How low can I go?

[bugbear]

This may help:

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bill ... -1900.html

Here's a couple of calculations I did before;

post777917.html?hilit=inflation#p777917

post662175.html?hilit=inflation#p662175

BugBear

 

[rxh]

Below is an extract from a supplement to The Woodworker, May 1960, which lists the planes available at that time and their prices.

Taking as an example, a Stanley No.5 cost 49/9 (about £2.49). Using the converter from BB’s link above, £2.49 is equivalent to £48.56 now. In 1960, the average UK wage was £18/5/0 (£18.25), equivalent to £356.25 now.

I’ll scan and post the rest of the supplement if readers are interested.

 

[RossJarvis]

Below is an extract from a supplement to The Woodworker, May 1960, which lists the planes available at that time and their prices.

Taking as an example, a Stanley No.5 cost 49/9 (about £2.49). Using the converter from BB’s link above, £2.49 is equivalent to £48.56 now. In 1960, the average UK wage was £18/5/0 (£18.25), equivalent to £356.25 now.

I’ll scan and post the rest of the supplement if readers are interested.

That's quite interesting, I did a similar calculation recently and it seemed that relatively speaking, good tools were fairly cheap in the old days in comparison to today. But that may be an unfair comparison as I think hand-tools have given way to power tools in a lot of instances. I was surprised as I'd read and been told by instructors that "in the old days" you'd budget at least a weeks wages on a plane (or was it a months). Maybe that was for apprentices getting their tools together, knowing they'd be using them for years to come.

 

[bugbear]

In 1960, the average UK wage was £18/5/0 (£18.25)

I haven't found a reference for average (mean, mode, or median) wages. Do you have a link?

BugBear

 

[MMUK]

In 1960, the average UK wage was £18/5/0 (£18.25)

I haven't found a reference for average (mean, mode, or median) wages. Do you have a link?

BugBear

I think the £18 5' is a little optimistic.

A more realistic figure would have been around £14 10' up to around £15. And that was a fairly premium salary for men working at the coal face.

 

[rxh]

I haven’t searched very hard but it does not seem all that easy to find historical data on average wages. I got my figure of £948.93 per annum (= £18.25 pw) from this site:
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/in ... 014AA4sFWm
- which in turn links to this site:
http://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/ ... esult2.php
- which gives a lower figure: Average Annual Nominal Earnings: £545.06 (= £10.48 pw).
I have just found this site:
http://www.quandl.com/MWORTH-MeasuringW ... l-Earnings
- which also says £545.06.

 

[KevM]

Clear as mud from that lot!

 

[rxh]

Agreed
Maybe a reader who was working in 1960 and remembers what they earned can help us here?

 

[Vann]

When I started my apprenticeship in 1973, I was on 81.2cents per hour - which was about 8s 1 1/2d. I bought my Stanley No.4 that year for $7.94 (= £3 19s 5d).

We changed from £ to $ in 1967, with £1 becoming $2. IIRC our pound was equal to, or fractionally less than yours, at the time.

Cheers, Vann.

 

[RossJarvis]

It's become very difficult to compare prices here as we've got a massive issue with importing skilled workers from Eastern Europe. The main issue is that the British do not want to pay fair wages for people who work with their hands. It's fine and just for the bankers or managers to earn £1, 000, 000 a year or more, but if someone who cares for the elderly or disabled or has to work with their hands wants more than £15,000 a year, they're being greedy or are trying to destabilise the "righteous system of capitalism". This is exacerbated by the fact that the UK education system has completely lost the ability to educate people in practical skills.

 

[Jacob]

Agreed
Maybe a reader who was working in 1960 and remembers what they earned can help us here?

I had my first job (building labourer) in about 1962 and seem to recall about £12 a week but rising steeply to above £20 if I did all the overtime and weekends.
Faithful planes - I tried the no 10 and it was unusable. I'm fairly tolerant of cheap stuff normally but this was useless. Quality of all the bits seemed fine but they wouldn't fit together due to inaccurate machining. Impossible to remedy. How low can you go? In this case to the point of completely useless.

 

[John15]

My recollection chimes with Jacob's. As a general labourer working around 60 hours a week I used to clear something like £20.

John

 

[bugbear]

Agreed
Maybe a reader who was working in 1960 and remembers what they earned can help us here?

Won't help. We need averages (of various kinds) not induividual spot points.

BugBear

 

[MMUK]

The #6 has arrived. First impressions are very good. It seems solidly built and apart from a tiny nick on the one edge of the sole it seems pretty flat and smooth. It even has hardwood handles!

I'll get some pics up later when I've sorted out some bench space in the workshop.

 

[G S Haydon]

Good stuff! How flat is the sole? This was my main issue with the Faithfull #7. As you alluded to the rest of the plane was actually OK. The handle and knob on the #7 were the highlight, a lovely matt finish hardwood and very pleasing to hold. Needles to say I was gutted to find the sole was Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo bent.

 

[MMUK]

Apart from some remnants of engineering fluid/grease and the tiny nick on the one edge, the sole appears to be pretty damned flat to my eye - I even had my glasses on at the time so it can't be too bad. I can get the O/H to take the sole to work and put it on the CMM for an engineeringly accurate assessment

 

[bugbear]

The #6 has arrived. First impressions are very good. It seems solidly built and apart from a tiny nick on the one edge of the sole it seems pretty flat and smooth. It even has hardwood handles!

I remember being amazed by a super cheap #4 in a pound shop; it was made in Brazil, apparently cast from pot metal (like a Dinky toy), extremely coarse machining, and very roughly shaped and finished handles.

But the handles were very nice timber.

BugBear

 

[MMUK]

I remember being amazed by a super cheap #4 in a pound shop; it was made in Brazil, apparently cast from pot metal (like a Dinky toy), extremely coarse machining, and very roughly shaped and finished handles.

But the handles were very nice timber.

BugBear

You mean they weren't Brazilian plastic? :shock:

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Apart from some remnants of engineering fluid/grease and the tiny nick on the one edge, the sole appears to be pretty damned flat to my eye - I even had my glasses on at the time so it can't be too bad. I can get the O/H to take the sole to work and put it on the CMM for an engineeringly accurate assessment

That might be useful if it's possible - some objective and accurate data for sole flatness is something very few of us are equipped to measure. So whilst we may say, "the sole is dead flat" we don't really know because we've checked it against a straightedge of unknown straightness.

(For those not familiar with modern metrology practice, a CMM is a 'co-ordinate measuring machine'. Usually it's a granite surface plate, on which the workpiece is set, with a gantry straddling it carrying a sensitive probe. The gantry moves along the surface plate, a carriage moves across the gantry, and a vertical arm carrying the probe moves up and down on the carriage. The probe touches the workpiece, and the location of gantry, carriage and arm are recorded. The probe then moves to the next measuring point, and ditto repeato. Once all the measuring points are sampled, a record exists of each point relative to a fixed datum, so a computer model dimensionally accurate within the resolution of the CMM is created. Very handy for complex shapes, such as turbine blades, gearbox casings and the like.

Bigger ones are used for such tasks as measuring car bodies after assembly and welding, and similar tasks.)

(Sorry MMUK - not trying to steal your thunder, but I just thought not everybody would be familiar with CMMs)

 

[bugbear]

Apart from some remnants of engineering fluid/grease and the tiny nick on the one edge, the sole appears to be pretty damned flat to my eye - I even had my glasses on at the time so it can't be too bad. I can get the O/H to take the sole to work and put it on the CMM for an engineeringly accurate assessment

That might be useful if it's possible - some objective and accurate data for sole flatness is something very few of us are equipped to measure. So whilst we may say, "the sole is dead flat" we don't really know because we've checked it against a straightedge of unknown straightness.

Some of us manage ... (bottom of page)

http://www.oocities.org/plybench/flatten_practice.html

BugBear