It's such a brilliant piece of industrial design. Timeless. Like the chair you're reproducing. It's like asking for empirical evidence that a Van Gogh is a masterpiece. Do you have any empirical evidence that Wegner's The Chair by Golly really isn't THE CHAIR?
Everything about the Bailey was predicated on a much thinner plane iron than was being used at the time.
Otherwise, one gets the feeling that Lee Valley must be about to introduce a line of really thick plane irons (or thicker than they currently produce) and this is the start of the campaign to soften up the beachhead for the full-scale internet marketing blitz and "review" lollapalooza to come.
"Hey, I helped design it (we're told) it's only fitting that I should review it against its competition too." Yeah right, on the planet Biased a few solar systems from ours..
Paul Sellers pleads the case, though he is not in possession of a secret treasure trove of Bailey's letters and notebooks:
Leonard Bailey – Designer, tool maker, inventor and entrepreneur.
Let me ask you a question. In the 1850’s 99% of the hundreds of thousands of woodworkers were using wooden bodied planes with thick irons which tapered from around5/32” thick to 1/8”. Because the irons were wedged into the body of the plane they needed something that would lock the position of the iron. That way, should fractional slippage take place, the iron wedged between the wooden wedge and the plane body to become immoveable. These irons were hammer forged by drop hammers and then ground to dimension. Leonard Bailey, one of the brilliant woodworking tool designers of the day and a cabinet maker to boot, decided to make a thin iron for his newly invented Bailey-pattern plane. Throughout the ensuing decades, 130 years to be close to precise, no one used a thicker iron. Why? Well it’s dead simple and it wasn’t because they were thick. Bailey’s newly invented thin irons actually worked and worked exceptionally well. They still do and no one can convince me that Leonard Bailey was a dummy when his planes remained virtually unchanged throughout one and a half centuries. No one can convince me that he just missed it and no one can convince me that there was in any way a shortfall in the invention. He was designing a whole plane and he was going against the traditions of the age. He faced great opposition, but Stanley Rule and Level stuck behind him not because they were trying to create a fashionable trend like so many mass makers of tools. No, he invented a plane with thin irons for a strategic reason, stuck to his guns and created an affordable plane. How amazing is that.
There is no doubt that the Bailey pattern plane was a well designed fit-for-purpose product and it is amazing that no one has really bettered it or come up with something different that matched its quality or bettered it. If everyone would readjust their thinking even just a little and look with serious consideration at the Leonard Bailey’s Bailey-pattern plane and then too give credit to the thousands upon thousands of ordinary woodworkers who used them for all those decades without change we would discover a plane of real value and substance. It was indeed a plane engineered to last, yet with the lightweight versatility of a bantamweight boxer.
Everything about the Bailey was predicated on a much thinner plane iron than was being used at the time.
Otherwise, one gets the feeling that Lee Valley must be about to introduce a line of really thick plane irons (or thicker than they currently produce) and this is the start of the campaign to soften up the beachhead for the full-scale internet marketing blitz and "review" lollapalooza to come.
"Hey, I helped design it (we're told) it's only fitting that I should review it against its competition too." Yeah right, on the planet Biased a few solar systems from ours..
Paul Sellers pleads the case, though he is not in possession of a secret treasure trove of Bailey's letters and notebooks:
Leonard Bailey – Designer, tool maker, inventor and entrepreneur.
Let me ask you a question. In the 1850’s 99% of the hundreds of thousands of woodworkers were using wooden bodied planes with thick irons which tapered from around5/32” thick to 1/8”. Because the irons were wedged into the body of the plane they needed something that would lock the position of the iron. That way, should fractional slippage take place, the iron wedged between the wooden wedge and the plane body to become immoveable. These irons were hammer forged by drop hammers and then ground to dimension. Leonard Bailey, one of the brilliant woodworking tool designers of the day and a cabinet maker to boot, decided to make a thin iron for his newly invented Bailey-pattern plane. Throughout the ensuing decades, 130 years to be close to precise, no one used a thicker iron. Why? Well it’s dead simple and it wasn’t because they were thick. Bailey’s newly invented thin irons actually worked and worked exceptionally well. They still do and no one can convince me that Leonard Bailey was a dummy when his planes remained virtually unchanged throughout one and a half centuries. No one can convince me that he just missed it and no one can convince me that there was in any way a shortfall in the invention. He was designing a whole plane and he was going against the traditions of the age. He faced great opposition, but Stanley Rule and Level stuck behind him not because they were trying to create a fashionable trend like so many mass makers of tools. No, he invented a plane with thin irons for a strategic reason, stuck to his guns and created an affordable plane. How amazing is that.
There is no doubt that the Bailey pattern plane was a well designed fit-for-purpose product and it is amazing that no one has really bettered it or come up with something different that matched its quality or bettered it. If everyone would readjust their thinking even just a little and look with serious consideration at the Leonard Bailey’s Bailey-pattern plane and then too give credit to the thousands upon thousands of ordinary woodworkers who used them for all those decades without change we would discover a plane of real value and substance. It was indeed a plane engineered to last, yet with the lightweight versatility of a bantamweight boxer.
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