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Fenton & Marsden Measuring & marking Tool Makers

Fenton & Marsden slitting gauge

Fenton & Marsden slitting gauge
‘Fenton & Marsden’ slitting gauge

In the late 19th century, table saws weren’t that common. Your average craftsman was spending a great deal of his time cutting various pieces of stock to size, usually with a hand ripsaw. Following a line with a rip saw, even with good skills, usually meant the saw wavered a little as it followed the grain of the wood instead.

Slitting gauges took many forms, and many craftsmen made their own, but they all followed the general form of a blade, held in place by some sort of wedge at the end of a bar. Also running on that bar, was a moveable fence. The fence ran along the edge of the stock, adjusting the distance from the edge of the stock, to the blade.

A slitting gauge tended to be used on thinner stock where the blade could complete the cut right through, such as the thin stock used for the bottoms of cabinet drawers. But these tools also proved to be very helpful in scribing a good starting line on thicker stock for the saw to follow.

Fenton & Marsden slitting gauge
Original brass wedge holds blade in place

 

Fenton & Marsden slitting gauge
Fence-tightening screw is made of boxwood

I found this gauge in a car boot sale. It’s made by ‘Fenton & Marsden’, another excellent edge tool maker from Sheffield. It’s 9” long, is made of ebony, with a brass end and original brass wedge. It also has a tightening screw made of boxwood, which is really beautiful.

At Hackney Tools, we buy antique tools. If you have any old tools in good condition and you would like to sell them, please get in touch.

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People

Liberty Tools

Over at Hackney Tools, if we had to try and write a manifesto for our beliefs, it would just be a direct transcript of the words of H.G ‘Skip’ Brack, of Liberty Tools in Maine, U.S.A. In our modern, commercialized world, it’s now common to see people intimidated by the idea of fixing or making things themselves. But as Skip says, people are so happy when they even glaze their own windows with a putty knife, rather than employ someone to do it. God bless H.G ‘Skip’ Brack, and all those like him. Find tools. Learn about tools. Use tools!

Categories
Planes Stanley

Meet the Baileys (Part 2)

Revel in the beauty that is the Stanley No.7 Jointer plane.

Stanley Bailey No.7
Stanley Bailey No.7

Stanley Bailey No.7
The blade that’s in this plane isn’t the original, although it’s a Stanley blade. I’ll switch it out when I get round to finding an original.

 

Stanley Bailey No.7
Coquettish ‘look at my bottom’ shot, shows small adjustment nut, and that steel lower bolt, that allows the whole frog to move forward and backward.

 

Stanley Bailey No.7
3rd-gen Bailey frog receiver, as seen on my other No.4 smoother. You can’t moan about these, they’re solid.

[notice]Tool Nerd Alert! The following information is reserved for people who, like me, probably should get out and socialise a bit more.[/notice]
I believe this plane is a Type 11. It has rosewood handle, and the front knob is a ‘low’ version. Manufacture date is therefore 1910-1918, and the blade should carry a pretty wacky ‘V’ ‘Stanley, New Britain, Conn, USA’ logo. It has a small brass depth adjuster nut and it has the ‘APR-19-10’ patent date added behind the other dates on the plane casting, behind the frog. Please let me know if I’ve got this wrong. You learn by your mistakes!

Stanley Bailey No.7
I could, and at some point will, write a long post about repairs. One of the things that attracted me to this plane, was the beautifully repaired handle. To me, a nicely done repair is as interesting as a makers mark. As with a lot of these finds, you can’t help but wonder who did this and exactly how he went about it. What a lovely job.

 

Stanley Bailey No.7
Someone wanted to make sure this didn’t get nicked!

 

Stanley Bailey No.7
As previously mentioned, this isn’t he original blade, and a close up shows it’s a bit crappy. However, this shot is just to show how a chipbreaker exaggerates the angle of the cut shaving, once the blade is slicing the wood. The chip breaker lifts the shaving a little more, making it break out.

Jointer planes like this one, are used to true an edge, so that successive pieces butt up against one another very closely, or they’re used to get the face of a piece of wood very flat. At 22″ long, it’s one of Stanley’s biggest planes, being only secondary to the No.8, which is 24″. Jointers are long planes because the ‘sole’ of the plane is less likely to follow the ups and downs of the wood, but will instead remove the high and lows, ready for planing with a smaller-sized plane.

I think these planes are just beautiful, and for not much money, you can snag one on an online auction site, and have a killer tool working in no time. If the one you find is rough, rusty and looks like crap, this is the sort of thing you need to do.

So there it is. The second of my Bailey family.

I buy old, good quality woodworking tools. If you have any tools you would like to sell, please get in touch using the contact form on the home page.

Categories
Planes Stanley Tool Makers

Meet the Baileys (Part 1)

Stanley Bailey No.4

This is the standard Stanley plane, designed by Leonard Bailey, of Boston Massachusetts. This one is a ‘No.4’, and sits in a middling position on the size scale, from the diminutive ‘No.1’, through to the large jointer, the ‘No.8’. I’ll soon be posting a some more detailed info about Leonard Bailey, and his association with Stanley as a separate page. In the meantime, I’ll stand on the shoulders of giants, and point you to the wonderful website of Patrick Leach, Patrick’s Blood & Gore. If you’re looking for information about Stanley tools, Patrick’s website is an absolute must-read.

Patrick’s earlier career was in software. He developed an interest in woodworking early on, and now admits to being a ‘self-confessed tool fanatic.
He has an enviable knowledge of Stanley, and other well-known makers.

A proportion of my own small tool collection is made by Stanley, and it’s becoming something of a mission to build a complete set of Stanley USA-made ‘Bailey’ planes, numbering 1 through to 8. Recently I managed to find my first Bailey, (which is a number 4), from a private sale on the web.

Stanley Bailey No.4
The standard no.4 measures 9″ long, by 2″ wide. It weighs in around 3 3/4 pounds and was manufactured between 1869-1984.
Stanley Bailey No.4
Removing the lever cap (left) shows the iron and the chipbreaker (sandwiched together in the middle by a bolt).
Stanley Bailey No.4
The frog, the part that remains in the sole of the plane, has an adjustment lever protruding from the top. The lever, when moved left or right, slightly angles the tip of the blade up or down either side, to make sure your cut is square.

Tool nerd alert! (Quite geeky and unnecessary facts about frog casting variations follow).

The casting in the base of the plane takes a lot of stress holding the frog, which in turn holds the blade, chipbreaker and lever cap. Consequently, the method for holding the frog was constantly being revised by Stanley and was the focus of many new patents. Previous to the design shown, the frog was seated on a flat bed with machined grooves, but in 1902 this new design was introduced. The frog has support from a cross rib and centre rib, and also support on its leading edge from the casting, as well as being held by the two bolts. Planes of this period have ‘PAT’D/MAR-25-02/AUG-19-02’ embossed into the sole of the plane.

Stanley Bailey No.4
The design of the frog receiver, (the part of the plane casting where the frog is bolted to), underwent four major changes during the complete manufacturing period.
Stanley Bailey No.4
The brass adjustment nut moves in and out, moving a ‘Y’ shape wishbone-shaped piece of metal in and out. This movement transfers to an up and down movement as the metal tab protrudes through the front face of the frog, (see pic below).
Stanley Bailey No.4
Here you can see the metal tab that’s raised and lowered by the movement of the rear adjustment lever and wishbone. This tab engages with a slot in the blade, resulting in fine depth adjustment of the blade in the mouth of the plane.
Stanley Bailey No.4
The no.4 is a standard-sized plane, but see how small it looks compared to some of Stanley’s larger models. Here’s the #4 (top) next to a #7, which is a big ol’ badass jointer. I’ll be posting more pics of the #7 soon, (my second purchase of the family).
Categories
Drabble & Sanderson Saws Tool Makers

Drabble & Sanderson (Sheffield, UK)

One of the things I’d like to explore with this blog, as well as showing individual hand tools, is to to give an insight into some the British manufacturers responsible for making them.

D&S dovetail saw
D&S dovetail saw

 

D&S dovetail saw
Drabble & Sanderson dovetail saw (close up)

I found this ‘Drabble and Sanderson’ 8″ dovetail saw on an auction site, 17ppi, and marked ‘Warranted’, ‘Sheffield’ and ‘Cast Steel’. The tool making industry of Sheffield is well documented, but I wanted to find out more about Drabble and Sanderson.

D&S dovetail saw
Drabble & Sanderson dovetail saw (close up)

Several listings popped up on the internet, mostly marking Drabble and Sanderson as having premises at Steelhouse Lane, Sheffield (around 1825), then Ebenezer Works (around 1837) and finally the same works address, at Russell St. Maybe someone has more information about this?

Then, in the way that one does on the internet, some idle noodling around led me to this amazing account by ‘Brit’, on lumberjocks.com. It documents the breaching of Dale Dyke reservoir on March 11th, 1864. A local disaster which affected many people including Thomas Wilkinson and Robert Howden of Drabble and Sanderson. The other links listed by Brit are also worth reading. The internet is sort of amazing like that.

Hackney Tools buys old, good quality woodworking tools. If you have any tools you would like to sell, please get in touch using the contact form on the home page.