Thread: Carter 54 plough plane

Presented for your consideration is this offering from Haus Carter. It is either the second, fourth or seventeenth revision of their highly respected and eminently collectable tribute to the Stanley 54; a plane made in tightly controlled numbers to avoid cluttering the shelves of the few resellers begrudgingly allowed to supply to carefully selected clientele.

Observe if you will the luxurious nickel plating which has gracefully developed an elegant patina, the almost untouched set of blades where only the 3/8” has signs of any use and the careful machining of … oh crap I can’t keep a straight face anymore… it’s a Carter.

It’s complete except for the long rods and the depth stop although I will include a piece of SS and a 5mm SS bolt shaft that I always intended to make a stop out of. Only the 3/8” blade shows any real sign of use but I’m blowed if I can work out how it was used often enough to require resharpening any of the blades. The issue was with the fence; all Carters have at least one huge flaw and this one had a fence that was at least 5 degrees out of square vertically with the skates. In use the fence would move down the work normally but as the rod holes were drilled out of square the fence would pull the whole plane towards the edge and widen the groove… anyway the fence has now been faced with an angled slip of timber and it now functions fine as a plough as shown in the photo. The nickers have never been used and theoretically should allow the plane to be used as a dado or trenching plane but one that would likely need some frustrating fettling and adjusting to do so.

I’m almost ashamed to ask $80 for it plus postage; unless the buyer is a keen Carter enthusiast in which case it’s $197 and the loss of whatever remains of their sanity/dignity/self esteem

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