Thread: Stewart Spiers spares

Blade with chipbreaker.

Regards from Perth

Derek

As Derek says, the blade and the chip dealer. Here are a couple of pictures.

FE73A53B-01F7-4FE2-AB7A-8D9486A27BE6.jpg

Try this place.
https://www.ebay.com.au/str/The-Plane-Iron-Shop
If he has a Spiers blade then good but other brands will do while you wait for a Spiers to turn up. The width is the important measurement. I am guessing that one would be 2 1/4''. Brands to look for are Matheson, Sorby, Marples, Ward, Tyzac, Norris to name a few. If it has made in Sheffield on it its really good.
Regards
John

Originally Posted by tommy59

Hi
Can I please request the forums advice on the vintage plane?


The plane belonged to my late Father and I am trying to source the missing parts to make the tool functional again.


Are you able to determine what parts are missing and where I could source any replacements please?


Regards


Tommy

Hi Tommy .
Dundee looks to be 150 Km from Ayr . Does that make your chances good for parts over in Scotland? Something Ive often wondered . Spiers stuff turns up all around the world it seems . Whats it like so close to where they were made ?

What you want is called a parallel Iron which Spiers and a lot of the infill plane makers used . Not a tapered Iron like used in a wooden plane with a wedge or a Spiers plane with a wedge . Although I'm also pretty sure known examples of tapered Irons in levered planes did happen from new as well with Spiers and maybe others.

The Iron in the picture on the left is Parallel in its thickness . Click on the pictures they get larger.
The Iron on the right is tapered. Its also Snecked to the left of My Red line for a different type of plane so forget that bit .

IMG_2177.JPGIMG_2170.JPG

Spiers Planes Older than yours mostly, but not always I think, had Ward blades . The one on the left has the Ward stamp at the top . Later planes had a blade stamped like the picture on the right . This would be the likely type for your plane I think .



IMG_2173.JPGSpiers 1.jpg

That blade on the right above came from a plane with the lever cap stamped like this plane below . Same as yours . They show up, if you search ebay all the time . I found one missing from one of my planes stamped like the later one. It could take a long time to see one though. You may be better off getting in touch with as many tool dealers you can find . There is quite a few to be found on the internet.
Spiers 2.jpgSpiers 9.jpg

Rob

The handle appears to have been replaced, most of that style were open handle, but that's not uncommon. The open handle planes were nice to use, but suffer breaks easily if the plane is dropped.

Agree with others about parallel iron and cap iron. If you can get original, that's great, but there are probably more planes than there are original irons. I'd expect a good original spiers cap and parallel iron to be over $100 US. Same with ward if ward is period correct for the plane (either one would look good. A ward combination will be better for modern use).

I wouldn't put the handle back to original - it's your dad's plane, and that's how he liked it. the market value for the plane in good shape isn't high enough to justify taking away sentimentality.

Tommy

For some reason you photo won’t open for me, all the others did.

First question would be, do you want to use it or look at it?

If you want to get it back working again take a photo of the sole ( bottom) of plane with a ruler in the photo and you’ll get some advice on what size of plane iron you’ll need.

Spiers planes were made for around 100 years and over that time thing changed with plane irons. I have 2 early smoothing planes (upside down Spiers Ayr) both with original James Howarth irons and both irons have a tapper a smaller taper than on wood planes. If I had to replace one of those irons it could be impossible to find one and to fit a parallel iron it would take a bit of work with a file to open up the mouth.

I have 2 Spiers panel planes that have Hock A2 parallel irons and chip breaker and these are great planes to use and well worth the trouble of getting them up and running again.

Peter

Originally Posted by Peter Armstrong

..... both irons have a tapper a smaller taper than on wood planes. If I had to replace one of those irons it could be impossible to find one and to fit a parallel iron it would take a bit of work with a file to open up the mouth......

Peter, you're the second person to mention altering the mouth to take a parallel iron, and it has me intrigued why you say that. As long as the replacement iron is no thicker than the tapered one at its thickest point (which is at the cutting edge), a parallel iron is going to be fine. In fact, the parallel iron makes more sense, imo, because it will maintain the same mouth gap throughout its life, unlike a tapered iron, which will cause the mouth-opening to increase as it wears.

Parallel irons are also easier to adjust because the pressure on the blade remains constant as you move the blade back & forth. Tapping a tapered iron forward rapidly loosens it, which in 8 cases out of 10 causes it to jump more than you wanted. Bringing it back if you go too far takes a bigger whack on toe or rear-end because a tapered blade wants to tighten itself as it comes back, which is fine for helping it to hold position once set, but a nuisance when adjusting.

You can live with tapered blades, but I would much rather have parallel irons in any lever-cap plane, meself...

Cheers,

Ian
The early tapered irons are not as thick as the later parallel irons so you need to open the mouth to fit a parallel iron. Back in the 1800’s infill planes had the mouth filled to suit the iron that were being fitted and with no uniform thickness of the irons replacement are a bit hit and miss. With a late 1800’s Spiers panel plane I had to open the mouth to fit the thinner 5/32” Hock iron.

In the old days they knew what they were doing and I find these tapered irons easy to adjust. Planes that are hard to adjust people have just taken bigger hammers and hit harder and over time the infill got knocked around a bit. If I could workout how to post a photo on here I could show you a early Spiers with tapered iron and it’s infill has no hammer marks.

Peter

Hi Chaps Thanks so much for your replies and advice, just found an iron in my Dad's old box size 2 1/4" and it fits in the plane. Probably not much use in the Spiers plane as it is tapered but included shots of it anyway.

I am unsure what to do with the plane, it did belong to my Dad and I would like to see it complete. I doubt if it would be used as I am from an Oil & Gas engineering background but I do appreciate antique and vintage tools. It is also good to be close to the area where this was manufactured in Glasgow during the 1930's? That area was a major powerhouse for manufacture during the "sun never sets on the British Empire" days

IMG_2686.jpgIMG_2687.jpgIMG_2688.jpg

There is a chance that is the iron your dad used in it. Quite often planes get whatever blade fits after the original gets lost or whatever. If you were not lucky enough to also find a chipbreaker in that box then have a look at the Plane iron shop I mentioned. I have a Matheson infill smoother very similar looking to your plane and the iron is in fact tapered while not as tapered as another Matheson blade from a wood body smoother.
Regards
John

Originally Posted by Peter Armstrong

......The early tapered irons are not as thick as the later parallel irons so you need to open the mouth to fit a parallel iron. Back in the 1800’s infill planes had the mouth filled to suit the iron that were being fitted and with no uniform thickness of the irons replacement are a bit hit and miss. With a late 1800’s Spiers panel plane I had to open the mouth to fit the thinner 5/32” Hock iron.....

OK, that makes sense. My experience of infills (apart from those of my own manufacture), is limited to a few 20th C models, all of which had parallel irons, and all of which were very thick. I can't recall exact measurements, but typically about 25% or more thicker than even the after-market blades from Hock or Veritas, which are about 20% thicker than old Staanley/Record irons. About 10 years back, I needed a new blade for my late-model Norris A5 (which was a parallel type, of course), and had no luck finding a genuine article, so I was stuck with using a replacement bench plane blade for a while. However, it left a gaping mouth, which I didn't like, & I ended up getting a blade custom-made, which cost as much as a benchfull of old Stanleys..

Cheers,

Some of you will recall that I "restored" a Spier smoother many years ago.

It did not look like much when I got it ...



But it ended quite well ... OK, a little OTT FWW magazine featured it a few years ago...



I needed to find another parallel iron for this plane as the original was a tapered iron for a woodie. I found a good blade and then built the plane around it ...



The mouth was quite tight, but not so tight that this prevented the chipbreaker from being used (in recent years). Set up this way, the Spier is a superior smoother. Had it been left and used with just a tight mouth and sans chipbreaker, it would have been pretty ordinary.

The point is that a too tight mouth will prevent the chipbreaker from being used as it will block shavings. Rather use a slightly undersized (thin) blade that leaves the mouth open. It will work better this way.

Regards from Perth

Derek

I might have found something not 10 miles from my front door, again any of your experienced advice would be appreciated.

ToolBazaar

ToolBazaar

- - - Updated - - -

I might have found something not 10 miles from my front door, again any of your experienced advice would be appreciated.

ToolBazaar

ToolBazaar

Originally Posted by derekcohen

Some of you will recall that I "restored" a Spier smoother many years ago.

It did not look like much when I got it ...



But it ended quite well ... OK, a little OTT FWW magazine featured it a few years ago...



I needed to find another parallel iron for this plane as the original was a tapered iron for a woodie. I found a good blade and then built the plane around it ...



The mouth was quite tight, but not so tight that this prevented the chipbreaker from being used (in recent years). Set up this way, the Spier is a superior smoother. Had it been left and used with just a tight mouth and sans chipbreaker, it would have been pretty ordinary.

The point is that a too tight mouth will prevent the chipbreaker from being used as it will block shavings. Rather use a slightly undersized (thin) blade that leaves the mouth open. It will work better this way.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Hi Derek That is a lovely looking plane, what is the handle and front end made from? Would my plane have been that style of handle at sometime in its life?

Regards not far from Perth

Tommy