Trying to date a hand plane

[Dan]

I've posted a few pictures of a hand plane a friend dropped off a couple days ago, on alt.binaries.pictures.woodworking, under this same subject line. I don't know if I'll be able to make it actually work, but I'm going to give it a shot. It's a metal body with a lever cap, on a wooden bed. The blade has a Marshal Wells logo. Can anybody tell me anything about it?

Thanks, Dan

[LRod]

Isn't that illegal?

- - LRod

Master Woodbutcher and seasoned termite

Shamelessly whoring my website since 1999

[Dan]

On Tue 24 Feb 2004 10:38:35p, LRod wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I don't think there's a constitutional amendment banning it yet.

Dan

[Joe Tylicki]

I checked the pics on the binaries group. She's definitely over the age of consent.

[Larry C in Auburn, WA]

I don't care how old she is, you still can't shoot her if she won't work.

[John McCoy]

Dan wrote in news:Xns9499E485284E4s2scharternet@216.168.3.44:

Metal top with a wooden body means it's what's called a "transitional plane", for no good reason. Many people beleive transitionals have all the bad points of both metal body and wood body planes, with none of the good points of either :-)

Marshall Wells was a large hardware store. Around the turn of the century-before-last (i.e. 1900) it was common for large hardware stores to have private-brand tools. Marshall Wells seems to have mostly had their planes made by Sargent. I dunno if there's a Sargent dating page anywhere, but if there is you could probably date your plane thru that. Otherwise, a likely guess would be a date around WW1.

John

[Wolfgang Jordan]

John is right about Sargent. I've found a plane just like yours last year and asked about it on the Oldtools List. I got good info and even some copies of old Sargent catalogs. Here are illustrations of your plane from 1894, 1910 and 1922.

[Fred the Red Shirt]

Also, wooden-bodied planes including the transitionals usually have a manufacturers name and catalog number or size stamped into the endgrain.