All things to all men: The universal fallacy.

Picture yourself hesitantly entering your village hall where you find an ambiance of loathing and no more than six or seven fellow residents spread amongst the serried and optimistic rows of chairs, you choose one near the back and sit uncomfortably. As you do, the chair grates sharply against the wooden floor, a middle-aged woman turns her head sluggishly, and warily stares at you with tired grey eyes. You think you may have seen her a few times in “The Decapitated Stranger”, you nod and smile wanly, without acknowledging she returns her attention to her lapped and wringing hands.

An unprepossessing man in jeans and v-necked green wool emerges squinting, from a kitchen at the back of the hall, dabbing at traces of Ribena on his chin he closes the long yellow-streaked muslin curtains covering every window. A soiled and faintly xanthic gloom spreads like sulphurous Tahini over the room. He leans down and flicks a switch, the ancient slide projector he has set up earlier hums into life and a long mote-filled cone of light misses most of it’s intended target of an unfurled and creased screen. The man sighs quietly and adjusts the beam. He is impatiently gripping a pointed wooden stick and starts to rhythmically pummel the palm of his left hand. He stares expectantly and with frowning foreboding at the door as if he's waiting for one particular person, yet to arrive. He checks his watch and with a staccato sniff of fleeting petulance finally begins to speak. Not as you had anticipated, eruditely and entertainingly on the incursion of flaxen Viking hordes into your village a millennium in the past, but instead, in jaw-hanging disbelief, you hear my unmistakable and uncannily accurate impression of Barbara Windsor:

“’Ere mister, looking for a good time?”

“Er…would you um…I mean do you… do….er, centre beading?”

“ Alright darling, but get yer skates on, I ain’t got all day.”

The Victorian harlot of plane-world is the combination plane. It is a remarkable piece of metal originally designed, and not by Stanley, to replace a multitude of single-minded wooden planes. The most commonly famous multi-plane must undoubtedly be the ubiquitous Stanley 45, which like many others had a variety of different cutters that could be used in one body. Rather unsociably, Jack the Ripper was doing precisely that to the above, four years after the first 45 hit the shops, sometimes the way things effortlessly juxtapose and interrelate can almost look deliberate.
 

 
This very early example dates from around 1884 and for Stanley this could be thought of as the forerunner, the vanguard even, to a dynasty that would survive for well over a century and right up to the present day, still made by other people who sadly no longer wear bowler hats while at their labours. It was originally supplied with 18 cutters and a mislaid slitter, which might have disappeared 125 years ago, stealthily over the back of a workbench into a pile of New England shavings, a sobering thought. All the securing screws are of unslotted brass and short rods were still a distant dream. The familiar 78 type tri-lobe slitter was present on the main body and the sliding section, and would remain unflustered and not that good while everything around it contorted and painfully transformed for the selfless good of the whole.

The cast iron body was finished with black japanning, which has lasted very well, if it hasn’t been repainted. There was no thought initially of interrupting the flowers in the casting with the Stanley name or number, but that was soon to change.

For the next few years there were minor tweaks, the screws became slotted and the fence got scrawled on, but it basically remained recognizably the same.

 
In 1890 the 45 underwent a major non-invasive facelift, nickel-plating all over, several of Stanley’s products were forced to wait years to be blinged-up and another bestseller the 78 never got this treatment at all, maybe a cost consideration. I prefer the japanned look anyway, more cosy kitchen-range and less Mitsubishi Pajero.

A few years earlier the fence had become reversible with a flat section, giving more reach from an edge.

With this particular plane someone and probably more than just one someone has been very careful in the past century with the slotted screws, they’re surprisingly hardly burred at all.

By 1907 huge changes had taken place.

The front knob had moved, cutter adjustment was screwed and the right-hand depth stop was now taken up and down by an excellent captive knurled-screw arrangement, I wonder why a similar device couldn’t have been used for the cutter and saved a lot of complicated casting, if you know and it’s not too embarrassingly obvious please comment.

The rods were no longer screwed into the main body, but free to be fixed at any distance, the Stanley 46, very similar in design and pre-dating the 45, never got any of this attention. To put this into the context of mankind’s evolutionary development, we would be walking upright at this stage but not yet going to a disco.

The front knob had become secured by a cast threaded protrusion from the sliding section, this was later to revert to the brass screwed method and I think this was the only retrogressive step. The cutters from here on were all notched for the new adjuster‘s lug, also the lower part of the handle had been re-contoured and is only slightly more comfortable but somehow looks more fitted and modern and consequently less interesting and charming. A rosewood fence appeared around 1896.
 

 

These two childhood sweethearts are from the 1920s.

Er, where have all the flowers gone? Pete Seeger reckoned they’d all been picked by young girls and lamented ‘when will they ever learn‘? Never Pete, until they’re named, shamed and given a hefty fine, sometimes you have to be cruel to be harsh. So here we are with the final incarnation of the 45, not that there’s a carnation or any other type of flora to be seen and hadn‘t been since 1910. Strange how the 46 kept it’s decorative squiggles right to it’s demise in 1942, bitter boardroom battles and motif compromises maybe.

1915 saw the introduction of the two-part fence with fine adjustment and other than some minor changes to trademarks and a blunting of the handle again, that was it until Stanley called a halt to the stippled madness in 1962.

The Stanley 45 evolved for the first thirty years or so, until reaching it’s ultimate form, it could have developed further but by the 1960s nobody cared, most of the world was getting plugged in to the new age of hot rotary action, trad-linear was for yesterday‘s squares, but there were a few cats still digging that old-time ‘to and fro’ scene. I’m very old-fashioned in many ways, always opening doors, throwing coats in puddles, that sort of thing and I have given up my seat on a train to a woman who wasn’t incredibly old, blonde, noticeably pregnant or in any way less-able, she was just standing there minding her own business. I have never been a commuter so am happily innocent of their ways, but I think I detected a little smirking at a neophyte.

So it should come as no surprise to me that I don’t often use a spinning Jenny and prefer the much more arduous, slow, frustrating and inconvenient but peacefully contemplative and esoteric ways of changing the shape of a piece of wood. Pete-mate can’t grasp the metaphysical concept of the doing transcending the done, neither can my brother, or any of the eight golf-boys, nor any of the villagers at “The Decapitated Stranger”, nor can the younger Stimp, or the critical Jesuits next door, sadly not even my angelic sister-in-law, or my elderly parents, or even grimacing uncle Norman, or anyone at work other than Karen. After the potato debacle, somewhat redeemed by a tomato, it seems hard to swallow but I can't believe a woman would fake a Luddism, would she?

As I mentioned about a week ago, the 45 continued to be made after 1962 by other manufacturers, from 1933 Record had been producing their copy: the 405. With the exception of only one other copied plane, the scrub 400½, and then because they had already used the number 040, Record always placed a 0 before the original number. Was the number 405 a typing error that persisted to the pattern makers and beyond? The 050, a smaller combination plane had been introduced the previous year, so perhaps the thinking was that there’s no way our most complex plane is getting a lower number. The 405, despite Record’s deviation from their usual numenclature   ( possibly nonword ), was made for 49 years with only packaging changes and thus giving it the longest unaltered run of any of their planes.
 

 
The one above is from 1959 and doesn’t look as though it’s been troubled with too much work in the last fifty-one years.

Sitting at the back but not lurking by any means is a modest hero, war finish was un-plated grey, Britain didn’t survive the blitz by having shiny 405s pinpointing every nocturnal woodworker for a passing Ju 88 to have a pop at. The plane at the front is from the pre-conflict careless banana-gorging days, and came with some extra cutters which I have painstakingly laid out with no regard whatsoever to any order or sequence. It must have been the era of the multi-bead, a moulding which always reminds me of those strips of childhood plastecine, starting life so brightly colourful and aromatic before eventually, care-worn and cynical, becoming brownly lumped and disillusioned. Like pasta, allegorising can be overdone and eventually becomes a soft and unappetising simile as if like a …..

Interestingly the boxes changed, becoming smaller but taller after 1945, I don’t know why, but I suppose we’ll just have to rely as always on what Jack Hawkins said, and with some feeling, to Donald Sinden in the 1953 film The Cruel Sea, “It’s the war number one, the whole bloody war!”
 
A great British film filled with snorkers, submarines, asdic, cocoa and guilt-laden voice pipes, that couldn’t have been made during the hostilities with it’s blunt honest realism, In Which We Serve served very well at that time and understandably so.
 
The 405 was a copy and a fairly identical one, but Sargent made their own version of the medium-sized combination plane and called it the 1080. There are a lot of similarities to the 45 but there are also some improvements.
 

 
As can be seen in this stunning and uninformative photo the 1080 was supplied with what by now had become the standard and indispensable array of cutters. This is quite a sturdy and simple plane, with a very comfortable and attractive handle and an adjuster that captures the cutter in two places; these are good things.

On the downside there is no micro-adjustment on the albeit reversible fence and the round headed set screws are frankly illegitimate, why have the shallowest slot at the points of most pressure, there is no film I know of that can even begin to give the answer to this domed conundrum. A problem, that could be more of an issue today than when this plane was still being made is the spur-cutter wheel, if you were indulging in an unnatural and embarrassing amount of cross-grain planing and wore the tiny teeth down on both your discs it could be awkward to replace them. Before your very own eyes your Sargent could die like an old sheep, but thank God there are many other ways to do ‘across‘ as it were, I outlined some a few months ago. The 1080 was manufactured from 1916 to 1949. For four years after this Stanley made it for Sargent and it looked very much the same as the rest of their badge-engineered clones. It might be best, if you can, to avoid keeping your 1080 under your pillow, it’s coated in cadmium.

There is no such problem with the Lewin as it’s mostly aluminium, there was a report years ago about a connection with dementia and aluminium but I can’t remember a thing about it now, however the Lewin only poses one danger and then only for the unwary or, through no fault of their own, the forgetful.

Sitting innocently in the corner of the spacious box like a gaping crocodile, the plane itself is less reptilian and more of a hedgehog. The numerous little spikes operate cams which lock the parts very firmly and quickly, it’s a pity that the fence locking cams have to have slotted operators, but I suppose it would have led to constant jabbing otherwise and mild complaint in the letters pages of woodworking magazines, as people used to before compensation was invented. Dear Sir, having recently lost three fingers to gangrene I would like to draw your readership's attention to the Lewin six fifteen's inherent…

If weight is an issue for you then the Lewin improved universal plane, and that’s what it is, could be just the thing you need, it weighs a size zero 3¾ lbs, little more a third of the Stanley 45. I’m not sure that a lack of heft is necessarily desirable in a woodworking plane but if you believe the handbook it was the number one priority for discerning craftsmen, along with an aluminium handle that was far more comfortable than a traditional wooden type, well it would be, especially if you‘ve just made a lot of planes with aluminium handles. A coupe handle at that, low-set to give a more aligned and direct focus for your push.
 

 
The cutters are the usual suspects with the narrower sizes left wider where they’re clamped for a better all-over clamping feel. The cutters are really more akin to a smaller plane like the Stanley 50, but the Lewin has enough of the larger Stanleyisms in it’s concept to be mentioned here, and I’ve taken it’s picture now so it is.
 

 
This plane from the late forties to somewhere in the vague fifties is absolutely British and slightly eccentric with it‘s cams, but nevertheless well-made and totally useable. There are also a vast number of them still extant and they’re very reasonably priced sometimes. I once acquired one for less than the price of 3¾ lbs of fresh Scottish salmon which Tony-golf, who is something of a gastronome, told me recently as salmon goes is nothing, and he spat the word out as if he‘d just found a contemptible tartan fish head in his mouth, compared to wild Danish.
 
As cups of tea are passed about, you murmur a few words of politeness and hastily leave the village hall for a cigarette. Stumbling into a drizzling crepuscule, you shiver and raise your collar against the dispiriting numbness you feel, and wonder if that was the nearest you are going to get to hearing about Vikings; maybe the second part would be better, maybe. You consider leaving, there is still time to catch a sizable gobbet of Midsomer Murders if you hurry, but for reasons that would require a cross-legged professional and an easily-reached box of tissues to explain, you push open the door to discover a new picture on the screen and the disconcerting mumbling has already started again.
 
1881 saw the last chance to celebrate a palindromic year before 110 more of living with an asymmetrical annus, and the publication of A Study In Scarlet, “ Make haste Watson, there’s the invention of a whole new genre afoot!” A genre that would inevitably lead eventually to Magnum PI. More relevant for here however, 1881 saw the introduction of Jacob Siegley’s No 2 combination plane, capable of ploughing, beading, looking great and everything in between.
 

 
Throughout it’s long production life, much of it in the hands of Stanley, the Siegley underwent several changes of cutter adjustment, they just couldn’t quite get it complicated enough. Yes, that does look suspiciously like a wood shaving, I can't help a feeling small surge of pride.
 

 
This one from around 1891 used a thumbwheel-controlled block that matched with a groove in the cutter. The sliding section is on the unorthodox right-hand side, which leaves your left hand free to multitask as there isn’t really a convenient place to place it on the front of the Siegley.
 

 
By 1902 a levered cutter adjustment was the answer that had been staring everyone in the face for years, again with grooved cutters. Any cutter can be used in these planes but if you want to make the most of all the bygone head-scratching you’ll have to file some transverse clefts in them. At this time the Siegley cost $4.50 and the 45 was $4.90.

The handle is the most comfortable of any of these type of planes and the spurs by their nature, that of a hardened nail, could conceivably outlive the most ardent dado enthusiast.

In a perfect world there would be a combined plane with the Sargent cutter adjuster, the Stanley depth-stop, the handle and spurs from a Siegley, housed in the capacious Lewin box or lounge, covered in floral fripperies and with Stimp cast into the fence. But in this imperfect world that is all the 45ish things I can think of at the moment.

As I kneel on the floor to scrape up the slides spewed from the box I have dropped, the door of the now deserted village hall swings open. I shiver as the frigid fingers of night air trace a path along my spine and I look up at the faceless figure standing motionless, shadowed in the doorway, and though I have never seen him before, I know who he is and why he is here.

“I‘ve finished, it’s all over. You’ve missed it, you must have mistaken the time, it’s much later than you imagine, much later.”

“Put it on your blog. Was it any good?”

“I don’t think so, one bloke kept asking about Vikings. I don’t think it was very good, no”

“I’ll see when I read it.”

“Yes, of course.”

“None of that other stuff?”

“No, very little, hardly any, not enough to notice really.”

“Good. I'm going now.”

"Yes, you must. I think you'll find it's all going to get better from now on."

"It needs to."

"Well yes, it does need to."