A stanley #8C arrived in the mail, today, freshly snipe^Wpicked from the verdant fields of Easy-on-the-Bay.
Wow.
The package it arrived in was completely beat up, and if you must know, the lateral adjustment lever is a little bent, the which I attribute to the bad packaging.
It doesn't really matter. Well, how much would a blister on your foot matter to you, or a papercut? Not much.
Because this thing is big. $DIETY, it's big. It's broad. It's a Schwergewicht. I balanced it on my fingertips and grinned like a chucklehead before the mirror.
It's old, too. A sweethart, somewhere between 13 and 14, as it has
*both* the sole 1910 patent date behind the frog *and* the raised ring around the knob.It's clean but dirty. It has enough "patina" for three others of its size. Someone flattened the sole, long enough ago that the bottom isn't much different a color from the rest of the plane: you can see the grit wear behind the tails of the corrugations (and the sole is flat).
It's haggard, with a worn stump where the tote horn should be, some deep splits in the knob, monstrous pitting on the blade, and what looks to be sawdust under the leprotic lac between the letters cast into the body.
I would like to tell you how it cuts wood. The swiss cheese sandwiched between the cap iron and the frog won't do, though. I'm waiting... for Ron Hock to send me a blade and chip-breaker. We already talked.
It's a user.
er