Old Wooden Jack plane ID?

[Dominic Greco]

Hi everyone,

While this does not rank up there with many of the fantastic yard sale finds that members often post here, I think it's still cool.

I was on my way to Lowes on Sunday when I came across this yard sale in progress. In a plastic milk crate there was this beat up old wooden jack plane.

When I asked what they wanted, I was told "Eh,....$5." So I forked over the money and left with a plane, that at minimum will look cool on my book shelf.

But I'm sort of curious to it's origins. I cleaned it up with some Murphy's Wood Oil Soap and took some photos. The insignia on the iron loosk familiar. But I can't seem to find where I've seen it before. Does anyone recognize it?

From the stamp on the front of the plane body that is almost identical to the one on the iron. From this I would assume that we're talking about an manufactured handplane as opposed to one that was "shop made". Is that a correct assumption?

I'll be honest with you. This plane is is somewhat sad shape. The tote has been broken off and is long gone. The chip breaker and iron are rusty, but not hopelessly pitted. Some home handyman ground a terribly steep bevel on the blade. I would need to regrind this carefully before re-honing. Plus the chip breaker looks to have been ground. The front of the body has some stress cracks. But they are only on the surface. And the wedge looks like it was chewed on by a mad dog. In addition, the throat opening needs to be patched so that it isn't as wide.

In other words, it's perfect to restore!

I've been reading David Finck's "Making and Mastering Wood Planes" as well as Michael Dunbar's "Restoring, Tuning & Using Classic Woodworking Tools" so I guess I got the "bug" pretty badly. I've had the idea to make my own hand plane for a while. I believe this could be the perfect project to get me started in that direction. I mean, what could be the worse that could happen?

[Brian Kent]

Nice find and nice project. Please keep us posted as you work on it. I wonder why I don't see more restored wooden planes. I would really like to know how well it works as you work on each part.

[Mike Henderson]

To me, the plane doesn't look that bad - I've seen much worse. I don't know the history of W.Butcher but maybe someone on the forum can look them up - maybe it's a Sheffield company. Often, the blades were bought from a company who specialized in them, and the body was made by the plane maker. The body looks pretty good to me - no major splits or other faults, except the missing tote. Since its a jointer type plane, the mouth doesn't matter that much - but from what I can see, the mouth is in pretty good shape. You can probalby use the plane without a tote, or make a new one for it.

The problem for most people in using wooden planes is adjusting them. If you have some books on wooden planes, they'll tell you how to do it. It just takes practice.

While wooden planes are interesting to use, craftsmen switched to metal planes pretty rapidly once they were available. But they were used for a lot of years - craftsmen in the time of Julius Caesar used planes much like yours.

Mike

[Wolfgang Jordan]

Hi Dominic,

the stamp on your plane reads 'UNION FACTORY/WARRANTED". Here's some info on Hermon Chapin and his Union Factory:
http://theclampguy.info/hist_ch.htm

W. Butcher is indeed a Sheffield company. There's more info on the net, but this is a good start:
http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/archive/get.phtml?message_id=67120&submit_thread=1 (http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/%7Ecswingle/archive/get.phtml?message_id=67120&submit_thread=1)

Both sources suggest that your plane is quite old.

Wolfgang

[James Mittlefehldt]

Dominic as Mike said I wouldn't be in a hurry to put a patch in the mouth of that plane, unless that is a project you want to try.

I have a 22 inch Jointer similar to that, except it has the tote, and I use it as a scrub plane for taking down the rough grain on softwood like pine. It does a better and faster job in my opinion than a scrub plane does and leaves the wood much closer to finished when done.

[Bill White]

Well funny you should ask. I just posted a question about Butcher stuff.
You'll be well served to clean it up and use it (or send it to me).
On second thought....Just send it to me anyhow. It will look good with all my W. Butcher tools.
Bill