SOLD: Stanley Bedrock 607C, freshly restored...

Stanley Bedrock 607C

Type 6 (1910-1921)

$350
SOLD

Up for auction is a Stanley Bedrock 607C, type 6 (1912-1921), 2 patent dates and small depth knob. Ground up refurb and tuneup, it's ready to go to work out of the box. This is a restore done by a hand tool woodworker for hand tool woodworkers.

So what is a Bedrock plane versus a Bailey one? I’m glad you asked...Introduced in the early 20th century Stanley decided that they needed a new, higher end, line of planes where they could introduce newer more “high end features”. The majority of innovation of bench planes at Stanley was occurring around the Bedrock series. One of the first additions was from a patent that introduced the world to that middle frog adjustment screw, the one just below the iron depth adjustment knob on Bailey planes. While offered in the Bedrock series it was then added to all of the Bailey planes as well and survives to this day on modern Stanley and other makers planes.

The other, perhaps more controversial, addition introduced in 1911 (on the type 5)  was from another patent which would allow the frog to be loosened up without removing the lever cap and iron. On a Bailey plane, you need to remove those pieces so you can access the screws that hold the frog in place. On a Bedrock you simply loosen 2 screws on the rear of the frog, right beside the other new frog adjustment screw, and move the frog back and forth without removing the lever cap and iron. These are my favorite Bedrock planes and represent the majority of the ones I restore and sell and are widely considered the finest planes ever made by humankind.

Fast forward to modern times… When Thomas Lie-Nielsen was designing his new bench planes, he didn’t have to look any further than the Bedrock series for inspiration. They were, and still are, considered the last great plane to come from the Stanley company. LN took modern steels, tooling and other materials and turned what was a great plane into the world’s finest. By purchasing this Bedrock you are getting a piece of woodworking history.

The nitty gritty details

The base was blasted and received replacement Japanning. The japanning is my recipe and is a near carbon copy replacement for Stanley’s circa 1900-1930. It was applied in several coats then baked at progressively higher temps, an hour at a time. After this it's allowed to cure for 30 days. This finish will last longer than engine enamel and looks nearly identical to a plane coming out of the Stanley factory. The only apology on the base is very slight pitting on one side, I do not remove that because it would cause the side to be too thin. It will not affect performance

The frog was torn apart, blasted and received the same japanning as the base. After curing all mating surfaces were flattened. There are no apologies on it.

The knob and tote are new and are hand made out of cocobolo by me. To allow the natural beauty of the material to show through they received 2 coats of teak oil (so they're UV protected), were buffed out then had a coat of Renaissance Wax applied. If ren wax is good enough for the British Museum, it's ok in my books. I've added one of Bill Rittner's beautiful brass tote screws, it's a Bedrock and deserves a little bling.

The only apology top side is slight pitting on the lever cap and has no affect on performance. The lever cap is the type correct one that has the word "BEDROCK" cast into it, NOT the word "Stanley" as that is incorrect for a type 6 plane.

It will come with a type correct iron that has been flattened and sharpened to 8000. Some pitting on the top of the iron and lever cap but none in the area that matters. The cap iron was tuned and mated to fit the iron correctly.

It's taking shavings that range from thin .002 to thicker .010, all are pictured.

This is one fine plane, it's beautiful and works very well. For all intents and purposes, this is a almost brand new 100 year old plane that, if taken care of properly, will last at least another 100 years.

Contact me if you're interested.

Some additional pics

Books on japanning

Over the past couple years I've spent quite a bit of time researching the history, and making of, the finish commonly called "japanning". The link to Wikipedia describes what japanning is decently but here goes...

Japanese woodworkers used to use the sap from a particular tree, which was quite gummy, to cover their steel tools with so they didn't rust. After drying this finish would have a dark brown, almost black, color and a nearly semi-gloss sheen. Western tradesman saw this finish on tools brought to them from the far east, recreated it using western ingredients and dubbed it "japanning". This process of finishing, especially steel tools, has been in use by westerners since at least the 17th century and became very popular in the 18th century. All sorts of steel implements were covered in japanning from hand planes and chisels all the way to sewing machines and cast iron stoves.

A common misconception is that japanning is only available in black but that's certainly not the case. Asphaltum, and more so lamp black, was widely available in the 18th and 19th centuries and definitely were the most common pigments used. Lamp black especially so since it was readily available as a by product of the lamps used to light everything in everyday life. However, there are examples of many other colors such as white, yellow, blue, brown and even red being created. It's all about what pigment is used to grant a certain color profile to the liquid.

At some point in the 19th century, tool makers, notably hand plane manufacturers such as Stanley and Union, used various recipes for japanning to cover the steel portions of their tools to prevent them from rusting. They used this type of finish up until around World War II when the more modern enamel finishes, like we use today, were introduced and became cost effective. At some point, somewhere in the 1950's and 1960's it seems, the original japanning fell out of favor by these manufacturers and ever decreasing qualities of enamel paint replaced it. By the 1970's it seems the finish these companies were using wasn't even a decent quality enamel but just plain ole oil based paint.

In my plane restoration endeavors I have tried to reproduce something that is similar to the recipe Stanley used circa 1910-1930. I chose that era to reproduce as that was the heyday of plane making here in the U.S. and the finish they achieved was quite excellent. During this development I discovered a few old books on the subject and wanted to share them with others. If you're interested in making your own japanning, these are a good place to start.

My three favorites are:


           

Grain Direction for Wooden Planes

I am about to (re)start making a no 10 round molding plane and thought I'd take this opportunity to post how you should align the grain on the wood for these types of planes.

I learned how to lay out wooden plane grain direction from the excellent book "Wooden Planes And How To Make Them by David G Perch and Robert S. Lee", one of the first chapters is making a wood smoother and the first page of that is grain alignment. If you are even the slightest bit interested in making wood planes I highly recommend obtaining this book. And if you like the content I produce on this blog, by all means purchase it using the link above as it passes me the referral credit with Amazon. Gotta pay for lumber and tools somehow right?

If you're not familiar with the parts of a wood plane I'll be using terminology you might not understand, here's a reference image with the various pieces. While this isn't a molding plane, nearly all of the parts are named the same as a smoother/jack/try plane.

Parts of a wooden plane

Anyways, here's a shot of that page of the book showing the proper orientation of grain in a wood plane (reproduced with the author's permission).

Grain direction in a wooden plane.

You want the growth rings that are furthest from the heartwood to be the sole of the plane and the closest to the heartwood, typically the larger growth rings, to be the top of the plane. The shortcut to remembering this is "bark side down" so write that on a Post-It note and stick it somewhere you'll see it while making planes. If you're unfamiliar with heartwood, sapwood, quarter sawn and plain sawn, here's a quick review

Parts of timber and cut types

There's a distinct look to this on the front and back of the plane, if the material was perfectly quarter sawn you it won't be as noticeable but if there's a slight curvature to the grain the concave side of the curve will be facing the top of the plane.

Toe view of grain direction

The other critical aspect is the direction of the grain, you want that to run toe to heel, top to bottom. This allows the short grains to work in your favor when opening the mouth of the plane.

Grain direction

As you can see in the image, the direction in which the grain runs is quite discernible, to the left is the toe and to the right is the heel.

That's about it for this post, hope it helps when you start making your own planes and as always, if you have any questions feel free to comment here or find us on Facebook.