Who was the customer for a plane like this in old England?

[D_W]

https://www.jimbodetools.com/collec...e-dovetailed-rosewood-infill-excelsior-102969
the price is shocking, but I'd bet someone will buy this plane at it or close. It sure won't be me. I have dreams of retiring early.

I've had panel planes that were on the long end of panel planes (18" or so) and at some point, the nose end of an infill gets really heavy and you have to return the plane after a stroke with two hands or the muscle on the top of your forearm will be burning.

mild steel has more friction than even cast, too - this thing would be a man killer. Would it have been a status plane?

 

[raffo]

How much was this plane relative to a #8? five times, ten times?

If you were a cabinet maker willing to spend that much money, you were well off, and if you were well off you were no longer on the floor jointing boards, you had employees doing that. I'd be inclined to think it was a status plane..... all conjecture, of course.

 

[D_W]

Not sure what the cost of a stanley style plane was. The norris catalog in 1914 quotes 49 shillings? Not sure if I got that right.

I see survey answers for men of 69.x pounds for men in 1910 and 164.x in 1920, but no clue where a cabinetmaker would come in that.

Someone on here who speaks the real english - am I reading the price list right compared to wages? (take my word on the wages -they are actually clearly stated as pounds in the wage list, though I saw another that claimed 204 for 1920 instead of 164).

http://www.norrisplanes.com/files/Norris1914CataloguePreview.jpg
if I understand that right, it would be about 67 hours of labor.

Just as shocking is inflating the average wage (due to how much less productivity was had per individual back then), the 1920 wage inflates to a real dollar figure of about 6900 pounds at 2010. So sparing better than a week's earnings for one tool for someone in craft lucky enough to earn the average wage was probably a bigger spend than us thinking a grand or a couple of grand now in comparison. Which is still a stinger, but society has far more disposable income.

The figure for average "real" (inflation adjusted) earnings in the wage list in 2010 was 3.4 times higher.

 

[D_W]

I could make a plane to about the same spec mostly by hand probably in about 125 hours, less the adjuster, which I don't have the tools to make neatly, but it would cost about $400 in materials and just isn't worth the trouble for something to chase rust off of and stare at. Anybody's guess about actual labor back then in a factory where people would be good at it and have good patterns and fixtures to do the rough work and metal finishing. 20 hours?

 

[raffo]

For a week and a half worth of earnings, it better be something out of this world for a hobbyist like me. The equivalent today I suppose would be one of those saw stop table saws, the ones that won't cut your fingers. This plane probably would have broken your toes had you mishandled it and dropped it.

 

[G S Haydon]

For some reason I think Jim Kingshot might of made a copy? Happy to be corrected.
Perhaps they were made just for show, the reverse of the Stanley No1. ?

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

David, I do not know why you are surprised by Jim Bode’s asking price? I wonder what a Holtey equivalent would sell for? This is never going to be used in a workshop - the Buyer would be a collector. And it is a special plane - made by the Karl Holtey of its time, rare, and in very good condition. Even if you, or I, could build an exact copy, we would not get a 100th of its price. It’s in the name. You know this.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[G S Haydon]

11,995, can't we just sell it for 12k? . I think the 995 cheapens the deal, premium plane, premium prices

 

[D_W]

David, I do not know why you are surprised by Jim Bode’s asking price? I wonder what a Holtey equivalent would sell for? This is never going to be used in a workshop - the Buyer would be a collector. And it is a special plane - made by the Karl Holtey of its time, rare, and in very good condition. Even if you, or I, could build an exact copy, we would not get a 100th of its price. It’s in the name. You know this.

Regards from Perth

Derek

that was to prevent anyone from turning the discussion into that. i'm not a collector of planes, but these are rare and the condition is exceptional - i may get burned at the stake for saying this, but I think it's a reasonable price.

Interestingly, Jim used to have terrible prices early on, but he brings in so many tools that I think he's more interested in getting the tools in, getting them back out now. He drew a lot of fire because the "old club" in the US was some used tool dealers who would more or less take a little and leave some behind for others.

but, things have changed - his business has changed and my opinion is based on what he does, not what he used to do. I think he's fine. Surprisingly, I listed an infill on ebay a few years ago that I fished out of england and put it on ebay and Jim bought it, paid my asking price and resold it for really not that much more.

the comment about making a plane is self-reflection - there's a desire to build things but at some point when you get a whole bunch of stuff, you start to think "what is the end game with this?" I can't make sense of spending $400 to build a plane that I wouldn't use over a $200 record or sorby stanley style jointer. And I have both of those.

 

[raffo]

If you make $420k a year after taxes, 1.5 week's worth of income will get you this plane.

If you dig a little at Jim's site you'll find a $10k Norris 2" shoulder plane. You just got to have the right frame of mind to even contemplate getting one of these things to put on a shelf.... I certainly don't.

 

[D_W]

11,995, can't we just sell it for 12k? . I think the 995 cheapens the deal, premium plane, premium prices

plus sales tax now that they collect that on the internet in the US!!

Kind of reminds me of guitars. I'm not confused that someone would pay $12k for a rare plane now, or an uncommon one in rarely good shape.

I'm going around the record player by repeating this, but for a guy like me who may have stints of dimensioning a couple of hours a day or an hour here and there to pretty much put up an infill in 5 minutes....

.....what about the guy getting the plane up on a board on thursday after working 40 hours already m-w on some deadline work.

when I handed warren my no 13, I recall him giving me a blank stare. But he did say once it was on wood with wax, "it's not that bad once you get it on the wood" or something along those lines. But in a "it's bad, it's not as bad as I thought, but it's bad".

I busted the no 13 out after filing and flattening the bottom to what you'd want for fine work, it had a LOT of wear - last year making something - an amplifier case or a shelf thinking. "I'll just use this for a while and power through it and really keep the wax on it".

it feels super solid going through hardwoods, but the feel is deceiving. I still put it back in about five minutes and got out an old try plane that I use a lot. This one.


you feel the wood more, but the weights aren't that much different and the slickness means you're not heating the sole with some of your energy.

that particular plane is involved in my comments about cap irons - it's bedded a few degrees steeper than my own made try plane, but it pushes easier. Swap the cap iron in it (a very elegantly made ward or something similar - the iron is ward) with the other plane of mine and get around the wedge issues (not so bad) and whichever plane has the cap is more productive. Noticeably.



This is a picture of the two caps - the slight difference (not so slight if you zoom in) in the hump that continues behind the initial edge is a big difference in effort pushing. The fatter one is earlier. It's not by chance that mathieson and ward ended up moving from the initial more full design to this one, and the shallower angle feeds better, to boot. Same tearout protection.

When you make planes, you tend to notice things like this and when you're considering making your own at some point (cap irons) you kind of collect little nuggets because what you don't want to do is make a plane and have someone get it and say "nice plane...pushes a little harder than mine, though".

 

[D_W]

If you make $420k a year after taxes, 1.5 week's worth of income will get you this plane.

If you dig a little at Jim's site you'll find a $10k Norris 2" shoulder plane. You just got to have the right frame of mind to even contemplate getting one of these things to put on a shelf.... I certainly don't.

I tend to be the guy who looks for the norris shoulder plane that's $200, which I think is about what the one that I have cost. Users drive up the price of user planes, so that's really the only people we'd be doing battle with. I don't even use a shoulder plane, so it's not like that one is on hand for anything other than future making.

it costs less than a new large shoulder plane and the feel is a bit nicer. It doesn't have all of the fancy adjuster stuff, but when you use it and set it for a working shaving, you start to realize that it doesn't need to have one.

I'm thankful that the disparity between collector's stuff and user gear is so large that I will not ever accidentally get in bidding wars with collectors. I'm glad to have them throw around the money if it means stuff gets kept, I suppose (it's really not on my radar). where things go south on the forums is when someone draws a conclusion that something older is rare because people were too dumb to appreciate it, or that something was common because people were too dumb to know it wasn't any good.

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

David, it’s like an electric guitar played by Eric Clapton, which I saw with an estimated value of between $1 - $1.5 million. What would one pay for one from Hendrix? Are they better guitars, per se.?

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[essexalan]

For some reason I think Jim Kingshot might of made a copy? Happy to be corrected.
Perhaps they were made just for show, the reverse of the Stanley No1. ?

Kingshott made a 30 inch version of this plane and had offers of £3000 for it according to his book. That was 30 odd years ago.
He must have had a use for such a jointer but how such a plane handled would be pure speculation on my part.
I can't see how making such a large plane would be anymore difficult than it's smaller cousins but then I have never tried.

 

[D_W]

David, it’s like an electric guitar played by Eric Clapton, which I saw with an estimated value of between $1 - $1.5 million. What would one pay for one from Hendrix? Are they better guitars, per se.?

Regards from Perth

Derek

This comparison doesn't fare well because:
* most of the value is based on who played the guitar.
* generally the better guitars were sold by dealers (used dealers) to musicians or made from the factory for a musician with more care and more selection than an off the rack guitar

The one thing that may be in common is that I doubt many of clapton's auctioned guitars will be played much unless they end up in a musician's hands again and are part of the "business"- there is some chance of that, though, or an owner loaning guitars out for recordings.

The plane stands on its own for shelf value- the question isn't a shaming about price, it's more a question of who purchases such an impractical plane at a time when craftsmen didn't spend too much on impractical things. I fancied a plane like this 15 years ago, but doing a lot of dimensioning makes me fancy this kind of stuff less - the curiosity is gone and the sense that maybe they were only uncommon due to the price has gone away.

 

[D_W]

Kingshott made a 30 inch version of this plane and had offers of £3000 for it according to his book. That was 30 odd years ago.
He must have had a use for such a jointer but how such a plane handled would be pure speculation on my part.
I can't see how making such a large plane would be anymore difficult than it's smaller cousins but then I have never tried.

Someone who reads large text to me, or it could've been steve voigt...I can't remember who...told me that the long wooden jointers were seen as a plane to be used to true a long edge and that's about it. Reference about why had something to do with physical strain, calling the 30 inch types of jointers "man killers".

That's probably confusing to anyone who ever picks one up for 2 minutes - it probably has more to do with poor ergonomics (nose heavy) and repetitive stress.

I think you're right, I've built a few planes and there's not much different about the construction - it's just bigger in size. Someone who machines planes instead of flattening them by hand may have more thoughts about work holding complications, but I'd build something like this primarily by hand so work holding or mill travel issues wouldn't factor in. It would be a lot of physical work to make something like this given it wouldn't be used.

 

[essexalan]

Someone who reads large text to me, or it could've been steve voigt...I can't remember who...told me that the long wooden jointers were seen as a plane to be used to true a long edge and that's about it. Reference about why had something to do with physical strain, calling the 30 inch types of jointers "man killers".

That's probably confusing to anyone who ever picks one up for 2 minutes - it probably has more to do with poor ergonomics (nose heavy) and repetitive stress.

I think you're right, I've built a few planes and there's not much different about the construction - it's just bigger in size. Someone who machines planes instead of flattening them by hand may have more thoughts about work holding complications, but I'd build something like this primarily by hand so work holding or mill travel issues wouldn't factor in. It would be a lot of physical work to make something like this given it wouldn't be used.

There is a 22 1/2" A1 Holtey up for sale at £10560.00 just as a comparison. Probably the pinnacle of infill planes only affordable to those who will probably never use them. It would be good to achieve that level of engineering excellence especially if you can run your hobby in profit.
Both Spiers and Norris offered 30" jointers which makes the mind boggle.

 

[D_W]

There is a 22 1/2" A1 Holtey up for sale at £10560.00 just as a comparison. Probably the pinnacle of infill planes only affordable to those who will probably never use them. It would be good to achieve that level of engineering excellence especially if you can run your hobby in profit.
Both Spiers and Norris offered 30" jointers which makes the mind boggle.

I tracked that down. Lovely plane. I like Karl - I asked him some questions at one point (when I was a relative beginner) and he answered them in earnest, and thoughtfully.

I hope nobody takes offense to this, but i liked his early planes that were closer to precise makes of the original norris types. And tracking down the one you mentioned, that's exactly what it is.

Too rich for my blood, but exceptionally crisp.

Check out the norris link above. They advertised that they could make the A1 up to 36" on request.

(!!!!!!!!!!)

If someone finds a picture of such a thing, I'd love to see it.

 

[D_W]

One of the things that Karl doesn't get enough credit for is how much trouble he must go to sourcing wood. Anyone who wants to build a really nice infill, one of the first road blocks you'll run into is finding good wood big enough to build an infill.

You an pretty quickly find people online who will send undocumented wood from india - it's just tea plantation rosewood and there's nothing illegal about it until it's sent without paperwork. But to find wood like that on the ground or old and dry without cracking or bug damage. Tough!

Or in some cases, Karl will make a full jointer with solid boxwood billets. Boggling.

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

This comparison doesn't fare well because:
* most of the value is based on who played the guitar.
* generally the better guitars were sold by dealers (used dealers) to musicians or made from the factory for a musician with more care and more selection than an off the rack guitar

The one thing that may be in common is that I doubt many of clapton's auctioned guitars will be played much unless they end up in a musician's hands again and are part of the "business"- there is some chance of that, though, or an owner loaning guitars out for recordings.

The plane stands on its own for shelf value- the question isn't a shaming about price, it's more a question of who purchases such an impractical plane at a time when craftsmen didn't spend too much on impractical things. I fancied a plane like this 15 years ago, but doing a lot of dimensioning makes me fancy this kind of stuff less - the curiosity is gone and the sense that maybe they were only uncommon due to the price has gone away.

David, there are dozens of plane makers capable of building better planes than a Norris. Either by hand or with the aid of CNC. The value of a Norris lies in its name. Ditto an instrument played by any famous musician. It's value lies in being owned and/or played by a famous name.

Regards from Perth

Derek