What is a Combination Plane Stanley 45 and 55

hey y'all I'm James Wright and welcome to my shop it is hand tool Thursday and I want to go into one of my all-time favorite tools the Stanley number 55 and the Stanley number 45 also known as combination planes these are a lot of fun because they do a lot of different things and every single one of these cutters can make a different profile a different cut and you can set these up to do different things so I'm actually want to go into this and show a little bit more detail on these now if you want to see even more than that I do have a couple old videos where I go into detail on the 55 and I go into detail the 45 and then have another video where I can compare the two what do they do so I'm not going to be covering that information I just want to be more introducing these today so if you want to see that I'll leave a link those down below but let's actually dive into these and see what all can they actually do so the stanley 55 and it's little brother of the 45 are known as combination planes and the reason they're called combination planes is you can mix them up and make all sorts of different combinations to make all these different planes it said that the stanley 55 can replace 55 moulding planes in your shop so one plane can do it all but most of the time they end up being a plough plane because that's just the most common thing you're going to do is cut a groove or a dado or a rabbit and so you can use these standard chisel cutters for that so how exactly do these work if you break them down basically you have this one ski this is a plane all in one but it only has this one thin line that's the sole on this you have a depth stop so just like on a lot of your moulding planes you have that and then you have a depth adjuster here so you can actually slide the iron in and out then all mounts onto these two rails and with these two rails you can put on other things and then it has a second skate that you can put on and this is basically another soul to make it wider so if you're using a wider cutting surface you can put one of these souls just inside of both sides of the cutting surface or if you're doing something like this beating plane you can actually put one of the two skates on each of these points so the lowest point down has a support from the skate then we have a fence that we can slide on and this has two sets of holes number one I can put it on the lower holes and this will slide on and actually slide right up against the iron so it slides down there and sits right beside it so you can move that in and out or number two I can put it in the higher holes and these will allow it to slide underneath the so if you're cutting a rabbit with a one-inch cutter but you only need a 7/8 inch rabbit you can actually move this fence in and make the rabbit a little bit smaller because part of it is being covered by the fence the 55 does everything that the 45 will do but then takes it a step further number one has a second fence so if you want to sandwich a board you can put this other fence on the other side number two the fence is actually on a swivel so if you want to ride on a board at an angle or you want to run up with a corner of a board you can pivot the fences to then sandwich the board on that angle then number three the big thing that sets it apart is the second skate on the 55 has an adjustment knob here that'll actually move this skate in and out on these tracks and what that allows you to do is it allows you to move one skate lower or higher than the other one then you can see now have one skate is a good bit lower than the other one where I can back them up and keep them even the reason you'd want to do that is if you're using some complex molding plane like this you need one skate that's going to be low down here that's going to be the first point of contact as it's running along and you know their skate up here but you don't want that one down at the same depth otherwise it's not going to be cutting so you need to have two different skates at two different heights so the sole will still support the iron as it runs through the cut it also becomes fun if you want to cut around if I put one skate on either side this Tong is going to be sticking out so far it's gonna be cutting a massive heavy cut every time and not what you want to do what we actually want to do is put one of the skates low towards the middle of the crown and the other one up here on the side that will still support this one runs to the cut so with a 55 you can do rounds but with a 45 you can't because you can't move one of the skates down well lower now the 45 or 55 would come with sets of iron's like this this would be the set for the 55 and this would be the set for the 45 and the 45 would normally come with several of your standard chisel cutters which you can do your grooves your rabbits or dedos they would also have beading planes so you can do all of your decorative beading and then it would either have a tonguing plane or it would have this sash iron and this would be what you'd use to create your window sashes so you could run along this side you have your decorative Cove here but then you'd also have your rabbet on the side that the glass would fit into so this could do it all in one pass but then the 55 would have all of your standard cutters all of your beads it would also have multiple bead cutters it would have rounds a bit of hollows it would have half rounds it would have decorative OGIS and it would have your window trim so you could do just like you did before with the sashes as well as some of the more decorative cuts that you could do along with it now rarely is anyone gonna be using these decorative cuts unless that's the type of thing you'd do a lot of most of the time all of your cuts are going to be these standard chisel cuts your rabbits your grooves or dedos 99% of the time these are the chisels you're going to be using now I know no one is gonna let me go without showing them exactly how this actually works so let's do this decorative beading plain this one's a little bit different and this one could be used in the 45 or the 55 but for demonstration is taking my setup here in the 55 and you put it in there's a little notch here that fits into the depth adjuster slide it into the groove here and then you can adjust it to its depth so that it is just sticking out a little bit past the skate once the depth has been adjusted and you run it forward then you can tighten up this on the back and this will crank it down and actually suck it up against the side wall of the skate here and then we can slide in our second skate now on the 45 when you slide it in it should be at the exact same height as the first one but on this one we're probably you have to adjust it a little bit to make sure that it's the same depth as the other one because last time we may have adjusted this differently to do that we have to loosen up these knobs and I usually just stick an allen wrench in one of these holes loosen this up and this will allow me to adjust the depth in and out and I can do that exactly as I did for moving iron in and out but this time I'm actually going to move this skate to adjust it to the iearned once the depth has been adjusted then we can tighten these back down and make sure that the skate is the correct distance in on either side the iron on this particular iron I want the skates to be as far out to the sides as they can be so if they don't get into the grooves that we're going to be cutting for the bead if I'm doing something like this standard chisel cutter I'm actually going to move the skates in a little ways so it's an eighth inch or so into the middle of the iron that way I'm not worrying about it running up against the side unless I'm cutting cross grain and then I'm rollout the skates right up against the outside here because there's these knickers these Spurs that stick out and these will cut the cross green fibers so you can actually cut across the wood but I don't do that a whole lot but every now and I need to cut a dado now that we have the skates is set up I can grab the fence and slide in on and this is what adjusts how far in these beads are do I want them right up against the edge and I'm probably going to use the top holes and slide the fence in a little bit until it cuts underneath the iron or I can actually put it on the bottom hole and then set the beads in a certain distance from the edge of the wood I think I'm gonna do here I'm gonna move them about a half inch away just to play with it and then for its use it's just like any other molding plane some people like to start up here by the end and run off and work their way back along the board I'm actually not a huge fan of that I like to start all the way back at the end just run all the way along and keep on going there every now and then you'll get these birds nests you just have to pluck out otherwise it starts to clog up but that's the normal of moulding planes here you can start to see how it's taking shape just gonna keep going till we get these crowns a showing another pass for two and then usually once I've gotten to this spot where I'm hitting my depth right here I'm gonna set the irons in there and now I'm going to adjust my depth stop right up to it so that everything else will be at that spot and so I'm just keeping an eye on until the first section gets to the depth I want you just keep going until everything is down that same depth all day long that everything looks good which I think I'm right about there here we go there's the nice bead all the way along now usually the next question I get is okay how do you actually sharpen all of these complex irons well the nice thing is most of them most the time they're just using these chisels and they sharpen just like a chisel you flatten the back and you sharpen the bevel but promotes these complex ones I'm going to get a dowel and wrap some sandpaper around it and then sharpen on the sandpaper and I always make sure the dowel is a smaller diameter than this so I can focus on one point or another all the way across the iron and then for that final touch-up I'm going to grab a strop bend it over and do the exact same thing on the strop just like I would do with a carving gouge to clean up the inside and then it's ready to go now if you want to see more in depth I do have an old video on how to sharpen these I'm not going to go into it in too much detail in here because it's a fairly straightforward but you want to see that it's down below in the description so there you have it there is a lot of fun you can do with the stanley 45 and stanley 55 and i know there are a lot more questions as i didn't answer this is more of an overview of what they can do and what the plane actually is and every single cutter out there has its own little unique thing to it so i could do an entire series where i go through and demonstrate how do you do a sash plane how do you do a grooving plane how do you do all these different irons but i'm not gonna do that here so if you want to see that let me know I might do that on my second channel that might be kind of fun but for now that's about it if you do want to see more detail I'll have a link to the other videos down below where I go into a little bit more showing off some of the things that they can do and what are the differences between them so if you want to see that I'm go down below now the next question I get is where do you buy these and so I like to ask people you know what is your budget and if your budget is kind of strapped the base rate where you can begin is if you go online you can usually find a stanley 45 with most of the parts one cutter rusted needing a bit of work but still functional you can find one of those for around forty five fifty bucks and that's that's relatively common the stanley 55 on the other hand those are pricey and when you start talking about getting a stanley 45 with all the parts then the price goes up and up and up from there well stanley 45 in nice condition with all the parts could be 250 bucks stanley 55 with all the parts and in a nice condition could be upwards of five $600 so they they go up from there the most common place i tell people to find them is at the midwest toll collectors association and i'll leave a link to that down below it is an association that is devoted to antique tools that's probably where i bought 60 to 70 percent of all my tools you do have to become a member of the Association it's 25 bucks a year and then you get invited to these meets and they are all across the United States and several in other countries and I have a link to my web page where I list all of the locations of places I know of where you can buy hand tools I'll leave that down in the description as well so there you have it this is just a fun tool every time I get a chance to use one of these I'm excited because it's just a lot of fun to set up and play with and make that groove and make it work well it's very very happy and there's a reason the Stanly 55 is called the king of hand planes because it is just that cool it's the king of hand planes I hope you liked this video if you did please let me know down below like comment subscribe that really does help the channel out if you have any questions let me know down below I do read all the comments and I respond to most everyone on them so that's about it for day and until next time have a wonderful day so a moving fellow stirred plane and a beating plane married and their offspring was a Stanley number 45 then along came a hollow and around and they married up and their offspring was a stanley 55 there's a reason they're called combination planes

Channel: Wood By Wright

Views: 12,311

Rating: 4.9694657 out of 5

Keywords: Wood By Wright, woodworking, Handtools, Hand tool, Hand Tools, Hand plane, Hardwood, Hardwoods, Stanley 45, stanley 55, combination plane, what is a 45, what is a 55, what is a combination plane., how to usr a stanley 55, how to ues a Stanley 45

Id: 6yuK3VdkN2A

Length: 12min 9sec (729 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 14 2019