Lay off the file buddy

[James Taglienti]

Item number 260666825708 on the local auction site... the first picture is the freshly widened mouth of a nice spiers infill plane, with the offfending file and little bits of glinting steel in the background.

At least move the file. Talk about caught red handed.

[Chris Vandiver]

I like the way he says "not retored"!
It may get sniped for the $250.00 starting price.

[Bill Houghton]

Man, the top of the bun on that plane has had a hard life. Looks like it was dragged through gravel!

[Gary Hodgin]

Man, the top of the bun on that plane has had a hard life. Looks like it was dragged through gravel!

I was thinking maybe a dog got a hold of it.

[Zach England]

not sure I get it...did he widen the mouth to fit a different blade?

Otherwise why would he widen it?

[Jim Koepke]

Otherwise why would he widen it?

Maybe he wanted to use it to make fat potato chips.

jtk

[James Taglienti]

jim... i'd recommend an A4 to make potato chips... less risk of rust. if you're a stickler for accuracy, then an A6. you could also make them 3/8" wider that way.

[Rick Markham]

He had to widen the mouth so the fat potato chips would come out, they kept getting stuck and he ruined the bun by banging it on the counter to get them out. :p

[David Weaver]

I'm not sure that file and those shavings go with that plane. I've seen a lot of older infills with mouths bigger than that. Not saying that it didn't happen, though - very well could've filed it.

To the point of the "infill magic", though, I think Joel Moskowitz wrote an article online that summarized well that you have to know what you're looking for buying them if you want a plane that outperforms a premium bench plane.

I wonder who that plane belongs to. There's a dealer in fayetteville at an antique mall, who has a lot of tools and very honest pricing (his prices are lower than ebay for a LOT of things). I can't remember his name, but last time I talked to him, he didn't sell on ebay. Fayetteville PA isn't exactly a huge town, though.

[Zach England]

He had to widen the mouth so the fat potato chips would come out, they kept getting stuck and he ruined the bun by banging it on the counter to get them out. :p


I admit I have, more than once, considered using a hand plane in the kitchen. The toothed blade in a block plane would make fantastic citrus zest.

[Chris Vandiver]

I see it didn't sell.

[David Weaver]

I see it didn't sell.

Nope. It very well may be worth $250 to me, but I don't need it and I like to make my own now (coincidentally enough, because I can control the size of the mouth within a thousandth and make the iron bed exactly where I want it to bed (only right at the mouth and up the bed where the lever cap screw touches).

But, it's likely that plane would be a good performer for most things.

Ebay, however, is not the place to sell goods where you leave a buyer with any question. I see some of the sellers on there get prices for cherry tools that no sane person would pay, but you are rewarded on there if you have a nice condition tool and make the buyer aware that you know absolutely everything about it. I also see items that don't need a lot of help but the seller poo-poos something about it. That takes every single person who doesn't know a lot about repairing tools out of the equation, and I get the sense that a lot of the buying on ebay is done by people who aren't exactly savvy buyers.

[Frank Drew]

How in the world did the front handle get chewed up like that? I can't imagine that it would have happened while anyone was actually using the tool, at least using it in the conventional fashion.

Rats gnawed on it, maybe?

[David Weaver]

How in the world did the front handle get chewed up like that? I can't imagine that it would have happened while anyone was actually using the tool, at least using it in the conventional fashion.

Rats gnawed on it, maybe?

Way it broke (cleanly all the way across), you'd have to assume it was struck by something or it struck something.

At least that's what I'd assume.

[David Keller NC]

How in the world did the front handle get chewed up like that? I can't imagine that it would have happened while anyone was actually using the tool, at least using it in the conventional fashion.

Rats gnawed on it, maybe?

Many infill planes have this defect. A common practice in the day was to grasp the iron, and strike the front infill with a hammer to slightly retract the blade without loosening the lever cap. On e-bay, it's very common to see one of these planes listed as "in untouched condition" where the front infill has been buggered up by a hammer, then planed off to remove the damage (generally done by the original owner some 100 years ago, so that the planed area has aged to match the rest of the infill wood).