gothic bead plane, ever seen one?

[jim goddard]

I can only say I've ever seen one in all my travels and that was in the distant past when old tools were much more common than today. Has anyone else seen this profile and if so what size(s)? Given all the woodwork of that period it seems as though these planes should be more common. Perhaps it was just the area I was in at the time? Perhaps these profiles were scraped or run by machine rather than made by hand?

[David Keller NC]

Yes - Lee Richmond of The Best Things has had them on his site for sale occasionally. They're not terribly common.

[Mark Baldwin III]

I've seen two of them on the bay. Can't remember if they were E.Baldwin or the later E.&A. Baldwin. The seller was asking just shy of $300 for one of them. Looks like a neat plane, but I couldn't justify the cost for something I would likely never use.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Now you've got me curious, and I don't know my molding profiles well; What's a gothic bead look like?

[Chris Vandiver]

There is a photo of the profile here: http://www.alibaba.com/product-free/253079130/Kennedy_White_N_York_Moulding_Planer.html

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Ah - thanks. My Google skills were failing me, and I couldn't find a good picture/diagram of one. (A whole lot of tacky necklaces though.) Best I found was a picture of a molding plane, but it was at a bad angle to actually see what made it different.

Sorry to interupt the thread!

[jim goddard]

Then my experience finding them isn't so different. Any ideas why they're so rare? As I said in my initial post perhaps its b/c machines had taken over mostly by then? Any ideas?

Altho its a long shot, has anyone made this profile?

[David Keller NC]

One reason might be that the molding made from this plane would look quite strange - the "gothic" nature of it wouldn't be apparent, it would just look like pointed beads....

[Adam Cherubini]

I've seen a lot of gothic architecture and I've never seen a bead like this. That shape is common, but not in beads. To some extent, it kinda defeats the purpose of a bead (to end something, to conceal a joint). My guess is this is a victorian gothic revival (yuck) feature, originally produced by machine and later made into planes. In my opinion, a good bead has a nice round shape and a very fine quirk. When the quirk gets too large, the bead looks like an astragal to me.

[jim goddard]

I rather like the look of gothic beads. :) At any rate after thinking some about all this IIRC the motif shows up lot (relatively speaking) on sash. Im pretty sure Im remembering this correctly. So, while not many beads exist I think manyish sash types (ie stick & rebate) do.

Adam, yes I guess thats right, they would look more like an astragal than bead b/c to form the profile completely the quirk would have to be deeper. I agree that much of this was machine made and the need for planes was greatly diminished.