Thread: Stanley plane and unknown friend

It looks like these . These have “Brilliant “ cast into the lever cap . I’ve seen what may be similar looking but made by Kunz . I’m not sure of that though .

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Looks like Brilliant is the Kunz make .

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I need better glasses will have another look tomorrow for the name that is plain as day on your photos. Are they any good? And the idea behind the two screws ?

Originally Posted by SirNed

Are they any good? And the idea behind the two screws ?

They are pretty average Id say, compared to a well set up good condition Stanley or similar. Ive never used one though. If the blade stays sharp and the lever cap can hold the blade down which it should be able to do, the plane should work ok in the category of work its suited to. Smaller light weight work . Box sized/ drawer parts cleaning up and stick work like drawer runners is what Id imagine . I couldn't imagine face planing up a whole tables worth of long boards and rails. They are just over block plane sized tools.

The two screws are blade adjustment.

Ill have to clean one up and try it out.
I have a stash of planes that are average users that I let young guys learning use. Give them a morning planing with a rough plane and teach them how to take it apart and sharpen it. Then at a later stage hand them a well tuned 40 year old rosewood handled Stanley . To use and sharpen for the rest of the day. They quickly realize what working with a decent plane means. When it comes time to buy themselves a few tools they then buy the good stuff.

There was a similar plane being sold here in the U.S. by a retailer named Harbor Freight* that imports all kinds of tools and tool-related stuff, mainly from China. The plane was US$10 or so, and a few people bought one as a joke and found the plane was surprisingly good for rough work. If I didn't already own a scrub plane, it might have been tempting as the base for a home-made scrub.
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*Or, as some of us call it, "Horrible Fright." If you're feeling old, a visit to one of their stores will help, because you'll inhale so many plasticizer fumes that you'll be preserved for centuries.

Several similar planes were made by different firms around the middle of last century & beyond; As I recall, Stanley themselves made something similar around that time.

Over the years I have seen sporadic references to these planes & every one was negative, though I can't recall what the actual grievances were (one came up on another forum quite recently and got the usual bad press but without any specific details). I can see that with a thin blade, a pretty basic little lever-cap & no cap-iron it's unlikely to threaten the reputation of Lie-Nielsens or a good 'ol Bailey type, but since the 150 spokeshave is built along the exact same lines & does its job within its limitations, these planes ought to make shavings and do a modest job.

I hope you do get around to cleaning up one of your planes & giving it a run sometime, Rob; I have always been curious to know how "bad' they really are. Given they were likely bought mostly by folks with very little expertise and unrealistic expectations, their reputation might not be entirely deserved....

Cheers,

I gave it a clean up and a bit of work Ian.

The blade took a bit of rubbing on the diamond plate to get it flat enough to sharpen. The sole and rusty parts were wire brushed, sanded and buffed.
Then I smoothed some rough sawn Oak down.
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The blade edge did crumble a little pretty quickly. That may be the previous owner and his grinding / over heating possibly. It still cut reasonably well though. The crumbled edge was very fine.
I gave it a quick second hone and with a bit more blade sticking out took heavier shavings of some oily Cypress pine.
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Then as it was sitting around and I had some Oak drawer sides to adjust to get the drawer into the carcase of these bedside tables I used it.
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The blade adjustment is a bit awkward . A blade bedding down on a paint job cant be good for a start. That and the little plastic topped screw for pressure adjustment and the back lash of the brass wheels means a few attempts to get it just right.
Once its right though it planes well. And the light weight and size of it is like having an opened mouth block plane with a handle with lots of free space for hand and chip ejection.
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As a light weight Roughing and smoothing plane its a good thing. I like the feel of it.
It'd be nice to get rid of the green paint on the bed and mod the plastic topped screw possibly. Earlier ones look like they had a brass screw .

Rob

Well there you go, not a Lie-Nielsen, for sure, but it does do at least some of the things a plane is meant to do!

It should be easy enough to file off that blade bed and improve things a little more - Kunz really cut corners didn't they? Can't see it would've added much to cost to mask off the blade bed, but since it almost certainly isn't machined, I suppose they wanted the paint to cover up the rough casting. A brass thumbscrew for the L-cap would be a bit more workmanlike than cheap pl;astic - a good little exercise for you & your lathe...

Thanks for satisfying my curiosity Rob, now I won't have to bring it home if I see one at a flea market...

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

It should be easy enough to file off that blade bed and improve things a little more - Kunz really cut corners didn't they? Can't see it would've added much to cost to mask off the blade bed, but since it almost certainly isn't machined, I suppose they wanted the paint to cover up the rough casting.

I didn't even notice the lack of machining Ian . Maybe its a two point contact and just that front section in from the mouth is all it needs with a file. Ill check that out tomorrow.

Originally Posted by IanW

A brass thumbscrew for the L-cap would be a bit more workmanlike than cheap pl;astic - a good little exercise for you & your lathe...

The second plane has the plastic topped screw missing. They may have actually been steel threads originally as well . I don't think I have the patience to be making parts from scratch for them though. If I could find a suitable thread and braze on a knob or something that would do.

Originally Posted by IanW

Thanks for satisfying my curiosity Rob, now I won't have to bring it home if I see one at a flea market...

Cheers,

. I wouldn't be buying them unless they were a good price. These were given to me. A mate bought them at a garage sale for a few $. He also got a Lovely Turner No 4 size in perfect condition from the same sale for almost nothing. That was a nice plane. I took him to that garage sale. And when we walked in I went straight for the green bin with all the old hand saws sticking out the top. Nothing worth getting in there. I look around and he's holding up all these hand planes . We sold the Turner and went halves and I got these W German kunz to keep .

I tried to find this plane in the 1958 catalog, but couldn't find it.

Stanley Tools Catalog No. 34 : 1958 Edition : Stanley Tools Division : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Stanley did a pretty good job of describing what the tools were intended for later on. some of the earlier shorter price list style catalogs left some mystery unless a retailer's catalog provided more (M. Wards mail order in the states sometimes had more descriptions).

Humorously, after hearing for the first 6 years of my woodworking hobby that the chipbreaker doesn't actually work, I see that stanley stated in the 1958 this (snipped from a public domain catalog that gives rights to do anything with the material, even use it commercially):

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It's interesting to collect these things.

the catalog also has a pretty good description of what to do for basic sharpening, not too far removed from what Nicholson and Holtzappfel describe. Grind shallower, hone steeper.

The difference between 1958 and 1800s is that a fine stone is no longer assumed.

The other humorous thing in this catalog is the stanley 55, sold for a princely $80 plus a little change. it's described as a tool for an amateur to make mouldings or a pro to make a section of moulding when it's less trouble to make it than it is to have a millwork shop set up and run the piece, or something like that.

I had a 45 and 55, and some here may have. Full kits of blades, the #55 even had the slitter and all of the other 55 original blades almost completely unused. I followed Patrick Leach's or someone else's advice - buy a nice one that's complete so it's easy to sell after you try it.

I feel like I can probably plane with just about anyone, but to use a 55 even for short runs of mouldings is absolute hell on earth. I wonder how many trim carpenters bought them with the better part of a week's pay and wished they hadn't.

you can probably just about at a zero to the price for USD and then bump it up another 50% for that to figure in current money AUD. $1200.

Back to the issue at hand here - for not wanting to go through Leach's page to try to find the subject plane. It's a shame that it's not in the 1958 catalog. I would guess it was added as a low cost plane for site work only.

Stanley Tools Catalog No. 34 : 1958 Edition : Stanley Tools Division : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

A very nice start for someone who wanted to start woodworking as a hobbyist in 1958 - maybe wishful thinking on Stanley's part. Boys of my dad's era were thinking about baseball, jet planes and soon space stuff. they were using tools of burden as kids (reel mowers and manual handsaws to buck firewood until used chainsaws became available around 1960 or so), and neither they or their parents wanted too much to do with hobby manual labor when there was so much of it to be done just in upkeep of property or farm, or whatever else.

(by the way, the large miter box with a 30" saw, the stanley #360, cost more than the #55. My dad was a hobby woodworker of the black and decker tool type, and only to make things cheaper than they could be bought, like bookshelves and benches. I never participated but to sand or something like that. Dad never had anything that cost more than the absolute minimum, so no such thing as a plane or good chisel existed in our house, and about 1- years ago, he trotted home with a stanley 360 box in perfect condition. $3. No saw. he found a saw in a *trash can* full of little or no use miter saws at a local flea market for $2 and had miter box and correct saw for $5. he still has it - I tried to buy it from him for $50 and he was uninterested. I did sharpen the saw for him - he ruined the teeth on laminate flooring - and he gave me another equivalent size simonds saw in return, which fits my millers falls miter box. He paid $2 for that, too. His stanley 360 is covered with paint speckles because it's in an area where he paints. He uses it once every several years to help my mom make a picture frame or fix some other oddball thing that passes through)

Will have to see if I can work out how to sharpen the thing then work out how to use it. Have to do the same with the Stanley so I get to practice twice. Got cheapy Trojan plane included as well but figured that was cheap enough to use as a door stop. presuming ebay special.

All up cost me 30 bucks for the 3 so not feeling too ripped off for the prices I have seen for the Stanley 4 1/2. And I haven't used one for many years and even then it was badly a long long time ago in school.

Originally Posted by IanW

Several similar planes were made by different firms around the middle of last century & beyond; As I recall, Stanley themselves made something similar around that time.

I didn't think very far before going through stanley catalogues, but I believe they also made this type of plane here, too - but my memory of it is seeing it as a lower cost option vs. the #4 at home depot and hardware stores.

Stanley's #4 was sort of the default plane you'd see in a hardware store if there was only one. If there were two, a #4 and a #5.

But, those offerings are no longer on the shelves at home depot here, and the remaining other hardware store chains have smaller stores and probably don't have anything, either.

It's obviously a logical step toward a cheaper plane - it's a spokeshave bed, iron and adjustment setup.

The type swept through forums perhaps a decade ago when harbor freight imported a copy of the type for $10 and everyone went gaga over the something for nothing type gimmick. First trying to use the planes, and then turning them into "scrubs".

Haven't heard anything about them in a while.