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o_O I s'pose it could be used for that purpose Bod, but we were taught a slightly more refined method. It's now illegal to dock tails unless there's a compelling medical reason, of course. I forgot about polycythaemia as a condition where draining off excess red-cells would be beneficial, so...

Well tibi, you have learnt some valuable lessons on cap-irons, so you haven't wasted your time. :) The situation you described is pretty commonplace on old planes. I think Stanley et al deliberately made the cap-irons so that most of the CI sits flat against the blade when screwed together and...

I don't think the knife is a meat-cleaver, the handle is a bit flimsy & the hole at the front & general shape suggest to me it was attached to a pivot point on a board and used for chopping up stuff (like plug tobacco which was an old "worm medicine" and would fit with the veterinary theme of...

I've never come across one of these steel-bodied 4s or 5s in the flesh metal either, but they sound interesting. Patrick Leach doesn't denigrate them in any way & he's normally pretty quick to slam anything he thinks is a bit off the pace. In fact, he sounds borderline enthusiastic about them...

Um, it's a Stanley, made in England - what more do you need to know? :D I don't know if was ever dignified with a model number in the UK, but it's clearly a derivative of the Stanley "51" type. I had one I bought from a department store when I was 13, it was very inexpensive even for the...

Yep, that's a number used by the Ohio Tool Co., though they also used a more 'conventional' numbering system as well for some of their range putting an "0" in front of the equivalent Stanley number as Record later did). Looks like it lost its lever cap at some stage & the Marples just happened...

David, I have tried to research the New Haven Edge tool Co., but can find precious little info on line. It seems they were a company that mostly made tools for others to sell under their own brand-names, so relatively few carried the NHET Co. stamp. I acquired these chisels in the early 80s...

I do love a good paring chisel! I have neither the patience nor skills to make anything like yours, David, but I was lucky to acquire some long, socketed New Haven chisels many years ago. I don't know if they were made for this purpose, but the shape is perfect for paring and their "offset"...

I presume by "frog" you are talking about the wedge-shaped moveable part that sits on a sloped ramp? The angle of the wedge has to be added to the angle of the bed ramp (wrt the sole) to arrive at the pitch angle. I have never measured the bed-ramp angle on any 'bedrocks' but eyeball memory...

Is that a #7 or a 6? In any case, it's a big'un and you are up for a bit lot of work getting it flat, by the looks of where it's at now - a lot is going to have to come off the rear section to get the toe co-planar. It's probably only a couple of thou high, but that can take a lot of work to...

In a word, Pete, 'low'. I've got two Veritas low-angle jobs and my only real beef is with their adjusters. Both mine are last-century & have the original coarser thread adjusters. These are a bear for fine adjustments, the blade goes from zero to 100 at the merest touch! There must've been a...

Tom, I most definitely do NOT favour the Norris adjuster! Clever as it is, it has fatal flaws, imo. To alleviate the insensitivity of the early design, the later patent uses absurdly fine threads which wear quickly (especially when used by heavy-handed types who are accustomed to Bailey planes...

Could be useful in some patternmaking tasks, too. The nose looks quite fragile, so whoever made & used it (it does look well-used) was a careful craftsman, methinks. I think we moderns tend to forget how readily the craftsmen of a century & more ago made & adapted tools for specific purposes...

Good to read that even someone of your ability & experience can make bloopers, C.R., I can boast I'm in the best company, now... :) I just finished making a couple of scaled-down planes using a softer brass than the C380 which is the only alloy easily obtained in convenient sizes here. This...

I've got an A5. I could make a sketch with the main dimensions, and trace the sole profile on some 5mm grid paper. That should get you close enough for a model. I recently finished a small coffin-shaped infill myself, that is roughly half-size. It was fun but more of a fiddle than doing a...

Yep, that's the way I wuz taught, too, & I still finesse tenon shoulders & the like that way if they are less than 75mm or so wide. A shoulder plane doesn't excel at trimming narrowish tenon shoulders, there's simply not enough support & you're more likely to make a mess (speaking for myself)...

Somewhat reluctantly, I confess that I own 3 shoulder planes and a bull-nosed rebate. They are good tools & work very well but these are tools that will take a very, very long time to return the investment of time & $$s that went into making them (with apologies to G. K. Miller for ripping off...

Yes indeedy. This fact is frequently overlooked in the many instructions on fettling Bailey type planes. If everything is original & matching properly, the thumbwheel should also be somewhere near the centre of its stud or slightly on the frog side when the cam (or 'peg') is perpendicular to...

It does a bit more than that, Ian. It's very much an integral part of the depth adjuster system, and its dimensions are calculated pretty closely to give the blade a useable range of movement. There isn't a lot of wriggle-room, if the distance from edge to cam slot is out by 2-3mm it can mean...

Moving the frog back shouldn't change blade exposure. The frog slides parallel to the sole, so it should make no difference to anything other than the mouth gap. I suspect pulling the frog back in your case simply opened the mouth enough to let the grossly thick shavings through. If it really...