The Stanley 39 and a skewed sense of priorities.

Considering dadoism, as a reaction to the failure of religion, science and bourgeois society generally to avoid the Great War it pretty much proposed nothing in their place. When everything has gone with no viable replacement, it’s Somalia. I doubt they desired any real acceptance, they would have felt obliged to start another movement reacting against it, but they were polemic and that’s good even if you are proselytising anarchists living a comfortable café-life in neutral Zurich during a European war.

It started naively as nihilistic and anti-art as art, but became more positive with some dilution and the occasional urinal, it also paved the way for much greater things. Just mentioned this in case you’re here because you mistyped and thought, that’s it I give up, I’m going post-minimalism from now on, I wouldn‘t, you won‘t like it, just change the o for an a.

Back to dadoism, when Stanley introduced the 39 the second Anglo-Boer war had just ended which was a great relief, and around the time Stanley ceased production Britain tested its first Nuclear Bomb, there isn’t a direct connection, it’s a time-scale thing.

The Stanley 39 is an all metal plane with a skewed blade, two spurs, an excellent depth-stop adjustment,  and are used in exactly the same way as the wooden dado plane. They actually work very well, and unlike their wooden forebears they don’t warp, they don’t take up much room, they don’t look too bad and they don’t even make much noise. In fact, all the merits of a long-term partner. The above qualities were all there in Sarah in abundance (that’s not where she lived it’s just she had so many good points). I knew she was great right from day one, we had been seeing each other for a few months when we went to Rome to celebrate her birthday. It would be the first time we had spent any length of time on our own together. Days were filled with laughter, fountains and Baroque iconography, and the evenings were all candlelit endearments.

It was when she fell asleep that all the evil that everyone has in them, that never showed when she was awake, emerged spectacularly. She started making a high-pitched squeaking sound like a guinea pig, followed by kicking, possibly some flatulence and snoring then more squeaking, some shouting, waving her arms around and more squeaking. All night, a frightening cacophony and the gratuitous violence. Think of the surprise I had when Audrey Hepburn turned into Linda Blair and no Father Merrin available at such short notice.

After the initial shock, that is by the third night, I’d become accustomed to the nightly metamorphosis and even began to find it appealing in a way. An unintentional tiny flaw in someone who is otherwise perfect merely, I think, reinforces that perfection. I’d managed to push her right back on her pedestal. She stayed there for a few more months until she was promoted at the bank where she worked and made the choice to transfer to Brussels, yes Belgium. I took the rejection stoically of course, but Belgium?

It seems delusional and a big mistake to idolise someone you know intimately, but when millions of people worship someone they don‘t know at all, it can go beyond all rational explanation. There is the Michael Jackson issue with the 39; some men have taken to wearing one glove to alleviate the pain of pressing on all the protruding pieces of metal at the front end. My own epic single effort was about twenty feet of oak in twelve-inch runs on a pair of bookcases, the cutter was very sharp and I was using the 5/8”. I didn’t have any problems other than the usual tirade of abusive advice, “what a waste of time, I know you’re into all this retarded stuff mate, but you wanna use a router on that, no seriously, it‘s a lot quicker mate, really.”

Not the elderly Jesuits that live next door who are very quick to criticise, but my sister-in-law‘s husband, which makes him what exactly? It makes him Peter or just Pete when we‘re being casual. He has spent a few years in Australia which entitles him under Commonwealth law to call everyone mate, which causes my Pavlovian response of Pete-mate. I used to see him fairly infrequently but now they’re back permanently in England and living quite close.

I bought most of my 39s in America, but if that‘s not possible, I expect you could find them here, or have them sent over and it would be worth the effort. They are naturally imperial widths, not French widths so that could be looked on as either a problem when using glass or modern boards or a tremendous advantage because you will need to buy a side rebate or two to widen the dado a fraction, more skewed blades but for a different reason.

You may be wondering if they are better than their wooden equivalent. In some ways, they are, but in other ways not, so to be on safe side I would get as many as you can of each.