Arthur price plane maker, help needed

[tobytools]

Stumbled acros this infill plane maker and very little is known and as to why baffles me, maby someone on this forum has any information or remember something?

"This is what I know so far:
Price was working from 1924 - 1967 and only made small cast planes such as the shoulder and bullnose plane. According to an price list from about 1950.
It is generally accepted that Price was working after Norris, Spiers, and Mathieson stopped making infill planes and he was the last of the traditional infill plane makers".

The text above was taken from the new so any inaccurate infomation isn't my own.

Hopefully someone can fill in a few gaps and help me out.
(Does anyone own a plane by this maker)
Cheers.
TT

 

[AndyT]

Hi Toby,
I found a tiny bit more info here http://www.infill-planes.com/27/arthur-price-mahogany-infill-shoulder-plane/#more-27

 

[tobytools]

Hi Toby,
I found a tiny bit more info here http://www.infill-planes.com/27/arthur-price-mahogany-infill-shoulder-plane/#more-27

thanks andy,
i did stumble alone this site and another one with very little information, its strange as is said he is from an era where he could be remembered by the older generation.
his stamp is similar to that or "norris london" (a stretched circle)

truth be told i was hoping you had an old catalogue or some secure documents with vital information.
thank you for your input, if you find anything else out let me know,
im going to ask a few friends of mind and see if they know anything but im sure their search will end at google.

much appreciated Andy,

have a good day,
TT

 

[bugbear]

Stumbled acros this infill plane maker and very little is known and as to why baffles me, maby someone on this forum has any information or remember something?

"This is what I know so far:
Price was working from 1924 - 1967 and only made small cast planes such as the shoulder and bullnose plane. According to an price list from about 1950.
It is generally accepted that Price was working after Norris, Spiers, and Mathieson stopped making infill planes and he was the last of the traditional infill plane makers".

Where''s that from?

BugBear

 

[AndyT]

The Infill planes showcase site refers to an article in TATHS newsletter no 10 which would have been in 1985. I don't have anything going back that far, but I expect it is the source of the article I found and the one Toby quoted.
Toby - you ought to join TATHS - you would not only get their excellent publications, you'd get access to proper hard-core experts, not dabblers like me!

 

[AndyT]

Toby - a tiny bit more for you - the book "Woodworking Tools" by Proudfoot and Walker (Phaidon / Christies 1984) has this picture and the one line

"Probably the last of the metal plane-makers to survive was Arthur Price of London who carried on into the 1960s"

 

[AndyT]

(Three posts in a row, sorry!)

Toby - THANK YOU!

Thinking about your question, I wondered if the book on the Russell collection had any Arthur Price planes - it does, of course, and illustrates a bull-nose rebate plane. "That looks just like mine" I said to myself. This is my one - bought on eBay for not much:

So, now that I know what to look for, I looked again, a bit closer.

Now I can see the size - 1" - and the beginning of the word 'UNBREAKABLE'

and just barely visible - clearer to me than it is in this photo - I can see the start of the word 'LONDON' as it curves round

- so now I can be sure that this is indeed one of Arthur Price's planes!

Result!

 

[tobytools]

(Three posts in a row, sorry!)

Toby - THANK YOU!

Thinking about your question, I wondered if the book on the Russell collection had any Arthur Price planes - it does, of course, and illustrates a bull-nose rebate plane. "That looks just like mine" I said to myself. This is my one - bought on eBay for not much:

So, now that I know what to look for, I looked again, a bit closer.

Now I can see the size - 1" - and the beginning of the word 'UNBREAKABLE'

and just barely visible - clearer to me than it is in this photo - I can see the start of the word 'LONDON' as it curves round

- so now I can be sure that this is indeed one of Arthur Price's planes!

Result!

I would or replied earlier but working in new forest very bad signal,

I will have a look at that web site and join, I just joined that backsaw. Net or some thing like that I want to follow up on that saw I showed you a while ago, tissington or something (can't remember with out getting in out.

Wow, you lucky sod, shame about the visibility on the plane but all the same very nice I'm extremely envious, you should keep that safe will be worth a god sum in a few years as they are hard to come across or so ive heard/ read;

Your the number 1 for info Andy don't be modest,

Thanks for the links and info (thumbs up)
I'm going to do a bit more digging for some info on this maker I don't him very interesting for some reason.

Thanks mate,
Very much appreciated.

TT

Ok ok it's killing me how much you get it for?

 

[tobytools]

looking back the bull nose you have isn't in the book many is the rarest of them all

TT

 

[AndyT]

looking back the bull nose you have isn't in the book many is the rarest of them all

TT

It's no 831 in the picture on page 287. But my wedge is a bit beaten up.

 

[tobytools]

Ahh sorry I was talking about you pic in earlier post,
So it is. Even the "london" is a tad faded also, maybe his planes are so hard to find is that they are just invisible, their stamps worn away. But these planes not being that old really I don think that is the case.

(Same page)
What do you think of those granby bull nose planes? I have one, never used it properly so can't comment on it as a user but god is it ugly. Better of melted down and made into a lever cap

Cheers
TT

 

[Lawrence Hill]

[/img]

Hello saw your post with interest.

I have tried to paste in an image of one of the handbills.

Philip Walker the founder of TATHS cleared Arthur Prices workshop in 1979 or 1980 (when I worked for PGW) which is when a sheaf of the glossy handbills were acquired. If I recall rightly the workshop was an adjunct to his house - which by then was in a pretty ropey state - and relied on a human powered surface 'grinder' which was actually a spike running on a pulley wheel and rope drive used to surface the castings. I still have a couple or three Price planes (these were finished and 'stamped' but unfitted/no infill t castings which work fantastically and I also had machined about thirty of the castings for the simpler shoulder planes. The gunmetal shoulder plane is almost too good to use in the workshop...

The handbills must be just pre-war as Carlton St was renamed Carltoun St between 1936 and 1939 then renamed Grafton Road in about 1985 ish when redeveloped as flats across both the original Grafton Road and Carltoun St.

Generally a pretty run down area so I suspect the transfer of the business from Slater to Miller to Price went somewhere a bit cheaper each time. Chalk Farm estate (notorious for its riots ) is next door to this bit of Kentish Town.

Planes are very similar to some of the Norris styles - Price was making two distinct styles of shoulder plane - the gunmetal or steel ones with projecting 'ears' for want of a better word (i.e. York pattern, and as shown on the handbill) and what we found in the workshop in 1980 must have constituted his last batch of annealed iron ones with the 'upright only' London grips (not illustrated). These were mainly rough castings going a bit rusty in the 'shop. I finished off a couple of the latter (not very well and one has the milling marks where I overdid it a bit). But this style looks much more 'Slater' than Norris.

Norris did make a similar profile but dovetailed, not cast, so this leads me to wonder even further about what deals might, or might not, have been done when T Norris proper wound up and broke up the business to 'Norris Planes and Tools' at the Croydon address; and possibly some of the Norris casting patterns went to Price. Or maybe he simply plagiarised. As the new Norris (Croydon) planes were all cast steel channel bench planes they probably constituted a very different manufacturing set up. Price already had the gear to dress small castings.

Best regards

Lawrence

 

[tobytools]

Excellent findings, I'm greatful you took the time to share that, I'm rather taken by prices planes,
Do you know why he didn't produce a bench plane as these where more popular?

Would you be so kind as to upload so pic of the planes in question that you have.
Uploading pics can be tricky but there is a how to in the start forum.

In your experience and findings what is the typical price quide for these planes?
I ask for future reference and for my files

Cheers
TT
Many thanks.

 

[AndyT]

Welcome along Lawrence, you sound like you have some useful information!

I'm most intrigued by your reference to a pattern of plane with projecting ears.

Some time ago, there was a long inconclusive discussion about a plane casting found by Jimi43 which had 'ears' - have a look back at this thread https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/bootfair-brass-infill-t42501.html
Is that the sort of thing you mean?
Jim doesn't post so often these days while he's busy stargazing, but I know that he'd love to be able to identify the maker of his plane.

 

[Lawrence Hill]

Hi Andy

My description is woeful - the ears I was trying to describe are the fore and aft projections of a York pattern plane. Pics will tell all...but...

I was trying without success to post some pics and the handbill - evidently with no success. If you pm me I can post to you for attachment here or any advice welcome on how I successfully might attach stuff (sufficiently simple for a luddite to follow)

Regards

Lawrence

 

[AndyT]

There are two ways to add pictures. As a new member you can only upload pics to the forum. To do this, reply using the 'full editor' and the option below to add each picture as an attached file. The pictures need to be quite small - below 256k- so you will probably need to resize them.
Once you have over 5 posts you can include links to photos accessible online , which is a more flexible way.

 

[tobytools]

Hi Andy,
The three orphans that jimi owns arnt prices type of casting,
Well remembered tho.
The bull nose looks typical slater style.
As the other I haven't got a clue with out researching the web..
Beautiful restoration, and 3 kids I would like to have

Cheers
TT

 

[Lawrence Hill]

Hi Toby
Prices generally seem a bit less than a Norris but are all over the place. A gunmetal Price York shoulder went for over £200 in the 1979 Arnold and Walker auction (some one presumably got a little carried away) but since Ebay much lower prices might be more typical. Even Norris's seem to have declined in value during the recession unless they are an exceptionally rare example.

I have a private theory that Arthur Price stuck to smaller planes for two reasons:

1. His surfacing machine was manually driven - making a full sized bench plane such as a panel plane or larger would have taken a lot of physical grunt to power the spike over the rough castings. As a fourteen stone wimp I wouldn't fancy my chances. The pulley arrangement meant effectively he must have heaved the ropes across the workshop to power the machine. (If you look carefully at the pictures if Andy T is able to post them or on the previously posted pics you will see the streaks in the metal finish left by the spike - no nice linishing pattern as left by a surface grinding wheel on a modern machine).

2. Since Norris Croydon were making post war bench planes from cast channel I wonder if a deal was done (Norris were originally in Lambeth not a million miles from Prices London shop and might well have been known to him) I have speculated that he might have adopted the shoulder and bullnose plane patterns and left the new Norris company to the bench plane market for which their automated kit would have been better suited. I have to stress that this is purely idle speculation on my part but might account for how the Norris shapes became adopted by Price - the handbill pics and the actual product as billed in the plates do not match and the printed plates are presumably pre-war based on the Carlton rather than Carltoun Street address and name change.

 

[Lawrence Hill]

OK, after a couple of disasters and a quick learning curve on re-sizing here goes with handbill and planes/castings for reference
Regards to all

SELH

 

[tobytools]

That's great thank you,
I'm very envious of your collection
Do you use these beauty's?
Thanks
TT