Thread: Bridge City Plane

Originally Posted by hiroller

.........I now think it is more like this plane:....

Bingo! Nailed it this time, I reckon. There've been a few attempts at making variable-pitch planes over the years, don't know how many, but I've got a vague recollection of seeing at least a couple of old designs. It's a neat idea, but it has never taken the world by storm. Let's face it, a 'one-plane-that-does-all' would spoil the fun for those of us who like to see a tool cupboard well-stocked with at least a half dozen beauties.

Actually, I think the dis-attraction might be more practical than that - without a rather complex mechanism to maintain the cutting edge at a fixed position, every change of pitch requires a re-adjustment of blade exposure. You'd end up spending far more time fiddling with the darn frog & blade than planing wood....

Cheers,

As expensive as the Bridge City tools are and the obvious quality and reported performance, they have never really appealed to me. They all seem to be over priced, over thought, over designed, over engineered and overly complicated and many are not all that good looking to my eye. They have never fully embraced the KISS principe. A local cabinet making firm has a waiting area with a large display case full of mainly Bridge City tools that a previous owner had owned. As I looked at the tools in that cabinet the Bridge City tools had corroded and rusted in the cabinet from lack of maintenance and that made them look old but they had very little signs of routine use. The more ordinary tools were all well used.

I have one Bridge City tool, it is a JH-1H hammer in steel that I found at a garage sale and paid the $10 asking price for it. It is a nice looking little hammer that I could not resist for that price. Even it is over designed, the eye for the handle is blind. I'm not sure why, perhaps to give a smooth look to the top of the head. As nice as it looks it is a negative as the head is loose and the only way I could see to fix it at first was to try and inject or wick a filler in to firm it up or destroy the handle and drill it all the way through so it could be wedged. Then in line with the Bridge City Tools ethos I over thought the solution and came up with an overly complicated solution. I dipped the head in some Minimax wood restorer, which is really just a liquid perspex solution, and put it in a vacuum chamber to draw it into the socket. It worked but required a lot of cleaning with acetone to remove the muck off the head. I can now claim that I have remained true to the Bridge City Tools brand as I have come up with an over the top, complicated fix to what should have been a simple 5 minute job on a more conventional hammer design. When purchased the S/steel faces were marked from being hit on metal and that was easily corrected on a fine finishing belt and a buff as the faces are not hardened. This would make me think these tools are more toys to be looked at than tools to be used.
All the best
Jeff

Jeff, by nature I'm strongly inclined to the same sentiments as you express. KISS has certainly been one of my mantras, both in my profession & in my hobbies. However, there lurks in most of us, a certain weakness for things that are a bit special in some way, and I'm as guilty as anyone of buying or making a tool for eye-appeal as well as practicality. I justify myself by claiming that practicality is the number one criterion & bling is just the icing, but sometimes (just occasionally ) good looks might've blinded me to poor character. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, & I find an old infill to be far more aesthetically appealing than those BC creations, but there must be many who would disagree....

You could think about the relationship between ultra-high-end tools and those we use every day as a bit like the link between Formula one racing cars & the cars we drive every day. Some of the refinements developed to help open-wheelers go round in circles at absurd speeds have trickled down to the family chugger, with great benefits to safety & fuel economy - the 'racing improves the breed' philosophy. It's a bit of a weak connection, I admit, because it doesn't appear that the mass tool manufacturers are making much attempt to improve anything in their products other than the profit margin, but I think there is some flow-on, and it certainly gives us something to think about as to what are the really desirable attributes of our tools.

So while I reserve the right to critique them () & I could never afford such expensive tool-cupboard jewelry myself, I'm actually glad they exist, and glad there are those out there with the means to buy them. I too suspect that many of them end up gracing display cupboards and rarely meet wood in a meaningful way......

Cheers,

Hi IanW,
Your mention of cars reminded me of my last haircut. I spotted a black Bently flying spur parked in the supermarket carpark and I picked up an old copy of a motoring magazine in the barber shop, checked the price and made the silly comment that the area must be going up market if we are starting to see $450,000 cars parked there. After my haircut myself and another customer strolled over to the car where I made other oohing and arrhing sounds and then said it looks new, where upon the bloke who had wondered over with me said that it was a late 2015 model that he had bought 18 months ago for closer to $500,000 and that he hoped the shopping centre was going upmarket as he had just purchased it. One day I will learn to just shut up and not say the first thing that comes into my mind.
all the best
Jeff

Originally Posted by labrat

Hi IanW,
Your mention of cars reminded me of my last haircut. I spotted a black Bently flying spur parked in the supermarket carpark and I picked up an old copy of a motoring magazine in the barber shop, checked the price and made the silly comment that the area must be going up market if we are starting to see $450,000 cars parked there. After my haircut myself and another customer strolled over to the car where I made other oohing and arrhing sounds and then said it looks new, where upon the bloke who had wondered over with me said that it was a late 2015 model that he had bought 18 months ago for closer to $500,000 and that he hoped the shopping centre was going upmarket as he had just purchased it. One day I will learn to just shut up and not say the first thing that comes into my mind.
all the best
Jeff

Jeff

I think that is the family chugger to which Ian was referring. Did it have mud guards or was it an open wheeler like a "speed six.?" (probably cheap compared to a speed six)

Regards
Paul

Hi Paul (Bushmiller),
This is not the family chugger except for the very rich, as for the mudguards I like to think of them as sculptural elements of the art work known as a Flying Spur Bentley. Number of gears is now irrelevant as you will not hear or feel them change. A lot has changed in 90 years especially the way a Speed Six increases in value each year, now making it worth millions and the new Bentleys will loose 90% of their value in 10 years. It always amazes me that a person who is rich enough to buy one would actually make such a bad investment, image must be really important to them.
All the best.
Jeff