Are Bedrock planes really better? // Affordable handtool woodworking.

if you're shopping for your first vintage hand plane this will probably happen to you you'll find a tool dealer or a flea market vendor with a bunch of vintage planes at good prices and you might pick out something like this this is the Stanley Bailey number for smoothing plan for those of us who are lucky enough to find good vintage tools this is a precise reliable tool it's great for day-to-day work so you find one of these in good shape for thirty bucks and that's a good press so you get your money and you go to pay the vendor but right when you walk up to him he says to you oh that's a great plan you've picked out there but you know I've got a couple of bedrocks and you do not know what the hell he is talking about but bedrock sounds good and you don't want to look stupid so you say to him oh yes bedrocks I'll take a look at one of those and he hands you this and you think to yourself oh my it's certainly a plane it's got flat sides I don't know it looks a lot like the other one but the way the vendor made it sound bedrock like it was just the best thing ever you think well I do want to buy a good tool so maybe I'll just get this one instead so you say to the vendor yeah I guess I'll get this one how much and he looks you dead in the eye and he says that plan is a hundred and eighty dollars and as soon as you finish having a complete heart attack at the price you might look at that plane and think a hundred and eighty dollars what if you're just getting into vintage tools you might hear the word bedrock get thrown around a lot and you might not even understand what it means so here's the basics your regular run-of-the-mill stanley plane is called the bay repattern plan because it was invented by leonard bailey who sold his incredibly effective design to stanley in 1869 stanley used these designs to dominate the hand plane market and even their competitors eventually started making plans that were basically copies of the bailey design today when someone says hand plane they usually mean a Bailey pattern metallic plane but around 1902 Stanley wanted to off a more premium line of plans that would be more expensive and aimed at craftsman with more money so they introduced the bedrock line these didn't replace the Bailey line they were the next step up on the outside these two designs look very similar the bedrock just has these flat sides we have to go inside the claim to really see the difference once you take off the lever cap and the blade you see some differences in construction this big flat surface is called the Frog and it holds the blade on the original Bailey this frog is just screwed into the plane body with two screws you can see some small flat spots milled into the body and their matching surfaces milled into the bottom of the frog the frog and the body have a sturdy connection but the actual points of contact are pretty small the bedrock plane doesn't have screws it has these two pins and you unscrew the Frog from behind those back screws have points at the end when I look at the pins that hold the Frog they have little holes in them which fit those points the pointed screw comes in and engages with the hole in the pin as the screw is tightened that pin is pulled down and the Frog is seated really tightly against the bed of the plane where the Frog actually mounts to the bed of the plane that's where we see the real differences in bedrock construction on the bedrock the base of the Frog is a huge flat surface the bed of the plane has another flat surface and little rails on the sides that hold the Frog perfectly straight the Frog fits exactly to the plane body and it can't twist side to side at all the connection is rock-solid Stanley made this change to get a better fit between the parts of their planes but also to give their flagship bedrock planes an easily adjustable mouth the planes mouth isn't just the opening in the bottom of the plane it's the distance between the edge of the blade and the front of that opening the mouth controls how thick of shaving you can take and when the mouth is very tight it presses down on the wood in front of the blade and prevents terror if you're working on very difficult wood and getting a rough surface setting your plane with a fine mouth and a light cut can solve that problem I've got both the planes here and the bedrock is on top you can see that they both come from the dirty' with a pretty fine mouth but both of them also allow that mouth to be tightened up for the standard Bailey plane adjusting the mouth is a bit of a process you take off the lever cap and the blade assembly to expose the frog screws then you loosen those screws a bit and use the Frog adjustment screw at the back to slide the Frog forward a bit then you reassemble the plane which takes a little fiddling around this can take a little trial and error I moved my frog too far forward and the iron won't come out of the mouth after I took the plane apart and adjusted it a second time I got a very tight map this plane will only do the most delicate work but will also plane most difficult woods without tearing out you get an adjustable mouth with the Bailey line but it's inefficient and it breaks up the flow of work Stanley wanted something better for their flagship bedrock line that's why they have that super complicated pin and screws setup to secure the Frog to the bed of the plane with the bedrock the mouth is adjustable and it is super fast my bedrock plane starts out with a pretty fine mouth but tightening it up is a breeze I don't even have to take out the blade I just stick a screwdriver behind the Frog loosen the mounting screws a bit give the Frog adjustment screw a half turn and retighten the mounting screws again I get the setting right on the first try and it's fast that super tight mouth will handle some twisty grain and still give us a good service the improvements on the bedrock plane take a second to understand and they seem very impressive but it's important not to get caught in the appearance of the fact you can look at a bedrock plane and think oh look there's this big bearing surface there's extra iron extra steel a slicker mechanism it must be better but that could be kind of a trap these things all look better but none of them matter unless the plane actually performs better than a Bailey plant the truth is in the work so let's go do something we'll start easy by edge planing this white pine the bedrock plane is solid on the wood it glides into the cut smoothly and the shaving is feathery you really can't ask for more so let's switch to the Bailey with its sloppier construction and inferior frog design and it's honestly it's kind of exactly the same say shaving same surface same effort I can switch back and forth between the two planes all day and I hardly notice the difference but inch planing white pine come on that's kid stuff let's get serious let's tap up a planing stop and go to work on a twisted piece of time with knots and reversing grain in the face I'm doing localized planing here taking down the high spots to flatten the twists but I'm still getting really wide and thin shavings this bedrock is doing excellent work but can the Bailey measure up well yeah smooth performance wide shavings and a glistening surface the Bailey isn't showing any weaknesses here let's make it a bit tougher I picked this cherry off cut because it has a not and reversing grain on both sides and a rough edge this should be a real test I set the bedrock for a heavy cut to take off those saw marks and it slices right through the wood no trouble but a switch to the Bailey plane reveals no difference so let's go to the faces and that twisty grain that knot in the edge is throwing all kinds of reversing grain into the faces and there's plenty of tear-out from the planer at the mill this is a real world problem board if I can plane it I can use it in a piece if not it goes into the burn pile the Bailey gets first crack at the job I've left the mouth open and dialed in a fine cut as I work you can see those milling marks giving way to a smooth surface with neatly sliced fibers my Bailey has left me with a clean surface even around that not tear out is almost eliminated I could put this stock right into a piece of furniture the flip side has just as much nasty grain and some SAP wood to will give the bedrock a crack at this and you know it's kind of the same the plane glides nicely and the shavings fly out the surface is just as good and there's no tear out to get worried over this test is a tie but these are still sort of laboratory tests we need to bring these planes into a more real-world environment and that's no problem I've been finishing up this kitchen cupboard and now I'm ready to attach the trim get everything trimmed and straightened and get it prepped for final finishing this is the perfect test for these two planes use them all day long first thing is to trim this face frame my handy ryoga's saw handles the flush cut but the final trimming is all hand planed the pieces meet at right angles and the cut is demanding because it transitions through squishy and grain to long side grain I skew my Bailey plane for a slicing cut and it handles both surfaces just fine I switched to my bedrock and the results are the same both surfaces are quickly trimmed no crushed fibers on the end grain and that frame is level with the case next my top board is a bit bowed and that's gonna make adding trim really tough I want to set both my planes for a coarse cut and takeoff material fast both these smoothing planes are pretty fine tools but they'll take a heavier cut too when the work is too fine to reach for a scrub plane a heavy set smoother might be just the thing now without even sharpening let's go for the exact opposite task I need these cabinet doors prepped for finishing and I don't want to do any sanding let's make this a pure hand plane finish and try for absolute perfection on the surface I set the bedrock for a heavier cut to take care of some unevenness around the glue joint and then I can back the iron way off for a light finishing cut this planing goes very fast and after I've gone back and forth twice I'm done you can't argue with a finish ready surface like this but can the Bailey compete hell yes it can honestly if you blindfolded me I wouldn't even know which plane I was using the bedrock is supposed to be so much more solid and precise but look at the shavings the Bailey is making look at the width and the consistency check out the final finish I swear put these two doors side-by-side and you would never know they were prepped with different planes they both look great just to be complete let's finish off with a bit of end grain shooting oak neither of these planes is my first choice for a shooter but they both work both planes are a little light for this duty but the bailey leaves a square and clean surface the bedrock might be a little better here but the difference is some it cuts and grained just fine and the surface is just what I want so look I don't get it I have heard for years about the bedrock line there's surgical precision there solid construction their incredible performance but I'm not seeing it I used both of these planes for over a week day in day out I did real-world actual furniture building with them and there was almost no difference the bed rocks are even famous for supposedly being much heavier than the Bailey's but if I put one in each hand I can barely feel a difference the planes seem nearly identical now for sure the bedrock winds on it's easy adjusting mouth it's a clever and effective mechanism and you can change it fast without messing up your workflow but here's the thing about that I never changed the mouth on my smoothing planes really never all good Stanley planes come with a pretty fine mouth to begin with all these shots are me planing with the mouth open like it comes from the factory and I get very little tear out when I'm working if I do get a little tear out I usually just use a scraper you might work with trickier woods than I do but I'd rather have a plane with a medium tight mouth and just leave it alone now I'm not saying the bedrock planes aren't any better but the cult following they have among woodworkers and tool collectors does seem a little weird to me especially if you know a little bit of history Stanley introduced the bedrock line around 1903 but these planes were out of production by World War two meanwhile the Bailey line soldier Don all the way up through the 60s and 70s now there are a couple different explanations for why the bedrock series went out a lot of people said well by that point in the century coming up to the war we had a lot more machine production less handwork and there was just less demand for ultra high-quality premium tools like this that's one explanation another explanation could be that craftsmen just actually weren't really impressed by the bedrock line especially people who had already been using Bailey style plans for decades these planes were still going strong and didn't really have any shortcomings if you were a craftsman like that and you picked up one of these at a higher price it might have been very difficult to justify you might have been unimpressed and just not ever picked one up this brings us to the question of why these planes are so valuable today I don't think it's because there's so much better than the Bailey plans I think it's because they're so rare when you've got a bunch of collectors all coming in to buy up vintage tools well the things that are the most rare are automatically going to become the most valuable bedrock claims were produced for a short period of time and discontinued way before the Bailey line was so there's a lot fewer of them around and that's gonna drive up prices a lot but after having used this plane and compared it to a good quality Bailey I just don't think the increase in price is justified this planes better that adjustable mouth the super solid construction I can feel a difference I would call this plane ten percent better than a Bailey and if you had the two planes side-by-side I would gladly pay twenty or thirty percent more for this plan but when I bought my Bailey I got it at a flea market for twenty-five bucks in good shape I had to go to a tulle dealer to get this bedrock and with shipping this thing cost me a hundred and fifty five dollars do I think this plane is justified and commanding six times more money than my Bailey hell no ladies and gentlemen let us leave these things to the collectors and the cork sniffers we've got woodwork to do and we can do it just fine with a plain old Bailey style plan and listen if you enjoy history and tool collecting and stuff like that I super strongly recommend Gerrit hacks book the hand plane book it is by far the best book I have ever read about tools and I have a lot of books about tools hack is a professional cabinet maker he's extremely knowledgeable he goes over hundreds of different models and the photography in this book is unbelievable this is truly tool porn and unlike a lot of woodworking books this one is available in paperback so it's actually not that expensive I will link to it down in the description just like always this video is brought to you by my patrons on patreon my patrons make it possible for me to do a deep dive into a subject like the differences between different kinds of tools do a thorough review and bring you the straight dope for absolutely free it's not free for me to make these videos and it's not free for them they give me a little bit of money every month and that helps me bring this content to you and in exchange I give them all sorts of perks and extras if you'd like to find out about that stuff come on over to patreon comm / 4x Krueger and check out the early access the discussion board articles tool reviews and other stuff I do only for the people who keep this content alive I've really enjoyed making this video and if you want to see more of them let me know down in the comments and I can go into more detail about fun interesting vintage tools no matter what I do really appreciate you watching this video see you next week

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 62,501

Rating: 4.9598703 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, handtool woodworking, hand planes, hand plane, hand tool woodworking, bedrock plane, woodworking tools, woodworking planes for sale, block plane, woodworking planes for beginners, woodworking planes explained, hand plane shootout, woodworking plans, plane, smoothing plane, woodworking projects, woodworking videos, hand plane collection, hand plane setup, hand tools woodworking, handtools, wood plane, woodworking for mere mortals

Id: UJMgHzoUGFo

Length: 15min 57sec (957 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 10 2020