# Comparison of tool prices over time.



## Paddy Roxburgh (11 Aug 2015)

There has been some discussion on another thread about how we can compare prices of tools over time. In short are LN and the like more expensive than Stanley were 50 years ago? This post is an attempt to collect some data on this question. So to older forum members, do you remember buying your tools 50 years ago? Do you remember how much they cost? Do you remember how much you were earning and how much more experienced craftsmen were earning at this time?
Also I know some of you have a lot of knowledge and sources about the prices old tools and the wages of craftsmen for a much longer period than 50 years, I would be really interested to hear some of this information.
My gut feeling is that todays premium tools are not really more expensive than Stanley and record were if compared to a craftsmen's income, they just seem expensive because of the ever falling prices of consumer goods, however my gut feeling is of very little worth.
I look forward to your replies
Paddy


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## MIGNAL (11 Aug 2015)

Someone recently scanned a catalogue page from 1960 that showed a Stanley No. 4 as being £2. 
The average weekly wage from that year is given as being near £12. Even if these figures are out by a significant margin it still suggests that a LN is relatively expensive. I expect a LN No.4 to represent near 50% of a craftsmans weekly wage today. If you are self employed it could be 980%.


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## Paddy Roxburgh (11 Aug 2015)

£2 would have been roughly one days wages, comparable to quangsheng in pricing (but not LN)


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## CStanford (11 Aug 2015)

If Stanley was getting the equivalent of today's L-N prices for its Bailey line, especially given production levels, it is one of the most stunning feats in the history of capitalism.

I'm open to the notion. Let me see the math.


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## MIGNAL (11 Aug 2015)

The LN is near 2 1/2 days pay, assuming it's £240. I suppose it's difficult to gauge the Quangsheng, largely because it's manufactured in a country with relatively low wage and manufacturing costs. Hard to do comparisons of tools in 1960 and today when there has been such a sea change. Taking it as a straight measure though we are enjoying a greater quality tool for a similar 'price'.


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## CStanford (11 Aug 2015)

2.5 days' pay for whom?


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## Sporky McGuffin (11 Aug 2015)

MIGNAL":33eybu01 said:


> I expect a LN No.4 to represent near 50% of a craftsmans weekly wage today.



Pretty much bang on from a quick Google.

LN no4 from Axminster - £231.28
Average weekly wage for a carpenter - £462.09

http://www.axminster.co.uk/lie-nielsen- ... hing-plane
http://www.icalculator.info/news/UK_ave ... _2014.html


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## CStanford (11 Aug 2015)

Here, the word carpenter means a worker who be highly unlikely to use a hand plane in their work at all.

Is this a meaningful comparison in the UK? I don't know.


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## RogerP (11 Aug 2015)

The answers are probably all here if you have the time and will to read it. I haven't.

Average Earnings and Retail Prices, UK, 1209-2010
http://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/ukearncpi/earnstudynew.pdf


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## custard (11 Aug 2015)

One of the many complexities when it comes to measuring inflation is that the quality of the goods or services that we buy rarely remain the same in quality terms. They generally improve and occasionally they fall, but they're rarely constant. If you look up _hedonics_ or _hedonic regression_ you can read far more about it than you ever wanted to know.

A 1960's Stanley plane was pretty close to the post-war low point in tool quality, where as a current LN plane is approaching the high point.

We could all happily squabble for the rest of the day about the fine details of that assertion, but it's undeniable that it has quite a bearing on the issue! Personally I'd argue a 1960's Stanley and a current LN are _so_ far apart in quality terms that it's no longer meaningful to compare them in price terms.


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## Sporky McGuffin (11 Aug 2015)

CStanford":w2rwh8gx said:


> Here, the word carpenter means a worker who be highly unlikely to use a hand plane in their work at all.
> 
> Is this a meaningful comparison in the UK? I don't know.



You could look it up and find out.

Or you could see if there's a more appropriate occupation listed at that link.

Or you could investigate average UK wages for skilled woodworkers.

There are many, many ways you could contribute positively to the thread.


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## CStanford (11 Aug 2015)

custard":2fk66vls said:


> One of the many complexities when it comes to measuring inflation is that the quality of the goods or services that we buy rarely remain the same in quality terms. They generally improve and occasionally they fall, but they're rarely constant. If you look up _hedonics_ or _hedonic regression_ you can read far more about it than you ever wanted to know.
> 
> A 1960's Stanley plane was pretty close to the post-war low point in tool quality, where as a current LN plane is approaching the high point.
> 
> We could all happily squabble for the rest of the day about the fine details of that assertion, but it's undeniable that it has quite a bearing on the issue! Personally I'd argue a 1960's Stanley and a current LN are _so_ far apart in quality terms that it's no longer meaningful to compare them in price terms.



Why pick 1960? Probably ought to pick Bedrocks from one of the better production years, a few years after they came out for instance.

And I think the whole bit about a % of a workers wages is a variable you don't need. If somebody only uses a plane 10% a week then their outlook on planes generally would be vastly different from the fellow from the 1930s who may have used his for a much higher percentage of time. In this example, the plane as a percentage of a weeks' wages is not an appropriate measure of much at all. If you use a screwdriver all day you might be interested in owning really nice screwdrivers. If you drive five screws in an entire day you probably couldn't care less about the quality, and the measurement or evaluation of the 'willingness' to part with X-days' worth of pay to own nice screwdrivers is meaningless.


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## Corneel (11 Aug 2015)

This kind of stuff is very difficult to compare because of the vastly different culture now and then. Just a pant of the seat feeling: I have way more disposable income then my parents when they were young or my grand parents. I have a lot more money to spend on "toys" then they had. That's partly because prices for stuff we need for our daily existence are very low nowadays. So, even when the price of a modern handplane would be rather high, I have more money available to indulge.


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## matthewwh (11 Aug 2015)

Perhaps going back and comparing with the original 60... series bedrocks might provide a more valid comparison? 

Anyone got a copy of Melhuish?

Here's another source for wage rates that might provide some insight:

http://www.wirksworth.org.uk/A04value.htm

It's building crafts, so would include bricklayers, chippies, leadworkers etc, but it does give us a breakdown of labour vs skilled and covers a large time range.


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## custard (11 Aug 2015)

CStanford":2j86ko1t said:


> And I think the whole bit about a % of a workers wages is a variable you don't need. If somebody only uses a plane 10% a week then their outlook on planes generally would be vastly different from the fellow from the 1930s who may have used his for a much higher percentage of time. In this example, the plane as a percentage of a weeks' wages is not an appropriate measure of much at all. If you use a screwdriver all day you might be interested in owning really nice screwdrivers. If you drive five screws in an entire day you probably couldn't care less about the quality, and the measurement or evaluation of the 'willingness' to part with X-days' worth of pay to own nice screwdrivers is meaningless.



Good point.


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## MIGNAL (11 Aug 2015)

What difference does that make? Someone today can use their LN for 5 minutes per day (some probably do!), just as someone in 1960 may have used his Stanley for 5 minutes per day. 
I thought we were comparing a craftsmen wage (i.e. a pro woodworker) in relation to the cost of his tools, 50 years ago and the present day. The assumption, by the OP, being that cost of tools has become cheaper over the years.


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## CStanford (11 Aug 2015)

I think it matters.

If the assertion being made is that the L-N is the equivalent in price to Stanley Bailey at a particular point in time, and we acknowledge the fact that workers very commonly owned Stanley Bailey, then I guess we need to reconcile the perception (fact?) that Lie-Nielsen is an 'aspirational' brand (Derek's very lovely term) and they are perceived to be a boutique firm (which they are and Stanley certainly was not) with boutique-like prices to match (which seems to be the general consensus).

Otherwise, sump'n don't gee-haw.

One must also reconcile all the Bailey copyists. I think we counted a couple-dozen or more in a past thread and I'm sure a few were left out. Can you imagine two dozen plus Norris copyists? It's absurd. The market could never have absorbed this many copyists of a plane that is being asserted was as premium as Lie-Nielsen is today (Bailey, that is).

If the assertion is that Stanley Bailey was as premium a brand then (with prices to match), as Lie-Nielsen appears to be today, then it's difficult to reconcile this assertion with Stanley's production and sales numbers. One cannot sell and the market cannot absorb as many Rolls Royce cars as Pintos.

I'm sure L-N would love to understand the market mechanics behind Stanley selling orders of magnitudes more planes if the brand perception and pricing schemes were essentially identical. Even allowing for the mechanization of woodworking there's a huge difference.


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## matthewwh (11 Aug 2015)

Indeed.

You could also spin the same argument around and draw conclusions about how many hours work people were prepared to exchange for a specific tool and therefore how much they valued them.

I recall reading a similar discussion about Norris planes that had them coming out at several months wages, this would tally with the fact that some retailers offered credit terms on them.


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## Paddy Roxburgh (11 Aug 2015)

Firstly I'm not asserting anything, I'm trying to get some data on which to base an opinion. I know this might seem weird to you Charles but I am quite comfortable not having an opinion when I don't have enough information to base it on.
Secondly, I don't see any other way to asses real prices than to compare an item to income. My father bought his house in 1970, the year I was born, in East London for just over twice his annual income, now it would cost 15 to 20 times the income of someone in the same job. It's fair to say that in London my lifetime has seen massive house price inflation. Clothing on the other hand is much cheaper than it was. One hours work can buy me four pairs of jeans from tesco whereas a pair of cheap jeans even 30 years ago cost nearly a days wages. It really is irrelevant whether I will wear those jeans or live in the house, some things cost more and some cost less. A cheap silverline plane is definitely cheaper in relative terms than an old stanley was. My question was are LNs considerably more expensive than an old stanley, certainly from Mignal's answer in 1960 a stanley was considerably cheaper than a LN priced nearer to a QS.


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## matthewwh (11 Aug 2015)

Sorry, that wasn't what Charles's post said when I said 'indeed' to it. We seem to have cross posted / edited.

In either case there were a range of tools available in any given time period, but comparing them at purchasing power parity (which is effectively what we are trying to achieve by expressing it in terms of hours worked) you can still draw conclusions.

If a Stanley cost a days wages or thereabouts in 1960 and an LN costs two and a half days wages now, does a current equivalent Stanley cost around 40% of the price of a £230 LN? 

No, it's about £40

So Stanleys have fallen in price by about 60% (holding a days wages as a datum point) and LN's are 2.3 times the price that a Stanley would be now had everything else remained constant.

The numbers broadly agree with our experience that Stanley have achieved phenomenal progress in making their tools cheaper, and by so doing have exposed a gap at the top of the market into which LN, Quangsheng, LV and Clifton have successfully moved. 

Has anyone bought a new Stanley (standard model) recently that could comment on whether the quality is consistent with the tools they were making in the 1960's?


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## G S Haydon (11 Aug 2015)

I did Matthew, it was a bag o' dung. If you could get it for free ok. The silverline I tried was miles ahead and £12.00. 

As a general question we often discuss the merits of changes made over time. Is there any reason why the depth adjustment wheel on Stanley type planes could not be made from something harder? Stainless perhaps? I know nothing about making a tools but brass is pretty soft and I've seen these get heavily worn over time as the brass is relatively soft.


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## rxh (11 Aug 2015)

G S Haydon":38sqqplm said:


> I did Matthew, it was a bag o' dung. If you could get it for free ok. The silverline I tried was miles ahead and £12.00.
> 
> As a general question we often discuss the merits of changes made over time. Is there any reason why the depth adjustment wheel on Stanley type planes could not be made from something harder? Stainless perhaps? I know nothing about making a tools but brass is pretty soft and I've seen these get heavily worn over time as the brass is relatively soft.


Plated carbon steel has been used, as in this Stanley 4 1/2, which I believe is "war issue" (WW2).


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## CStanford (11 Aug 2015)

Double post, see below.


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## G S Haydon (11 Aug 2015)

Cheers rxh, seems a nice solution. Dad's number 4 is about to require a new adjustment wheel, everything else is pretty good.


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## CStanford (11 Aug 2015)

1960 USA Stanley was bad enough, UK made Stanley would have likely been worse as is its reputation. Not sure the focus on a decade clearly past the company's plane making prime regardless of location.


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## G S Haydon (11 Aug 2015)

I quite like the 60's one I have. Humble beech handle & knob. Workmanlike and works great! Adjustment wheel is big allowing easy adjustment, the earlier versions had smaller wheels I think. Can't think of a defective part really.


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## CStanford (11 Aug 2015)

You need mid to late 1920s era USA Stanley. 

I have my son's kit packed away and it's all Stanley Sweetheart era: jointer (7c), panel (6c), jack (5c), smoother (4), low-angle block plane. Original irons, too. Sweet, sweet, sweet...

If any planes were worth, comparatively speaking, what today's L-N planes are it's these.


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## MIGNAL (12 Aug 2015)

I have a Stanley 5.5 from the very early '70's. Works extremely well, can't fault it. I draw the line at the ones with the pressed metal yokes. We are getting dreadful. The one with the brown plastic handles were very poor too. That's the very first plane that I bought, around 1978. It went in the bin around 1990. Can't think what took me so long.


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## G S Haydon (12 Aug 2015)

What makes them better Charles?


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## Mr_P (12 Aug 2015)

Just for Matthew and Charles here is the 1925 Melhuish catalogue

http://toolemera.com/Trade%20Catalogs/t ... gs192.html

Big pdf but the answers are near the top (page 10).

Stan no.4 = 14/10 Bedrock 604 = 18/3


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## Downwindtracker2 (12 Aug 2015)

Here in BC ,a portable circular saw, Skilsaw ,cost $135, 2 days wages in '74, I bought one this spring for $100, 3 hours wages. Union tradesman rate. Chinese, but not junk. That's likely why I'm buying old tools I never could have afforded when that were new.


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## JimB (12 Aug 2015)

Dredging my memory here but I think I paid around $12 for my Record No 4 about fifty years ago. I was taking home around $60/week at the time. Australian dollars of course.


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## matthewwh (12 Aug 2015)

Mr_P":qtq3zb4e said:


> Just for Matthew and Charles here is the 1925 Melhuish catalogue
> 
> http://toolemera.com/Trade%20Catalogs/t ... gs192.html
> 
> ...




Thank you Mr P.

According to wirksworth a days wages for a skilled craftsman in 1925 was 15 shillings, so you'd have tuppence change (about enough to buy a paper) on the Bailey, or you could do a few hours the following morning and get yourself a bedrock. Still very much in Quangsheng territory rather than the LN.

Looking at infills, the most common A5 type comes in at 46/-, just over three days wages, a little more than you'd pay now for a Lie-Nielsen but nowhere near the prices that new infill planes command. 

It's also interesting to note that well cared for bedrocks and infills have held their value over the last 100 years, while baileys have at best halved.


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## CStanford (12 Aug 2015)

G S Haydon":rihgx722 said:


> What makes them better Charles?



Fit and finish I suppose. Frogs seem to click into place, soles flatter, just a more solid feel. The mouths are tighter.


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## CStanford (12 Aug 2015)

Matthew, purchasing power parity has more to do with the value of one currency vs. another and exchange rates rather than the number of days wages needed to buy a tool.


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## AndyT (12 Aug 2015)

Well, this is a potentially interesting thread, but there are so many possible directions it could go in!

I shall try to stay on the topic Paddy started with and offer a few more data points.

I've scanned a supplement to the Woodworker from May 1960 which surveyed the planes still available and gave retail prices for them. ("Retail Price Maintenance" - the system by which the manufacturer set a price which was held to by all resellers - still applied then.)
(There is a different problem when looking at prices in many old catalogues which were wholesale catalogues intended to set prices that toolshops would have paid when buying their stock. This is further compounded by application of discounts or plussages or both to list prices. )

Here is the page with prices of bench planes:






(I've scanned the rest, as it is likely to be of interest for other topics. Here are links to the other pages:

http://sloot.co.uk/bucket/ww_planes_1961-2.jpg
http://sloot.co.uk/bucket/ww_planes_1961-3.jpg
http://sloot.co.uk/bucket/ww_planes_1961-4.jpg

I also have a similar supplement on portable power saws - _much_ more expensive - which I could scan. There's one on hardboard too, but that is not so interesting!)

And for another price comparison, when I bought my first plane in 1979, it was a made in England Stanley no 4, with plastic handles, (which performs beautifully). I bought it in Barnitt's in York, which is still trading, and I am pretty sure I paid about £16 - 20 for it.
At the time I was temporarily working 48 hrs a week at the local glass factory, grossing about £100 a week which was a very good wage - £50-£60 was ok to live on. My rent for half of a 2 bed flat was cheap at £5 a week. Beer was about 28p a pint, petrol was, I think, about 38p a gallon.


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## Derek Cohen (Perth Oz) (12 Aug 2015)

> If a Stanley cost a days wages or thereabouts in 1960 and an LN costs two and a half days wages now, does a current equivalent Stanley cost around 40% of the price of a £230 LN?
> 
> No, it's about £40



I think that these calculations cannot reflect something approaching reasonableness as they contain added expenses that detract from the true price.

The problem is that Stanley Bedrock planes (which you need to consider as a match for the LN, another Bedrock design) reached their heights in the early part of the 20th century _in the USA_, not the UK. The LN is a_ USA-made_ plane, and subject to import duty in the UK, and so any calculation will be affected by this. 

It seems more appropriate to examine a (say) 1920 Bedrock #604 sold in the USA against the weekly wage of a USA cabinetmaker of that time, and then a (say) 2015 LN #4 price, as sold in in the USA.

Regards from Perth

Derek


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## CStanford (12 Aug 2015)

Yes, by and large.

But a cabinetmaker's wage where? A small Mississippi Delta town? New York? The panhandled of Texas? North Dakota? San Francisco? Miami? Muskogee, Oklahoma?

France is about the same size as Texas. The U.S. is huge.

California, alone, was the world's eighth largest economy as measured a few years ago. California's economy is bigger than Spain's and Canada's.

Be careful not to end up with a set of numbers you could trust about as far as you could throw a piece of cheesecake underwater.


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## whiskywill (12 Aug 2015)

CStanford":33rclckh said:


> Be careful not to end up with a set of numbers you could trust about as far as you could throw a piece of cheesecake underwater.



That is a very good point. Now, how far can you throw a piece of cheesecake underwater today compared to the 60's, what proportion of a day's wages would it cost and which flavour cheesecake can be thrown the furthest? Is stale cheesecake better than fresh and is homemade better than shop bought? So many variations and so little time.


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## Derek Cohen (Perth Oz) (12 Aug 2015)

CStanford":3kdbpr4d said:


> Yes, by and large.
> 
> But a cabinetmaker's wage where? A small Mississippi Delta town? New York? The panhandled of Texas? North Dakota? San Francisco? Miami? Muskogee, Oklahoma?
> 
> ...



Don't just pick one. Choose three cities, say, New York, San Francisco, and Oklahoma.

Go.

Regards from Perth

Derek


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## CStanford (12 Aug 2015)

Have at it. Union or nonunion wages?

Let me know where you find the numbers. BLS might have them, though maybe not (see page 4):

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/america ... entury.pdf

I did see in one BLS publication where a union bricklayer in Chicago made $1.50 an hour in 1925 and a $1.25 an hour in 1920. The same guy in Marks, Mississippi (where my mother is from) would have made less than half that, most likely.


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## Derek Cohen (Perth Oz) (12 Aug 2015)

> Have at it. Union or nonunion wages?
> 
> Let me know where you find the numbers. BLS might have them, though maybe not (see page 4):
> 
> http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/america ... entury.pdf



Charles, you are now being deliberately obstructionistic. 

I'm out of your game. Play it with others .... if they wish to play.

Regards from Perth

Derek


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## CStanford (12 Aug 2015)

Deliberately obstructionist? The data may simply not exist. I guess that's my fault? Again, the US is a big place. It takes almost eight hours to drive just from Memphis to the TN/North Carolina border. Hard to gather or even administrate the gathering of this sort of data. The US was in a post WWI small depression in the early 1920s as well. Resources were limited. Remember, this would have been pencil, paper, and mechanical tabulators. They didn't have Deep Blue running SPSS back then.


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## Derek Cohen (Perth Oz) (12 Aug 2015)

Charles, if you keep narrowing down the selection details, then you will fail to find anything. This is not about planning the next moon landing. 

http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/his/e_prices1.htm

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/20soirepar.pdf

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=u ... ge;num=110

Regards from Perth

Derek


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## CStanford (12 Aug 2015)

I see a statistic called 'building trades' for 1920 that showed a $1.08 an hour. And one from the other source that showed 'carpenters' at $1.27 an hour in 1925 and our Chicago union bricklayer at $1.50 in 1925. 

Bench woodworkers (encompassing cabinet/furnituremakers), as opposed to site craftsmen, I assume, are lumped into the average somewhere.


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## Derek Cohen (Perth Oz) (12 Aug 2015)

So do both, or use their average. 

All we are looking for is an _estimate_ of comparable costs vs earnings for the Bedrock-LN planes roughly 1920 (heyday of Bedrocks) and then throw in current USA figures (choose whichever city/cities/National average you prefer).

Charles, you know how to do this. As I recall somewhere you were an accountant once upon a time.

Regards from Perth

Derek


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## CStanford (12 Aug 2015)

The numbers seem quaint, don't they?

$1.08/hr ("building trades" catch-all average) to $1.50/hr (union bricklayer in Chicago) is a 38.9% change. What we think of as a few cents was real money back then. Somebody making $1.08 that got a raise to $1.50 would have been on Cloud 9 and looking to upgrade every aspect of his or her economic life. 

Derek, think about what you net in your practice every year and do the math with close to a 40% increase.

Gracious, you could actually pay LV for the tools they send you.... :wink:


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## bugbear (12 Aug 2015)

CStanford":11xyu207 said:


> The numbers sound quaint, don't they?
> 
> $1.08 to $1.50 is 38.9% change. What we think of as a few cents was real money back then. Somebody making $1.08 that got a raise to $1.50 would have been on Cloud 9 and looking to upgrade every aspect of his or her economic life.
> 
> ...



Do grow up, Charles.

BugBear


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## CStanford (12 Aug 2015)

bugbear":20yce4mb said:


> CStanford":20yce4mb said:
> 
> 
> > The numbers sound quaint, don't they?
> ...



Just illustrating a point BB.


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## AndyT (12 Aug 2015)

Much as I enjoy the contributions of experienced members, it looks like the exchange in the last few posts has shown that trying to factor in such different economic histories does indeed make Paddy's original question too complicated to answer. 
Could I suggest we look back at his original request for examples from within our collective memory?


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## Mr_P (12 Aug 2015)

Not much help from me then, since I was born a few weeks after the war. That's post Vietnam btw.

Think the thread has got itself into a bit of a mess since the original question had a few flaws as they have already have been pointed out. Mainly not comparing like with like.

Imported LN and the Made in the UK 1960's Stanley
The LN is based on the Bedrock which ceased production during WW2.
Economies of scale with the mass produced Stanley Bailey's of the 60's


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## matthewwh (12 Aug 2015)

Gentlemen please!

This is UKWorkshop and the question was posed by Paddy (in London) why on earth would it be more relevant to discuss American pricing?

PPP is normally used for comparing across currencies but works just as well over time. By relating prices to an agreed good or service (days wages in this case) you can compare £ today with $US today or £/S/d in 1925. It's a crude method at best but certainly a valid one in this context.

You can't account for every subtle nuance, but if it allows you to see the difference between half as much, about the same, or three times as much then you have a little more to go on than a 'feeling in your bones', which was what the OP asked for.

Andy T's post gives us another point in time with a Stanley No.4 still costing just under a days money in 1979. 

It seems to me that across several time points, a days pay is about right for a usable metal bodied No.4. Pay a touch more and you get an original bedrock in the 1920's or a QS now, pay two and a half times as much and you could have had an infill in the 1920's or an LN now.


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## Derek Cohen (Perth Oz) (12 Aug 2015)

In 1923 a Stanley Bedrock #604 cost $5.90
https://virginiatoolworks.files.wordpre ... r-1923.jpg


The average per capita income of USA in 1920 was $688
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/inde ... 724AADwcGR

*Based on this, one could purchase 116.6 planes in one year*


The average per capita income of USA in 2013 was $28,184
http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/us/

Current price of LN #4 = $350
https://www.lie-nielsen.com/nodes/4171/ ... nch-planes

*Based on this, one could purchase 80.5 planes in one year*


2015 Stanley Sweetheart #4 costs $150
http://www.stanleytools.com/ps-whrtobuy ... =US_12-136

*Based on this, one could purchase 187.8 planes in one year*

2015 WoodRiver #4 plane cost $145
http://www.woodcraft.com/product/150874 ... ne-v3.aspx

*Based on this, one could purchase 194.3 planes in one year*


*Conclusion:* LN planes are 40% more expensive than their Stanley Bedrock counterparts of their day, while the current Stanley Sweetheart #4 is about 60% cheaper (similar to the WoodRiver). 

Regards from Perth

Derek


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## AndyT (12 Aug 2015)

Ok here are some more data points. Gardiner and Sons, Bristol, 1940.

Stanley or Record no 4 - 13s 6d. 
No 5 - 16s 6d.
Cheapest Norris infill smoother was a parallel sided 2" iron with an iron lever cap, at 22s.

Fast forward to 1959, after severe post-war inflation and the prices are very close to what the Woodworker listed - 

Stanley no 4 - 41s, Record - 40s 9d. New British contendor Woden, 37s 6d.

For no 5s, Stanley - 49s 9d, Record - 49s 9d, Woden - 47s.
Norris planes were no longer listed in the catalogue.


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## Mr_P (12 Aug 2015)

AndyT":1nd5060s said:


> And for another price comparison, when I bought my first plane in 1979, it was a made in England Stanley no 4, with plastic handles, (which performs beautifully). I bought it in Barnitt's in York, which is still trading, and I am pretty sure I paid about £16 - 20 for it.
> At the time I was temporarily working 48 hrs a week at the local glass factory, grossing about £100 a week which was a very good wage. My rent for half of a 2 bed flat was cheap at £5 a week. Beer was about 28p a pint, petrol was, I think, about 38p a gallon.



You were robbed, either that or the winter of discontent had a massive effect on prices.

April 1977 Stanley booklet
No.4 = £10.32

1985 Stanley booklet (20p this one)
No.4 = £23.50


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## CStanford (12 Aug 2015)

For what it's worth:

Data for the United States:

1967 base year=100
2015 Consumer Price Index: 720.3
1923 Consumer Price Index: 51.2

Factor (divide the two): 14.068

Multiply by $1: $14.07

One dollar in 1923 is worth $14.07 today, which seems to indicate that planes were cheap when compared to the basket of consumer goods which makes up the index. This could be considered consistent with Stanley's high volume model rather than a boutique maker's low volume/high(er) margin model.

Source (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis): https://www.minneapolisfed.org/communit ... index-1800


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## AndyT (12 Aug 2015)

Mr_P":2u9y1zpl said:


> AndyT":2u9y1zpl said:
> 
> 
> > And for another price comparison, when I bought my first plane in 1979, it was a made in England Stanley no 4, with plastic handles, (which performs beautifully). I bought it in Barnitt's in York, which is still trading, and I am pretty sure I paid about £16 - 20 for it.
> ...



I think I may have left it a bit too long to go back and complain...  

Maybe I didn't pay as much as I thought - I can't really be certain after all these years - but inflation was kicking in big time back then and it became normal to find goods with several layers of price stickers on.


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## Cheshirechappie (12 Aug 2015)

Mr_P":14rtaax3 said:


> AndyT":14rtaax3 said:
> 
> 
> > And for another price comparison, when I bought my first plane in 1979, it was a made in England Stanley no 4, with plastic handles, (which performs beautifully). I bought it in Barnitt's in York, which is still trading, and I am pretty sure I paid about £16 - 20 for it.
> ...



Inflation was pretty rampant in the late '70s and early '80s. If I recall correctly, it peaked at about 25% per annum, but calmed down somewhat in the 1980s. Several price rises in a year were very common; in one of my early working years, we had pay rises every six months. Hence, the relative prices quoted for 1977, 1979 and 1985 are quite believable, especially if it was early 1977 and late 1979.


Edit to add - a couple more data points.

Record o4 smoother bought new from C.J.Bent's of Warrington in August 1986 was £25.36.

Record 07 try plane bought new mail order from Tabwell Tools of Bakewell in November 1989 was £37.50, including £2.50 p&p, so the plane cost £35.00.

(Just for the record (boom boom!) the 04 was dreadful - banana sole, finished by rough linisher - but the 07 was nicely finished, flat and a credit to the makers. It still is, but the 04 has had a LOT of fettling. Why a 1986 plane was dreck and a 1989 one was fine, I know not; maybe they overhauled the smoother production line but kept on the old try production line because there wasn't enough sales volume to warrant a revamp, or summat.)


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## Droogs (12 Aug 2015)

Mr_P":1ye86fdo said:


> AndyT":1ye86fdo said:
> 
> 
> > And for another price comparison, when I bought my first plane in 1979, it was a made in England Stanley no 4, with plastic handles, (which performs beautifully). I bought it in Barnitt's in York, which is still trading, and I am pretty sure I paid about £16 - 20 for it.
> ...




Well that puts the Stanely's No4 planes at just under a days wages as my daily rate of pay when I joined up in 85 was £26.47p a day and 2 years later once a qualified tradesman was 29.80


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## MIGNAL (12 Aug 2015)

You must have good memories you lot. I can barely remember what I paid for something last week, let alone in 1980!
Old age, don't you just love it.


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## Downwindtracker2 (12 Aug 2015)

Talking about hand planes, I looked at the box my Canadian made Stanley #4 resides in, $12.59 bought at a discount department store, low. It's one of the first tools I bought. I was making as a first year carpenter apprentice $2.96. Beer was .20 a glass, $5.00 was a night, $2.50 if you were an American drinking Canadian beer.


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## RogerP (12 Aug 2015)

MIGNAL":1n7ajbak said:


> You must have good memories you lot. I can barely remember what I paid for something last week, let alone in 1980!
> Old age, don't you just love it.


... or even what I bought last week!


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## Mr_P (13 Aug 2015)

Inflation is indeed the answer and I've found an online calculator

http://safalra.com/other/historical-uk- ... onversion/

£2 in 1965 = £34 in 2013

So Graham was spot on with his comments on his £13 silverline
silverline-4-t90575.html



> The biggest thing I reflected on was the potential. Literally if you doubled the cost of the plane to £26.00 or even £30.00 and spent a bit more time on effort on production you'd have an excellent tool. I wonder if anyone would ever be bold enough to do so. From where I'm sitting Stanley, the people who made these planes famous, are well placed to launch these again.



Doesn't quite explain Andy's but then again different sectors have different inflation rates and its the average overall that is recorded.

£10.32 in 1977 = £13 in 1979 or £15 in 1980 

£10.32 in 1977 = £23 in 1985 (so almost £23.50 as stated in the booklet)


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## G S Haydon (13 Aug 2015)

A broken clock is spot on twice a day . I get lucky sometimes


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## JimB (13 Aug 2015)

RogerP":vnbk7np9 said:


> MIGNAL":vnbk7np9 said:
> 
> 
> > You must have good memories you lot. I can barely remember what I paid for something last week, let alone in 1980!
> ...


I think I might be given pocket money. :?


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