stanley number 55 and compare dating comparing them and seeing what they do what can the 55 do that the 45 can't do or how do they work and what do they have that's different and that was a great video had a lot of fantastic response but a lot of people were asking me ok can you actually show a little bit more detail actually use the plane and cut some wood with it and and it show us actually what it will do and I thought you know that's a great idea so I recently did a video on the stanley number 45 and taking it through paces you can see a link to that video over here that was a a really fun video these are just a joy to use they're a pleasure for me so I really wanted to take some time today to go over some of the things that the 55 can do that the 45 can't do now anything that the 45 can do the 55 can also do it and so I'm not going to go over those things again and I'm just going to show you some of the things that the 55 can do that the 45 can not do so come along with me let's take a look so everything that the stanley number 45 can do the stanley 55 can do but it can do more so everything you can do I can do better and one of the first things that it can do is the fences can actually pivot and slide so that they are not just at 90 degrees to the blade they can actually go out to 45 degrees to the blade and you have both in there so you can run a beam down it now one thing that a lot of people like to do in the past is actually put a a bead right on the corner of a beam it protects the beam and makes it look a little bit sharper and cleaner so I'm going to show you how to do that here let's take a look so I slid a little bit on that you can see a bit of the double grooving over here but you basically see how that can give you a bead right on the corner of any plank you want I think that's really kind of a cool feature and I might end up using it in a few projects coming up now another thing you can do with the stanley number 45 are hollows and rounds and traditionally these were done with wooden planes and each plane was a specific hollow or specific round and that works great but they wanted to be able to do that with the stanley number 55 so you could you could do the hollows with the stanley number 45 because you can have a tooth at either point escape running along to support those points but a hollow you really can't do number one the first skate is over here on the side and so your second skate if it were in the middle to support it would be did it would be down so far that the tooth of the blade would be sticking out and taking out a quarter inch dry a quarter inch chunk at every pass and that doesn't work so I'm going to show you how to do this the hollow is basically the exact same as a beading plane so I'm not going to show you that if you want to see that look at the 45 video and you can see how those are done let me show you the next trick up the 55 sleeve to be able to do a round so now I can be able to do things like this and with the combination of a hollow and round you can create just about any trim profile you want how are around in a rabbit and you can combine those to make oh geez and other fun trim pieces so let's check out the next time so the last thing that the 55 has is moldings that it can do and this is a little bit tricky it's something that the 45 is never able to do so if you have a molding something like that that has an aggressive curve on it the problem is one skate has to be up high and the other skate has to be down low and the 45 couldn't do that but the 55 does have the adjustment mechanism to be able to slide the second skate down to the bottom of the tooth so you can see here one skate is up high and the other skate is down low this is is very very useful for doing moldings for the rounds for anything other than that where you want to the the first point of contact has to be a skate and so whatever is the lowest point on the iron there needs to be escape supporting right there there could actually be a second skate or a third skate supporting other places but it's not as necessary as long as this is the initial point of contact so let's give it a try and see what does so there is the molding that it can do and this particular one has a bead Cove and then a whole other bead ending in a little bit of a rabbit and this is just kind of beautiful this is just one of many many different cuts that can be done with a 55 it comes it supposedly comes with 55 different cutters 55 different things that can do and then it combinations of them and then there are even more cutters on other things that are sold separately that you can then get your hands on and make something fun so there's the joy of the stanley number 55 this sucker is just a joy to use and anytime I'd have a chance between using this and using an actual router I'm going to pick this up every time because this is just pure fun it is an enjoyable tool to use and it's something I really look forward to doing so whenever I have a chance to use in the shop I'm definitely going to be using this and I know that once you get one in your hands you're going to feel the same way so I'd love to hear what you think about the video is there something I missed or something you'd like me to talk about a little bit more please let me know in the comments below you can also check out the video that I did on the stanley number 45 over here and the kind of a comparison video between the 45 and 55 I'll put that down over here I hope you like this if you did please hit the like button think about subscribing and feel free to check out one of these videos you might find something you like and until next time have a wonderful day

Channel: Wood By Wright

Views: 35,613

Rating: 4.9628153 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, Handtools, Hand Tools, Hand plane, Hardwood, Hardwoods, Stanley 55, Stanley 45, Combination Plane, How to use, tool test

Id: 6sY1_3KkiWw

Length: 7min 49sec (469 seconds)

Published: Thu May 19 2016