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267862 | Thomas Conroy | 2019‑02‑15 | FOOYBIPO (was Re: OldTools] Test) |
Chuck Taylor wrote: "My theory is that the BCTO (Bridge City Tool Owners) clan are cousins of the YBIFPO clan." I object to that, having just joined the FOOYBIPO with two planes. But I'm not jackass enough to fall for Bridge City's line of goods. Two good infills in first-rate condition, for about $135 all told! The "chariot plane" (more like a honking big thumb plane) needed a shim between the blade and the wedge, and its ready to go; its even sharp enough to use. I cut a bit out of a cardboard box (Trader Joe's English Breakfast Tea, for those who care about materials) but may have to replace that with a piece of glued-in veneer for serious work. BRASS INFILL CHARIOT STYLE, PLANE NEEDS TLC FROM UK | eBay The first I bought was a small coffin-assed smoother. It looks a bit grotty in the photo, but that is just the photo. All I can find that it needs is sharpening. The blade is a good Buck Brothers, not a parallel iron and made in the wrong country, but it looks like it has been there a long time and seen a fair bit of service. ANTIQUE INFILL WOODWORKING SMOOTHING COFFIN PLANE--BUCK BROTHERS | eBay I've wanted infill planes since I first read Jim Kingshott's Making and Modifying Woodworking Tools around the time it came out (1992). But Kingshott started making his own because he couldn't afford old ones, and I figured that meant I would never be able to, since they weren't professional tools for me. The last time I looked at prices, maybe ten years ago, bore this out: even unsigned examples in bad condition were ceiling-high then, in the middle hundreds if I recall, ten times the most I ever paid for a plane. But in an idle moment last month I checked out "infill plane" and "chariot plane" on eBay, and found quite a few unsigned planes priced or with starting bids under $100. Most unsigned infills seem to be resting under $200, including a lot of unassembled kits (could this be old Shepheard stock finally coming to market?). Mathiesons, by all accounts fully as good as Spiers and Norris, were down there with the unsigned. Only Norris seemed to have held their old value, with prices ranging from five hundred up to around three or four thousand dollars. I told the seller of the smoother that I didn't understand why it went so cheap, and they said that they didn't either. Maybe it was just last month; prices today look like they may have recovered a smidgen. My strongest reaction to them so far is wonderment at their weight, despite the fact that neither has a sole much over 7" long. They are too heavy for my letter scale and too light for the bathroom scale, but well north of two pounds each. At least twice the weight of a broadsword, for those of you for whom that is a natural unit of comparison. Neither, I must confess, sings in my hands as yet. I usually lift the plane at the end of each stroke and carry it back wards out of contact with the wood. I've used wooden planes more and more over the years, and there is no problem with using a coffin woodie in this way. But after a few trial passes with my new infill I understood why most infills have totes; it wants to slip from my hands as I lift it, and I think I will have to alter my planing technique to scrubbing back and forth with the sole in constant contact with the workpiece. The other plane is an even bigger shock. I expected an infill version of a block plane, a one-hand plane, and it is indeed very similar in size and even shape to the #65 sitting right next to it on my desk. However, its so heavy I can't control or use it with one hand; its definitely a two- handed plane, at least for me. The sole is 6-1/4" x 2-1/16", with a blade 1-3/4" wide.Looking at Kingshott's book, the very similar "thumb plane" I have lusted after all these years turns out to be probably 5-1/4" long with a 1-3/8" blade (from creative measuring of photos and drawings). The St. James Bay casting in my decades-old printed catalogue is likewise only 5" long. I think these seemingly not-much-smaller sizes would be small enough to be under control with one hand. One good thing about mine: the combination of heavy weight with low angle and fine mouth does indeed seem to give the infill aan authority and smoothness on endgrain that is well beyond what I have previously experienced. All for now, I think. I should be out shopping for tennis shirts and a BMW. Not buying, shopping. Tom Conroy North Berkeley, ancestral land of the yuppie, where Alice Kahn first described the species many decades ago, and I live surrounded by many no-longer-young specimens. I've been here longer, though. They moved in on me, and I couldn't control it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Links in the message (2) | | | BRASS INFILL CHARIOT STYLE, PLANE NEEDS... | | | | ANTIQUE INFILL WOODWORKING SMOOTHING CO... | |
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267864 | Thomas Conroy | 2019‑02‑15 | Re: FOOYBIPO (was Re: OldTools] Test) |
This is the "chariot" plane, lets see if it gets through. Properly speaking a chariot plane is a bullnose infill, but in eBay speak the term includes what Kingshott (and the Norris price lists) refers to as a "thumb plane" Lots of inco0nsistancies on terminology for small infills, it seems. www.ebay.com/itm/192788945349?ul_noapp=true On Friday, February 15, 2019, 3:37:30 AM PST, Ed Minch |
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267865 | Thomas Conroy | 2019‑02‑15 | Re: FOOYBIPO (was Re: OldTools] Test) |
OK, that seems to have worked for the chariot plane, so lets see about the smoother: https://www.ebay.com/itm/ANTIQUE-INFILL-WOODWORKING-SMOOTHING-COFFIN- PLANE-BUCK-BROTHERS-/123572634790?nma=true&si=Qj8PEywX3xOgKa9ybziUJuRJmlE%253D&o rig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557">https://www.ebay.com/itm /ANTIQUE-INFILL-WOODWORKING-SMOOTHING-COFFIN-PLANE-BUCK-BROTHERS-/123572634790?n ma=true&si=Qj8PEywX3xOgKa9ybziUJuRJmlE%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trk sid=p2047675.l2557 Tom Thanks for the write-up, you old Y. Could you try again on the links as we are all salivating over the prospect of a 2 pound chariot plane Ed Minch |
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267866 | Thomas Conroy | 2019‑02‑15 | Re: FOOYBIPO (was Re: OldTools] Test) |
O Galoots: I'm sorry my attempt to send better links dragged out over three messages, but I wasn't sure it would work (I'm still not sure, in fact). Yahoo no longer allows me to just paste in a link; instead, it creates a little thumbnail of the site I am linking to. It used to do this, but with an option to get rid of the thumbnail. This option has been removed. God preserve me from the "new, improved" versisoon of anything at all. The great writer A.J. Liebling, who had a fine hand with an analogy, somewhere speaks about bookleggers during Prohibition who would filter denatured alcohol through an old felt hat, in the belief that this would remove the poisonous contaminants from it. In a similar manner I pasted the link into a Word document, then copied from Word and pasted that into my email. The link seems to have made it through to the Bagga;ppts list and back to me, so I hope that it suffices. Neither plane would satisfy a c*ll*ct*r, especially since those gentry seem to favor highly polished braass and shiny wood for infills. The smoother has had a light restoration to working condition, showing in screw heads that have ebeen filed flush to the body and what looks to me like a light polyurethane topcoat to the wood---unfortunate if so, but its not too bad. The tapered (not parallel)Buck Brotherts Cast Steel blade may have been put in at the restoration, or it might date back to the day, but it fits well and it gives a nice tight mouth, and I will never use it enough to sharpen it back enough for the mouth to widen significantly. It has a nick or two in the edge, but I don't want to ush things so I haven't sharpened it yet. The "chariot" plane has the infill under the blade loose, with visible hot glue residues on it. I don't see any reason why it should be glued, since it is surrounded by brass on five faces, so I am leaving that as is for the moment. The blade is parallel, with half a mar at the top end; the first line has beeen lost, but "cast steel" remains. As received the wedge puts no pressure at all on the blade, and the blade simply slips forward and back undeer it. A piece of cardboard box about 1-3/4" x 4", slipped into place (as I said in an earlier posting) between the wedge and the blade, gives enough pressure to use the plane for a few test curlss; I'll have to play with it for a while to see if anything else is needed.Neither is my dream infill (that remains a little Sauer & Steiner I played with for a few minutes, a number of years ago, at a Lie-Nielson "tool event" at The Crucible in Oakland just south of here) but they are enough to fuel a raging hunger for more, more, more infills. Well, maybe not that bad, but I foresee a genuine bullnose chariot, a shoulder plane or two, and a 5" thumb plane in my long-term plans.God willin' and the creek don't rise. Tom Conroystill doing a gloat dance, but quietly, by shuffling my feet under the table. No blazing sporrans to see here, no sirree bob. |
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267869 | Chuck Taylor | 2019‑02‑15 | Re: FOOYBIPO (was Re: OldTools] Test) |
Hi Tom, No offense intended; I was just trying to stir up some discussion. I was expecting our British cousins to rise to the bait and tell us how much better the high-end British infills are than a bog-standard coffin plane. Basically looking for someone to tell me why it's okay to spend extra money on an infill but not on a Bridge City tool. I made a trip to England a few years ago and brought back two infill planes. One was a heavy shoulder plane, gunmetal body and ebony stuffing and wedge. I love it. The other is a smoother with a steel frame and rosewood stuffing. Unmarked, but in the general style of a Spiers infill smoother. So far I haven't been impressed by the way it performs. Maybe I just haven't learned how to tune/adjust it properly. For general use I reach for a Stanley 604 (purchased at an antique shop in Canada for C$25). The iron is Stanley-made-in-Canada. When I need a little more weight I reach for a Stanley 4-1/2 with a Hock iron (purchased at a PNTC meeting back in the day from Bretton Wade). Hard for me to imagine anything working much better than that combination. But then a bog-standard coffin plane with a tapered cast steel iron also works a treat. Cheers, Chuck Taylor north of Seattle On Thursday, February 14, 2019, 11:48:57 PM PST, Thomas Conroy |
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267872 | gary may | 2019‑02‑15 | Re: FOOYBIPO (was Re: OldTools] Test) |
Hi Chuck-- Good old Bretton Wade. Generous guy. I'll bet he sold you the whole setup for the price of a Hock iron. I have a swell Yankee Eggbeater he gifted me years ago, and it's the drill I use the most. He invited me over to look at a Bee-youteefull Spiers smoother he'd just bought on Ebay. It was beautiful all right. When he told me how cheap he got it, I started crying. So he said: "Here Gary, have this hand-drill, it'll make you feel better." His voice was calming. He had two infant sons, you know. That infill plane of his worked fine right out of the shipping box and had probably been in daily use when it went in to retirement. We had a lot of fun fiddling with it, eventually making shavings so thin they were invisible. No kidding. The shavings were there; you could hear them being cut, you could pile them into an invisible pile and light them off in a puff of smoke like a pinch of gunpowder, but you couldn't SEE them, not at all. More gas than solid, I guess. I did learn that with persevering patience one can find good deals on 'user' infills. And that's the kind I like. I also like a 4 1/2 with a Hock iron, which'll do most of what you want from an infill, eh Chuck? I'm with Tom Conroy on the Bridge City stuff. Not for me, not even for free. I do like *Old Tools* that are over-designed, ugly and impractical---I'm not a monster---but I don't need New and Expensive tools that are. and all the best to all galoots, everywhere--gam snowed in still in OlyWA/US On Friday, February 15, 2019, 9:18:04 AM PST, Chuck Taylor via OldTools |
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