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someone at Sargent had already came up with a better design in 1903 that meant you could adjust the frog without the adjusting the set and Stanly thus had to come up with an (inferior) alternative. Mind you the Sargent planes are even rarer than bedrocks)...

the frog design used in bedrocks is a better solution for adjusting the position of the frog than you get with a standard bailey design. The fact is that the most of Stanley's customer concluded that this was an improvement they did not need/were not prepared to pay extra for and consequently...

I agree with the above -it is a nice plane, but there is nothing remotely rare or unusual about it. If you would like a pristine example I say go ahead and refurb it to whatever level you want to achieve. On my used planes I just cleaned them up , but I did scrape of the finish from the...

and a bit more relevant to the OPs question, this Norton catalogue from 1935 shows the same label design, but there is no mention of 'pocket' stones. interesting to see that man-made india stones cost the same as the best washita, and that Hard Arkansas are 5x the price (reflecting the cost...

an interesting potted history of sharpening stones - including plaudits for Arkansas and Washita stones - is here: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-Jx ... &q&f=false I reproduced the images for brits in case they can't see the book Also an account from 1898 that explains Pike had a...

although ultimately a matter of preference, one argument in favour of starting out with a flush mounted vice is that it is easy to experiment with the alternative arrangement by adding a temporary rear jaw to see if you like it, whereas going the other way round is much less convenient.

lovely work Nick - I am sure it will encourage others to have a go also. Even though a bench seems like quite an intimidating project, I think threads like this help show that a good (simple) design like the one you are using is within the reach of anyone with a few basic tools and a bit...

ha ha! hard to argue with him on this one though - the 52 1/2 is a classic design and as far as I'm concerned has never been bettered. There is a reason there are so many of them about still, and that is because they are very good which meant many were purchased and most survived ...

quite right DW - it is perfectly logical to measure your own efforts against a something that is known to be a very good standard. Are there any better ways to improve your skills than by observing the work of others and trying to match or improve on it? I think not. Looking forward to the...

.. and it seems the Stanley HSS irons were available in Oz and NZ for a long time too, so there must have been a demand for them. I wonder if it is practical to sharpen them with oil stones (and if that is the reason they are relatively uncommon)?

alternatively, if you are not fussy about your bench top, you can just use a screw/nail as a temporary stop in place of the batten.

here is an approach you could try: WNrof3cd1cA

looking again at the W&P patent, what they claim to have invented was a chisel where the HSS bit was butt welded to the body. if I remember rightly (from pictures - I have never come across one) that is how the Stanley HSS irons were made too. This is a puzzling choice in as far as they...

thanks Andy - the link has some I hadn't seen before. Another thumbs up for the Internet Archive - a brilliant project.

yes I think that is the key - someone like Richard Maquire who uses the flat surface on his bench to speed up his timber prep (and does all his prep with hand tools) no doubt regards the effort of flattening the top every now and then as worth while, but if you needed it infrequently it would...

Since you don't need to make the whole bench top flat to use it for the purposes mentioned above - just the small area you typically work on - then there can't be much difference in initial effort whether using the top directly or making a separate board. I'd say there are pros and cons to...

I am not sure Maquire claims to have invented the idea :) He does 99% of the work by eye, just the final check for any (hard to see) twist left over is done on the bench top. Mind you, It is true that you have to sweep/blow the shavings off first and it would not be up to scratch for...

something I learned watching the English Woodworker videos was how a flat bench top can be used to speed up preparing boards. He removes the obvious high points and twist by eye (using the edge of the sole of the plane to check for flatness). After that he places the board face down on the...

in case you haven't seen it, there is a short film from 1939 about the steel maker Edgar Allen ltd." https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/wat ... play-film= One part shows the workmen forge a bundle of blister steel bars to create shear steel. As per BugBear the film was made very close to...

this has come up a couple of times on this thread - a while back I compared some older Records to a modern version and pointed out that, at least for the examples I had, the castings were slightly thicker in the older ones. I assumed this meant they were better quality until someone pointed...