So tell me about Stanley Gage planes

[Brian Hale]

It appears they don't have a lateral adjustment lever or a chipbreaker. If i understand correctly, once set, lateral adjustment isn't necessary?

So are they a good choice or just a gimick that didn't sell well?

Brian :)

[Walt Quadrato]

Can't believe no one responded to this one..I'll jump in on this..
Stanley bought out the Vineland Gage co..Vineland NJ just to get the patent for the frog design. now, there's some thought that Stanley didn't want a competing design out there, especially one that just may have been better overall for woodworking. Anyway, they produced a line of metal Stanley Gage planes from 1919-1941...transitionals from 1919-1935. Must have been something there for them to have manufactured them for so long..

They had no lateral because they were trying to eliminate "slop" in the blade movement. There is a two piece lever cap that does double duty as a chipbreaker. The outer part of the cap is the actual levercap, but there's an inner piece that acts as a chipbreaker. It's adjustable on a two screw slide to bring it closer to the edge of the blade. Actually, very ingenious and very solid. the frog is one piece with a large diameter adjustment screw...absolutely positive depth adjustment with no backlash. excellent design IMHO...even better than the Bailey, and closer to the Sargent autoset patent, another good plane.

I have a "thing" for frog design...and a small museum of different designs if you want to see some pictures..
http://www.brasscityrecords.com/toolworks/museum/museum.html
Not complete by any means but it'll give you an idea of how many people got from point A to point B using different routes..

If you have a chance to pick up a Gage plane, by all means you should....good solid tool.

walt Q

[Irby Vaughn]

Walt--thanks so much for the response. Apparently the blade is upside down at present..which obviously explains why the chips are jamming--it's bevel up instead of bevel down..if I swap the adjuster yoke and it's threaded plate on the other side of the blade, maybe I'll have more luck with it..the "second" blade will then be on the back side of the main blade and serve it's purpose as chipbreaker..being totally unfamiliar with this plane when I first disassembled it to clean it, I may have inadvertently re-assembled it wrong..silly me..thanks so much for the information--Irby Vaughn (I'm 66 years old)

[Irby Vaughn]

Hi again, Walt..I looked at the link you sent and the part about the Stanley G-6 Gage design clearly shows what I was calling a "blade." the first picture shows all the parts and just to the left of the main chipbreaker is a u-shaped piece of steel. This is what I was calling the second blade because it was beveled , sharpened and looks as if someone "scary sharpenned" the bevel. It shines like chrome. just thought you'd like to know your digging helped me immensely..thanks again..Irby Vaughn