[masraum]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

The Stanley #55 plane. What a machine. What a work of art. USA! USA!

Watch it in use at minute 20 of this video...

Very cool. I think there are several similar planes that were intended to replace other wooden planes, 42-55 covers them. Some are more simple like a plow/plough plane, dado plane, combination plane (45 and 55, I think), etc.... I think the 55 is the juggernaut that does everything.

It's interesting, this guy, Patrick, has a website where he reviews almost every Stanley plane known to man. He is not a fan of the 55.

The Superior Works - Patrick's Blood & Gore: Planes #55 - #57

Bought it. Used it. Hated it. Sold it.

The Great Zeus Himself thought His sentence of Prometheus to be the ultimate punishment for mankind, and throughout the millenia it was. That is, until the year 1897 when Messrs. Justus Traut and Edmund Schade devised a torture that knew no bounds betwixt Gods and mortals. We should all be so lucky to be chained to a rock and have our livers eaten daily by an organ-hungry raptor than to suffer the agony of this contraption. Even the Chinese would have gladly abandoned their infamous drip, drip, drip of water to the forehead had they been on Stanley's favored nations tradelist. If there can be a ball and chain of planes, this is it, baby.

Down in Australia this chunk of metal has been used as a doorstop (no lie). Here in America, it's been used as a woodworking tool. Now, you tell me which nation is more civilized? And since I'm on a roll slamming this tool, why stop here? Stanley advertised that the #55 was "A planing mill in itself." More like "A paining kill in itself" is a befitting slogan for the tool. Over in Greece, sponge divers tie these things around their waists as ballast to get them to the briney depths sooner. In India, swamis position a few dozen of them in a rectangular fashion and then have a snooze atop them.

This plane certainly is one clever chunk of metal design. With the success of the #45, and other Stanley combination planes, it wasn't long before Stanley produced this. The timing was perfect for its introduction, since metal planes of all sorts had proliferated for some 30 years prior, which meant there would be little objection from those guys trained in the "old school" (they were dead, dying, or feeble), and the wooden plane business was all but dead. Also, what pitiful few moldings that were fashionable at the time were simple profiles, which the #55 could handle. Had the complex Grecian profiles still been popular, this plane might never gotten off the ground.

Put simply, it's a temperamental monster that requires much fussing with in order for it to work well. Were you in the need to make a short run of molding, it may be a suitable alternative to a wooden plane. However, for any profile that you plan to stick over and over, a dedicated wooden plane is preferable. Why? Wooden molding planes are self-regulating; i.e., they have a fixed fence, a fixed profile, and a fixed depth stop. The #55 also has these three necessities, but none of them are fixed; they are all variable and require a great amount of skill/patience to get them to work perfectly. This fact doesn't rear its ugly head so much when sticking a profile with a single cutter (say an ogee), but it surely does when using a combination of cutters to stick a profile that normally can be found in a wooden plane. It also suffers the same deficiency that the #45 does regarding stock selection - the wood must be even-grained to minimize tearout, since there is no mouth, in the true sense of the word, on this plane.

What I'd really love to have is one of these (Stanley No.41 or No.44, less because of functionality, and more because of the form. You can read about them here.
http://www.supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan5.htm

No 41


No 44