Keep original bed rock irons?

[Zach England]

I am about to sell some of my good Stanley user planes because I have acquired some Bed Rocks that I like better, but my Bed Rock planes all have Hock or Lie-Nielsen irons in them and I either don't have the original Stanley irons or They are so beat up I wouldn't want to curse someone else with having to rehab them.

So my question is:

When i sell the Stanley planes should I sell them with the Bed Rock irons to try to get a few more dollars for the planes or should I sell them without irons or with mediocre ones so I can keep the Bed Rock irons with their original planes? I don't really plan on selling the Bed Rock planes because there isn't much of an upgrade path, but I may want to sell them some day if they ever become valuable collector items. None of the Bed Rocks I have are really THAT valuable--they're not the rare types and some do not have original "furniture" and are missing japanning, have been re-painted, etc. I bought them because I think they offer a slight performance upgrade and are just nicer planes to use than the Stanley successors they replaced.

Thoughts?

[Archie England]

Though you have a reason to keep the blades (namely, OEM), do you have the need or space to do so--long term? I've kept blades and now can't remember which plane they were original for, and that defeats the OEM reason. So, .....

[Chris Griggs]

Personally, I'd keep them... and unless they are in completely unrecoverable condition, I'd try to get around to fixing them up some time. Its good to have spare irons around. That way if you are right in the middle of a task and for some reason chip and edge in a way that requires major regrinding, you have a prepped iron that you can throw in your plane a go about your work.

[Jim Belair]

I agree with Chris. Depending on how well your plane collection includes high angle, you could always keep a blade/iron assembly with a back bevel ready to roll. If I was buying a Bailey I'm not sure how much, if any, more I'd pay for it with Bedrock irons. I may be wrong but don't think the Bedrock blades are any different.

edit- just read that some of your Bailey's don't have suitable irons. In that case, sell with Bedrock iron but don't expect extra $.

Jim B

[Mike Henderson]

I'd keep the Bedrock irons and offer them with the planes when the time comes to sell them. Take a piece of tape and label each one so you know which it belongs to (label it 603 or whatever the plane is). They don't take much room to store and it'll make the plane more valuable to someone else to have the original parts.

If you think you'll never sell the planes and your heirs will have to deal with it - and they won't know what 603 means - go ahead and sell the blades. Someone else who has salvaged a Bedrock without an iron can use it.

That said, I have a few Bedrocks and I've replaced the blades - and I don't have a clue where the original blades are, although I know I kept them.

Mike

[Zach England]

OK, thanks. Good thoughts.

I won't keep the bed rock irons prepped to use as spares. I just don't have a reason to use those old irons. I have never had good luck with them. I think they're too thin and if I need a spare iron in a pinch I will take one out of another plane since I have new premium irons for all my planes and for all widths but the no. 8 I have multiples. As much as I love good vintage Stanley/Bailey/Bed Rock planes, I really don't think those old irons can compare to the current offerings. Maybe I just have never taken the time to properly set one up?

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I find having extra blades around is useful, as Chris said. Also nice for some planes to have an extra blade with a little more camber on it.

But I also use them outside of the plane often - I use them sometimes to cut thin material or for little trimming tasks where a wide blade is useful. A curved blade can work well for this, as you can kind of rock it along it's edge like a guillotine cutter.

My favorite trick, that I actually rarely use is one I picked from Kari Hultman (Villagecarpenter.blogspot.com) - she's shown setting up a paring guide along a scribed line by dropping a wide plane blade into the knife line, and sliding the squared up block against it to register it in place before clamping it in place. I rarely use a paring guide like that, but for those times it's helpful, that works really well.

[Charles Bjorgen]

I have several Bedrocks all of which have been refitted with Hock cutters. I've thought about selling the Bedrocks and replacing with a few select Lie-Nielsens and if I do would sell with the Hock equipment. Mine are all user grade anyway so whoever might buy them would be winners and I'll probably be able to recover some of my investment in the Hock irons. I've assumed that the original Bedrock irons were no different from the regular Stanley irons.

[Zach England]

I have several Bedrocks all of which have been refitted with Hock cutters. I've thought about selling the Bedrocks and replacing with a few select Lie-Nielsens and if I do would sell with the Hock equipment. Mine are all user grade anyway so whoever might buy them would be winners and I'll probably be able to recover some of my investment in the Hock irons. I've assumed that the original Bedrock irons were no different from the regular Stanley irons.


This is interesting. For me the Bed Rock planes are likely my final upgrade. I have a number of Lie-Nielsen bench planes and cherish each of them, but there is something about the Bed Rocks that the LN cannot offer. I suppose it is just blind romanticism on my part. I think the a good Bed Rock with a new iron/chipbreaker and some careful setup is as good functionally as the LN and while I love the beauty of the LN planes I think the Bed Rocks have a beauty all their own that cannot be made in a factory nor bought with a credit card, but can only be earned through decades of faithful service.

That said, my no. 8 is the next upgrade candidate and I am thinking very hard about a Lie-Nielsen in light of the prices 608s command.

[Charles Bjorgen]

Interesting that you say that, Zach, because my 608C is one I've thought about selling to get a LN No. 7.

[Jeff Heath]

For a long time, I worked at my bench with a (almost) complete set of Bedrock planes. I replaced all the irons and chipbreakers with the Hock equivalent due to the drastic (to me) increase in performance. I began selling them when I discovered LN tools a decade or so ago, and began to sell off the Bedrock set, one at a time, on ebay. I sold them with the Hock blades and chipbreakers, and also included the original tinfoil irons from Stanley. This was during a different economy, but they all sold like hotcakes, and on most of the planes, I got within a small percentage of the cost of the LN replacements. Bedrock's are great planes, once tuned, but none were as good as my (now ) LN planes.

I'd save them and keep them with their original planes. You never know how your plans may change, and you can label them with a piece of masking tape and marker to remember what goes where.

My .02.

Jeff

[Zach England]

Interesting that you say that, Zach, because my 608C is one I've thought about selling to get a LN No. 7.

Interesting. If you do decide to sell the 608c we might be able to make a deal. I am not too eager to upgrade my no. 8 since it is not a plane I use much, but at some point I would like to.

I think something like woodworking tools for hobbyists is very subjective to most people. I have never done much serious analysis comparing plane performance, and really have no interest in doing that. I will leave that to the folks at the magazines and the hardcore WWing blogs. A premium new plane, A Bed Rock, or a vintage Stanley/Seargent/MF plane can all be made to work well with the right fundamentals like a good iron, a flat sole and properly mated parts, so at some point it becomes less about the minutia of performance than about the user experience, and a user's experience is always going to be colored by whatever bias one may have. I agree that the LN are technically better planes if for no other reason than the ductile iron and the (presumably) tighter machining tolerances. However, for me woodworking is a fundamentally experiential pursuit, so I am sometimes going to turn to the tools I like the most instead of the ones I know are technically the best.

[Jim Koepke]

To my knowledge there isn't any difference between Bedrock blades and those sold with the standard Bailey plane.

Some of my early planes came with blades that may have some collector value. Those are set aside and newer blades are used in the early planes.

It isn't likely someone who is buying a plane for a user would pay a premium for a blade that came with a Bedrock unless they didn't know any better.

My blades are all mixed together so many of my planes do not have their original blades. There are extra blades for most planes in my shop.

It isn't difficult for me to remember how to tell when a plane or blade was made to match them up in short order. I really don't see any reason to worry about that. If I am going to sell a plane, I just want it to be a good useable tool for the buyer. If my heirs end up selling my tools, it won't be something causing me to lose sleep.

Though I do have O1 Hock blades for many of my planes, most still have Stanley blades. They work fine, but do not hold an edge as well as newer blades. Also, due to the difference in mass, the Stanley blades will tend to vibrate more than the heavier blades at times.

Just now a somewhat related thought came to me. If you saw my post "Brothers Buck Meet Frankenplane" you saw a plane that I wouldn't feel right about selling. Just now it came to me... Since the only part that has any real value on the plane is the Sargent lever cap, it could be sold as a lever cap with parts attached. Who knows it could really get the bids going on ebay as a rare user assembled piece of working art.

jtk

[Chris Griggs]

So here's the funny thing about replacement blades. I find that they are most important in planes used for heavy cuts. A jack/fore/scrub plane cut puts a good deal of stress on the blade. Also because of the camber and depth of cut you can't set the chipbreaker close enough to really reinforce the blade. On smoothers and even jointers, I find that stock blades work equally well as thick aftermarket irons. That is if, you have a chipbreaker that is well tuned and set a few though from the edge and the plane bed is otherwise well tuned. Dave Weaver's been posting a lot about this lately, and I have jumped on his bandwagon.

Anyway, since you already have the aftermarket blades, I see why you don't want to bother to fix up the old ones - I certainly wouldn't bother. But I'd still keep the original blades, as you may find uses for them. For instance, I have an old stanley blade that I turned a burr on to use has a scraper to tune the sole of my one Kanna.

[Sam Takeuchi]

I find stock blade's edge durability to be lacking in many applications. I recognize that there are quite variation in quality of stock blades, and some are usable and some are very soft, but in all cases, I haven't come across stock blade that has good edge retention and don't really compare to many of quality replacement blades available today. Though I do like pre 1960s Record laminated stock blade quite a bit if I were to use a stock blade of any kind. Quite good quality blades for OEM blades, much better than Stanley stock blades as far as my experience goes. I know some people claim SW blades and vintage laminated stock blades were better, but there were nothing special about these blades and have just as much quality variation as any other, and perform no better than post SW and laminated construction era.

[Charles Bjorgen]

Interesting. If you do decide to sell the 608c we might be able to make a deal. I am not too eager to upgrade my no. 8 since it is not a plane I use much, but at some point I would like to.

Check your private message area, Zach.