Thread: Refurbing a cute little Spiers thumb plane

So, what’s the little thing like as a user? Quite good – it made quite nice shavings on a scrap of jacaranda:
1 shavings.jpg

And gave a good account of itself on a bit of she-oak: 2 shavings.jpg

The blade still needs a bit of work to get the tip absolutely flat & polished - my thumb plane made similar shavings on the same piece but left a bit better surface 3 she-oak.jpg

The sole is a bit pitted and not perfectly flat, though the most crucial part fore & aft of the mouth is flat ( dealing with those issues is not my remit). I wondered if it has already had some lapping in its long life – the mouth, although fairly fine, is far from super-fine, and given the quality of the workmanship in the dovetailing I suspect it started out a bit finer than it is now. It’s not huge, but compared with mine it isn’t tiny: 4 mouths.jpg

That isn’t a major setback for a plane like this, just something I noted.

The workmanship in the dovetailing of sides too sole is superb. I studied it very closely because I first thought there was an anomaly with the tails – what looked like a tail in front of the mouth lappeared to be the wrong way round to work! However, on closer inspection I realised it is the join between the two parts of the sole. This is a simple angled butt joint, no tongue & groove as on larger low-angle planes. There are a few very faint lines between the sides & sole in a couple of places and one font dovetail is moderately obvious due to wearing away of some metal (or was it rusted away?). But it’s an exemplar of how to dovetail up a body!

6 portrait.jpg

It has a few minor details that need to be addressed to bring it to its potential peak performance, but they are a little project for tits new custodian, whoever that may be.

And here it is beside my thumb plane, which you can see is slightly longer because I extended to sole a bit front & back: 5 pair.jpg

So thanks, Neil, for entrusting me with this little beauty – I have enjoyed making the new bits to look a bit more like original parts than what was on it before, and learnt a little bit more about old planes….
:)
Cheers,
Ian

Beautiful work on a lovely rare plane Ian!
I was going to ask how you attached the sneck but I went back and saw your picture of rivet holes. Nice .
Rob

Originally Posted by IanW

So thanks, Neil, for entrusting me with this little beauty – I have enjoyed making the new bits to look a bit more like original parts than what was on it before, and learnt a little bit more about old planes….

Cheers,
Ian

Well, it is me who needs to be thanking you Ian for your generosity on this, not just your time and effort (+ materials), but most importantly your invaluable expertise.

Also, many thanks for sharing this WIP for the benefit of those that may have similar projects or just for the others of us that get vicarious pleasure from seeing what we couldn't manage to do ourselves, which includes me!

No doubt Spiers would be chuffed to see the careful attention that one of his little planes is receiving so many years later.

Thanks Rob & Neil - tbh, I hadn't realised it was such a rarity when I made the offer to make the missing parts. When I saw the prices asked for them by the major dealers, I wished I hadn't put my hand up so quickly!

But my job was simply to make a couple of parts which can be replaced instantly, should genuine parts suddenly appear, so I certainly haven't done anything irretrievable. What more could/should be done is entirely in the hands of the next guardian,. Neil knocked off the really crusted rust & I've wiped it over with camelia oil (it's finally raining & humid up here & I don't want to send it home with any fresh blooms!). It looks quite good as-is, the real conundrum for me would be what to do about the slightly convex sole. A little more than half of the sole area is flat & it's evenly distributed fore & aft of the mouth and the plane works well enough so it is probably advisable to leave it as-is both for 'collector value' & to preserve what's left of the fine-ness of the mouth.

It certainly has experienced a few "slings & arrows" in its long life but that's to be expected of a tool that seems to have been much-used in that time. Fortunately, Neil spotted the stamping on the lever-cap before getting too vigorous with a scouring pad. It's well-worn, but legible enough that once you spot the remaining letters & realise what it says, there's no doubt about it, so as long as Spiers & Norris were the only suppliers of thumb planes to Buck, there's little doubt it's a Spiers because of the profile & because Norris doesn't seem to have made them in widths other than 1 1/8". At least that's all I've seen in the few old catalogues I've seen & on the Norris planes website.

I'm still intrigued by the construction. Norris examples are said to be in malleable iron, implying they have cast bodies. This plane could be cast, with the toe-piece applied, but I'm 99% certain it's dovetailed. The internal corners between side & sole and at the back curve are too sharp for a casting. There is a definite join of the sole at the mouth & a single dovetail at the front right corner is clearly evident, but man, it's superbly done, not even the teeniest gap on the inside of the D/Ts where I can see the insides. There's at least one small gap on every plane I've made (fortunately, completely covered by the infill), so even on my all-steel examples future restorers will be in no doubt about their construction. Gives me a goal to aim for, some day...


Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

The ‘infill’ which iforms the blade bed, is either ebony or very dark, oil soaked, rosewood. The latter was used more commonly, but after peering at it for a long time I agree with Neil that it looks more like ebony than rosewood.

Rosewood was the wood that was mostly used on these planes, so I think that the ebony was a refit at some later stage.

In my initial attempts to identify the maker of this plane I researched the H. MOORE stamp on it to see if that was a known plane maker's mark, but got nowhere with that so took that to be an owner's mark.

My speculation is that H. Moore was one of the Moore brothers of Moore and Moore, the piano and organ builders, who had their workshop in Bishopsgate in London, which is about a mile away from the Buck tool merchants on Tottenham Court Rd. Ebony is stock in hand for that trade and I wonder if they might have replaced the infill with ebony at the time they were refitting it with the replacement chisel blade. Furthermore, the small chisel blade is very typical of the hand carving chisels used for decorative detail on piano and organ cabinets, which fits in with that thesis

Anyway, all of this is mere speculation on my part!

An excellent bit of research & speculation Neil! The number of stamps Mr. Moore put on the plane is far more consistent with what some owners did than what manufacturers did - the latter were usually content with putting their marks in one place. On a plane with a bronze lever cap, that was the softest metal & the easier part to stamp, no doubt, & that's where you find 'em on the majority of metal planes.

Your suggestion of the blade-bed being a refit has merit. It's not inconceivable that it was originally infilled with ebony, Spiers certainly used the stuff occasionally, so it's highly likely there would have been small bits kicking about the shop that they might have used where they could. Spiers was a Scot, after all & would surely have abhorred waste! But your connection to a piano maker makes a very plausible story. The plane has had a LOT of use by the looks, and something may have happened that required the infill to be replaced. That would neatly explain why the lever-cap has been removed & replaced at some stage (I'm 99.9% certain of that), I can tell you from personal experience it is a very awkward task to replace a blade bed with the LC in place!

Speculating on its past life would have to be a good part of the pleasure of owning a tool like this....

Cheers,
Ian

Very impressed with your work on this little plane when I visited yesterday. Mr Moore is so loose and free with his stamping that he has stamped 2 of mine too. But what was the initial?

Originally Posted by mic-d

Very impressed with your work on this little plane when I visited yesterday. Mr Moore is so loose and free with his stamping that he has stamped 2 of mine too. But what was the initial?

H. MOORE

But on the base plate it is just H.M., twice!

If there were two Moore brothers or relations working together in the same shop that might explain the excessive stamping all over the plane... a way to avoid that thing where all the tools ín the workshop gravitate to one worker's bench... and the culprit is usually the one who doesn't look after his tools...

Yeah, my old dad used to work with a bloke who was notorious for "borrowing" tools & not returning them. Dad said he would read the "W" for "Wilkie" upside down so it was "M for mine".....

I guess with a name like "Moore" you have to stamp it more.....

Well, I am a happy camper tonight. My success with Neil's thumbscrew knurling prompted me to get myself into gear & do something I've been "getting 'round to", for a very long time.

Some years ago I made myself a chariot plane (well a couple, really, this is Vers 2.0): Finished.jpg

At the time, I had just one diamond-pattern knurling tool so every thumbscrews I made got that. The knurling was crisp (it took a few attempts to get that right), & at first I was very pleased with my efforts, but after a bit I became increasingly irritated by them. They were perfectly functional, but looked a bit blah & as time went by, the blah factor increased.

I later got some different knurling wheels & branched out a bit with my knurling patterns & thumbscrew shapes, in attempts to imitate the TS of old a bit more closely: Shavings.jpg

Making Neil's TS was the most adventurous I've got & it worked so well I decided it was definitely time to give the older chariot plane a bit better hardware: New TSa.jpg

That's better! (The observant types, as some of you are, will notice I had also changed out the screws holding the bridge for flush pins - I did that quite a whil ago)

I never thought I'd fuss so much about such details - I claim to make planes to use, not look at! But I freely admit, the new TS are far more in keeping with the era when chariot planes & thumb planes were having their time in the sun: New&old TS.jpg


Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Yeah, my old dad used to work with a bloke who was notorious for "borrowing" tools & not returning them. Dad said he would read the "W" for "Wilkie" upside down so it was "M for mine".....

I guess with a name like "Moore" you have to stamp it more.....

.... : ~}

Originally Posted by IanW

I freely admit, the new TS are far more in keeping with the era when chariot planes & thumb planes were having their time in the sun:

New&old TS.jpg

I agree with you Ian that those new thumbscrews are looking more at home there on your chariot plane.

There seems to be two distinct ways to go with making infill planes; the uber-engineered approach, as exemplified by Karl Holtey, and the approach that you have taken that I would characterise as being crafted in the historical tradition of the great 19th century plane innovators and makers like Spiers. Both approaches work well in their own way.

Thanks Neil; and I'm hoping that once they oxidise a bit & get a bit shop-soiled & maybe an odd nick from bumping against something that shouldn't have been on the bench, they'll look even more at home.

I've often added a few whimsical touches when making planes, like the scrolled front bun on the Chariot plane above - that has no precedent in the 19th/early 20th C planes. So far, I have never tried to make an exact reproduction of any Spiers or Norris, though I certainly have taken "inspiration" from various types they produced. But because I really didn't know how certain things were done by Mr. Spiers or Mr. Norris, and didn't have access to an original, I had to make some of it up as I went along, which often results in something a bit different from the old model I was using as my start-point (not to mention an occasional disaster!).

It's interesting that you describe Holtey's work as "uber-engineered", I reckon that's a very good way to describe it. Although I admire Holtey's flawless workmanship, there is something rather sterile about his planes, I don't think I've ever seen one I'd like to go home with. It's quite the contrary with Konrad Sauer's planes - they look equally flawless (the file-work both Konrad & Karl do is soo neat!), but Sauer planes have a beauty of line & form that demands fondling. It has always seemed to me that Holtey is an engineer-turned-planemaker, who has never used any of his planes for a serious session of planing, and fine tolerances are far more important to him than function & comfort.

Maybe it's because I'm from a biological background so the organic lines of Sauer planes appeal to me - I'll leave the Holteys to the engineers who lust over the micro-precision.....


Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

I've often added a few whimsical touches when making planes, like the scrolled front bun on the Chariot plane above - that has no precedent in the 19th/early 20th C planes. So far, I have never tried to make an exact reproduction of any Spiers or Norris, though I certainly have taken "inspiration" from various types they produced.

That is what craftsmen and women do, they honour the tradition and skills of their craft while innovating and forging their own pathway. Even a traditionalist like Bill Carter break out at times as seen in some of his planes that repurpose brass sawblade backs, which are both whimsical yet functional...

Bill Carter - 1.jpg

Bill Carter - 3.jpg

Bill Carter - 2.jpg