Anchor Plane Co wooden planes

[Marko Milisavljevic]

Bought a 28" razee wooden plane made by "Anchor Plane Co" (stamped on blade and nose). Not much use, 8" long, 3/16" thick tapered laminated blade with chipbraker, no cracks on sole, very minor dings here and minor rust with almost no pitting. The previous owner either used ruler trick or was sloppy, which made it impossible to flatten the back in this lifetime, so after having spent quite a while on 250 grit diamonds I gave up and ruler tricked the last .3 inches.

- Does anyone have any info about this company? I can only find some references to a Swedish company of same name making metal planes, but I'm guessing that is a different company.

- Sole appears to have powered jointer marks (lines visible under raking light, I assume that is what powered jointer marks would look like, don't own one myself). Is it possible that original plane would have had such marks? The only issue with the plane is that it has quite a twist, one diagonal is perfectly flat, the other lifts 1/16 in corner. To flatten this out will open the mouth a good bit which is a shame since it is pretty good now.

- Plane was quite grimy from use, a look for which I don't care. After a bath in Evapo-Rust and mild degunking with mineral spirits and a light coat of BLO, this is what it looks like:

283223283224

[Stew Hagerty]

It's a very "pretty" plane, it's a shame about the twist. My guess is that someone already tried to get rid of it and that's why you have the jointer marks.

[Bob Glenn]

The plane looks to be about 24 inches long. With a 1/16 inch twist, careful sanding on a flat surface should take out only the high corners and their adjoining edges, without taking too much away from the mouth. I would buy some large sheets of floor sanding paper available at a local rental center. Affix them to a flat surface and carefully work the plane back and forth. That plane is too nice to give up on. Good luck.

[David Weaver]

if the lift is even, it'll only take a 32nd of sole removal to get it out. Not a big deal, considering you should only have to do it once. It's a double iron plane, the tightness of the mouth won't matter at all. I think on a lot of the later planes, the makers just gave up and left the mouth wide open so it'd be out of the way of the cap iron and so they didn't have to be precise in cutting the escapement. While the mouths on a lot of the really old planes were tight, they still weren't tight enough to eliminate tearout in a way that was remotely as effective as using the cap iron.

I don't know anything about the maker, but it looks like an attractive plane. Someone with a book of makers should be able to describe when the maker was making planes and how rare they are. If nobody has by this evening, I'll see if I can find it in my maker's book.