One of Seven

[Jim Koepke]

The Stanley 45 was promoted as being "Seven Planes In One." Patrick Leach calls it, "the combination plane that has parts in the same realm as missing socks."

One of those seven planes is a slitting plane. Sort of like a panel gauge or or marking gauge on steroids. If you need to rip some thin stock, the slitter is your friend. The slitter on the #45 is one of the most often missing parts. Replacements can be found. Someone once made replacement slitter blades but collectors wanted "original parts." Just looked at St James Bay and it looks like the slitters they have listed are what a commonly referred to as spurs.

My current project to pop up on the 'Honey Do' list is a knife holding block. If you purchase a set of knives, they often come with a nice block to hold the set. We do not have a matched set of knives. Come to think of it, there might not be a matched set of anything in this household.

A piece of ash has been hanging around, leaning up against my wood rack just dying to get made into something. It had a little bit of cupping. That had to be worked out if it was ever to be glued up face to face.

Then it came to cutting the new homes for our old knives. My marking gauge just didn't seem to cut it when the light bulb glowed above my head and all that was needed was to figure out in which drawer my slitting blades were hiding.

Here is one cutting/marking the edges of a deep slot for a fork:

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With a few passes and a sharp blade it is possible to cut to a pretty good depth. The plane's skates were used as the depth stop in this usage.

There will be slots for two forks cut into the pieces of wood facing each other. One of these forks came from my family and one from Candy's family. They are likely as old as either of us.

A bit of relief area is chopped out for the router plane's blade:

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With the way the grain is running the relief area makes it easy to use the router and register against the side walls.

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If the grain is running the other way a small pocket can be chiseled out as a stopping area for the router. In this case it isn't as important since the bottom of the pocket will be inside the block.

This can be taken out with a chisel if a router plane isn't available.

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Not much else to show until it is finished.

jtk

[Pat Barry]

This last weekend Roy was discussing the super duper number 51 or 55 multipurpose plane - a little different type of animal than the one above. Maybe a newer model? He said the number had to do with the number of different planing functions that the tool could be used for, in fact he said, if I recall correctly, that it came with a boxed set of 55 different cutter profile tools that could be used in it. Any chance your tool has 45 sets of cutters or attachments that can be used with it?

[Jim Koepke]

Any chance your tool has 45 sets of cutters or attachments that can be used with it?

The early Stanley 45s came with 17 blades if my memory is working. Eventually it came with a set of 23, again relying on memory.

There were special (read extra blades to get folks to spend money buying) blades. I am not sure if those all add up to 45. I got lucky on an estate offering on ebay that wasn't described correctly, but the pictures indicated it had the extra blades in the deal.

Many folks have spread the myth of the plane being named after the number of original cutters supplied. They are mistaken.

The Stanley 55 originally came with 52 cutters according to Patrick Leach's Blood & Gore pages.

If one bought the four boxes of special blades it totaled 96 blades in all, again this is based on my memory.

One time when I was a little more flush in the financial department a set of the extra cutters for the #55 was listed as a BIN on ebay for about $1600. I saw it at about 2:00am. I waited to clear the purchase with my wife when she woke up. Someone else snatched it up before I had the chance. There was another one about a year latter with the plane and all eight boxes of cutters. It went for a bit more.

Because some of what are special cutters for the #45 are standard issue for the #55, the boxes of extra cutters are different.

There are a few differences between the two planes. The #55 has a height adjustment on the moveable skate. It also has the fences made so they can be adjusted to an angle. Finally when cutting on an angle the fence to blade space would change as the blade cut deeper. To work with this the #55 came with a screw to install in the moving skate to allow the blade lock to be a bit loose so the blade could be adjusted for the deeper cut 'on the fly.'

Stanley was a bit devious in their design of their combination planes. The rod spacing is different on all of them so one has to buy the complete plane and not just a few parts to retrofit an earlier purchase.

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

The knife block is finally done and in use:

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This was a lot of plane work, router plane, block plane, bench planes, low angle Jack plane, Stanley 45, and a couple of times the side rabbet planes came out to play. A lot of chisel work was also included. A hollow plane was used to round over the top edges.

The front section was cut off from the back. The block stayed up pretty well without the foot, but it does insure stability. Four holes were drilled in the foot using a drill press. Then the foot was clamped to the block and the holes were used as a guide to drill into the block. One inch long dowels were used to hold the two in position during the gluing. The clamping tweaked the alignment a little.

Four oak buttons that usually cover screw holes are being used as feet. Easily adjusted with the tap of a small hammer if there is any rocking.

Candy wanted to give it a dark stain. When she saw it in its natural state, she decided all it needed was a satin finish clear coat.

Well, that will keep the knives organized and at hand.

jtk

[Phil Mueller]

Looks great Jim. I may have to put this on my project list if for no other reason than to get out the router plane. Love that tool. Thanks for posting!

[Hilton Ralphs]

Very good Jim!

Did you treat any of the inside surfaces to guard against moisture?

[Stew Denton]

Jim,

Nice project, and very nicely done.

Stew

[Jim Koepke]

Very good Jim!

Did you treat any of the inside surfaces to guard against moisture?

Thanks all for the encouraging words.

Hilton, no the inside surfaces do not have any coating. I did tell the wife the knives should be dry before putting them away. She gave me the look of, "I knew that."

My thought was after inserting a knife a few times, any coating would likely be compromised.

One other note I didn't mention earlier, the #45 used for slitting can be done with either a push or a pull stroke. Sometimes it is actually easier with a pull stroke.

jtk

[Nicholas Lawrence]

It looks like one of those projects that is "easier said than done", getting all those slots cut neatly and having everything line up when it all comes together.

I used a similar idea a while ago on a box for my combination plane (to hold the cutters). I was going to use the plane to simply plow grooves, but the stock was just too small. I could not come up with a way of holding it that would also allow the fence to register on something. I ended up just chiseling everything, and it worked out all right.

[Jim Koepke]

It looks like one of those projects that is "easier said than done", getting all those slots cut neatly and having everything line up when it all comes together.

Making sure to use one side of the project as the base point for registration solves some of these problems. The only slots that were cut into facing pieces were for the two forks on the right. (not clear in the image) Using the slitter on the #45 like a marking gauge kept things in line pretty well when I didn't mess up.

If I were to make a box for combination plane blades with separators between the blades my thought would be to glue in strips between the face and the back of the holder. Stanley made theirs with continuous slots. Sometimes the blades are difficult to extract without extracting a bit of blood.

jtk

[Joshua Hancock]

Jim, I have to thank you for this thread. I have the slitter on my 45, and I never thought to use it that way. I have often thought to buy a japanese cutting gauge for the same uses you have mentioned, while there was one sitting on my shelf!

[Jim Koepke]

Jim, I have to thank you for this thread. I have the slitter on my 45, and I never thought to use it that way. I have often thought to buy a japanese cutting gauge for the same uses you have mentioned, while there was one sitting on my shelf!

Glad to be of assistance.

Now I am trying to figure out if two can be mounted to use as a mortising gauge.

jtk