Why Is This Worth $1000

today we're going to talk about the stanley number one this is a stanley number eight that is a stanley number one [Music] now a little warning i'm probably going to be starting a lot of arguments today because if you're talking about hand tools you're talking about arguments and the stanley number one has quite a few of them around it this is a cute plane a very very small plane a dainty plane some would say a worthless plane but no matter what you say it is a very very expensive plane the stanley number one is five and a half inches long and an inch and a half wide it is an incredibly small plane the earliest of stanley planes did not have a lateral adjuster that was just something was added in later types however the stanley number one no matter which one you get does not have the lateral adjuster that is something that just never came to the stanley number one there are lots of other things that are very different about this plane from others in the whole series as they changed all of the other planes kind of changed together the knob shapes changed the stampings changed the additions changed but when it came to the stanley number one there were very few things that changed from one to another or they might have carried over from one to another so dating these is very very difficult it's kind of one of these things that has spurred a lot of questions of why in the world was this made and that's where most of the arguments come from the next step up the stanley number two is fully useful the tote is it's still a small tote so it fits a smaller hand but it's still something that is very comfortable i can use this without any problem however the number one i i can't fit that it doesn't it doesn't fit in my hand i can't get my fingers in there it's just it's not a functional plane for a full-size hand functionally it's in the same size range as a block plane however this is just not as comfortable to use as a block plane because the block plane fits nicely in the palm of the hand it's something that is sculpted to fit there you grab either side palm in the middle if you need another hand you can get the thumb on the front this one just it doesn't work well as a block plane despite that i still hear people regularly saying oh yeah i regularly use my number one because there are small things that it can do that others can't and really have to say no it's it's a block plane with a handle there's nothing that this can do that a block plane can't do and a block plane is more comfortable but there are still people who say they use it and one of the reasons why they use it is they have it and they have to justify having it so they have to have it now i know i made a lot of people really really angry out there because there are people who honestly believe that yes this has uses that other planes don't have to which i kind of have to look wonder at because um yeah but there are people who really really believe that and so if you're one of those people i'm sorry i'll have to disagree with you but that's one of the great things about woodworking there is no right way to do it and if you like using the number one then use your number one but the big question comes why in the world did stanley actually make a number one i'm sure he made it for a specific purpose and in all honesty the reason that he made it is that people wanted to buy it so the question isn't why did stanley make it the question is why did people want to buy it there are as many theories to that question as there are number ones on the market now granted there are not a whole lot of number ones in the market but there's still a lot of them and there's a lot of theories out there the most common one that i hear is that this was made for kids elementary schools would buy these for their elementary shop classes and that would be great other than the fact of i really don't see a lot of proof of that it's a theory it's a decent theory it makes a lot of sense um but i don't i don't see the history of it i brought my kids down to the shop and let them hold on to this and my ten-year-old daughter this handle is way too small for her hand my seven-year-old son it's right on the edge he can barely get his fingers into it so if a kid is seven years or older they're probably not going to be able to use this plane because it's too small for even their hands now yes if you had a five or six year old child they probably could use this but in that case i would probably just give them a block plane because this works just as well and it's a little bit easier for two hands to grab onto but if you want to teach the proper technique holding this and holding the knob and running it then yes you could actually use a number one for kids one of the problems with figuring out why was this made was that there really aren't any advertisements listing the number one and it's great virtues or uses it's just listed with all the planes of you can buy the number one you can buy the number two you can buy the number three there's all their sizes and stanley never said that you know this is for kids or this is for specific use so this is for detail work it is one of those planes that just doesn't have a place in the normal mindset of the modern person but apparently back then it did one of the interesting things about their history is that stanley made a lot of these hand planes they made just about as many of these as they made number twos and number threes but we don't see a lot of them now most of these have disappeared and they are very rare and hard to come by and if you see two of these in the same place it's like the planets aligning in the sky we actually lost a lot of these in the scrap drive for world war ii and one of the reasons for that is by the time world war ii came around these really didn't have a purpose anymore they're you know a block plane that's uncomfortable so why hold on to this when you can support the war effort and scrap it one of the few interesting pieces of history we do have on them is there are quite a few references to these actually having a bit of an ethos to them back in the turn of the last century even the studly tool chest had one of this held in great regard with this beautiful housing for it it was something that was very precious and something that was very valuable and you kind of got to wonder why would this be so precious and valuable when it's really close to the same price as a two or three at the time because you could buy it out of a catalog the truth is the stanley number one gained a bit of notoriety and ethos to it very early on and it was kind of held as the number one you were just taught to hold this in high regard because it is something special it is something cute and we as human beings view something cute as something that is valuable and worth protecting and for a lot of that that's one of the reasons why stanley number ones were around is when you bought the set of planes you also bought a number one because this was the special plane and it's almost always been that way the other thing that's always been that way is we as human beings have to justify our purchases yeah i use all my tools do i need to use them all no i could get by with a chisel a saw and a number four and i could make just about anything but i use them all because i have them and i want other tools that i don't need but i want and the number one is kind of in that place it's something that we all really want but does anyone really need it i as a human being can justify pretty much anything and that's kind of the history of the number one is it's there because it's there it's cute it's lovable it is a fantastic little plane to have and if you're going to have a full set of planes well you need the number one and we all as humans do like being first and therefore we've got to be number one there's just something about this that is drawing us to it like a like a moth to a flame it is a fantastic little plane is it useful yeah yeah you can use it is it necessary no is it the key plane that really is functional no but if i have one i'm going to put it on my wall i'm going to protect it i'm going to build a housing for it and i will pull it out and use it from time to time because if i have the plane on my wall i'm going to use it so now let's wrap it all together the number one it's always had an ethos to it it's always been the cute valuable special thing but really until stanley stopped making them and selling them in their catalog the value was set the catalog price for a number one was about the same as a number two or a number three it was something that wasn't incredibly valuable because they still offered them brand new you could still go and buy a brand new plane but then came world war ii and a lot of people had these nice planes that they really loved but weren't very useful and they got rid of them in the scrap drive a lot with all of these amazing big foot powered tools and tools that weren't really useful because of the power coming into the industry a lot of those were destroyed for the war effort and number ones were kind of thrown into that they weren't very useful in the current working model and therefore they were gotten rid of because the value wasn't incredibly high yes they were held in a high regard but the value wasn't there so they got rid of it and so now we only have a few of these and stanley isn't making them anymore and they still have the ethos and now if you want a full set you need a number one and you can kind of see how the ethos combined with the rarity combined with not being able to bind a new one anymore the price on these started to climb and it started to climb very fast because they were hard to come by and now if you want to buy a number one in okay shape you're spending about a thousand dollars if you want to buy a number one in good shape you're spending 1200 if you want to buy an early number one in decent shape you're looking upwards of 2 000 plus for a tiny little plane that really doesn't have any particular use is that a bad thing that the collectors have run away and driven up the price of this no because as a user you don't need this this is not a functional plane for the shop it is not something that is necessary now if you have it you're probably going to use it because if you have the tool you're going to use it you've got to justify it but do you need it no if you're a collector this is then kind of the pinnacle of the collection this is the number one the ethos and so you're willing to spend more money on it and i think that's a good thing it is a way that we can value things not just by their use but how they make us feel and it's a number one of course it's worth a thousand dollars i know i didn't answer why did stanley make the number one and i probably never will because stanley never recorded it he never actually wrote down i made it because of this we don't have any advertisements saying stanley number one for a junior kids shop class we don't have stanley number one gets you into those nooks and crannies we just have stanley number one stanley number two stanley number three why did they make the stanley number one because people wanted to buy it and we as human beings have always liked to buy cute little things and we probably will continue to buy cute little things now if you want a number one and you don't have to have the stanley you can go get a lee nielsen you can go get a wood river and save about a thousand dollars or you could go get a veritas low angle that actually has a man-sized tote on the back that you can hold uh that one looks kind of cool and interesting why did veritas make it do people need the number one size no but people love cute things and people are willing to buy them and having that number one with the man size handle is something that people want to buy because we want to buy more tools and because we want to buy it they're going to make it is it a specific used tool maybe probably not but because we want to buy it we're going to buy it okay i'm sorry i know i just started a whole pile of arguments out there but this is one of these topics where you know there is no right or wrong why was it made who knows who cares it doesn't matter do i still want the number one yes because it's cute it's fun and it fills out the collection am i going to spend a lot of money for it yes because it's a number one so i hope you like this little bit of a talk but this is one of the fun ones i'd love to hear your thoughts down below i'm feel free to unload on me and tell me why i'm wrong and and why this is actually a good functional plane for the shop i'd love to hear that or tell me your thoughts that maybe you found something that i haven't been able to find i'd love to hear that down below let me know those comments i do read through all of them and i respond to as many of them as i can so unfortunately no this is not my number one one of these days i will buy one and i will probably paint it blue because it's mine and i can do what i want with it but this one is actually from a friend of mine who let me borrow it as i did the restoration video if you want to see that i'll try and leave a link to the video down below i'll be shipping this back to him later today so thank you for letting me use it if you do have any questions thoughts ideas comments let me know those down below and also i want to say thank you to the patrons on patreon members here on the channel everyone who is making this channel possible i say it every week but honestly without you the viewers this channel would not exist so thank you for that without people supporting the channel clicking that join button we would not be here so if you'd like to keep the channel coming think about supporting us finding out more you can find out that in the link down below so i think that'll do it for now and until next time have a wonderful day never have i ever heard anyone say the stanley number eight is cute i've never even heard that the stanley number two is cute but whenever someone looks at the stanley number one they say he's so adorable so cute

Channel: Wood By Wright How To

Views: 28,160

Keywords: Wood By Wright, wood By Wright 2, Hand tools, Handtools, Woodworking, stanley no 1, stanley #1, stanley no 1 plane, Stanley planes, Stanley plane identification

Id: nsivK-NGpEE

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020