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25 January 2020 at 6:06 pm #646421
I’m not an expert either, but it looks like teak to me. The first picture in particular with the white streaks is a hallmark of teak. After you’ve taken some shavings, does the surface of the wood feel waxy? Again, this is a characteristic of teak. Also, the fact that it has been outside in the rain for a long time points to teak, as teak is pretty water resistant.
19 January 2020 at 11:17 pm #645610That sounds much more like it, and quite a haul. That’s a great price for the No. 71.
The No. 5 looks great, and looks to be pre-1960s at it appears to have rosewood handles and the blade and cap iron have the angular corners rather than the rounded corners on the “improved” blade of the No 4.
One of my No. 71’s has resin handles, which look and feel OK, but we all know it would be much nicer if they were wooden. A member of our extended family who lives up on the Central Coast of NSW has turned me a pair out of tallow wood and lovely they are too. Somethings just look and feel right.
At this rate you might still be broke but you’ll have a lot more to show for it.
17 January 2020 at 10:17 pm #645336Hi Colin,
I have a Tyzack catalogue from 1949/50 and it shows the 14 and 14B as having the Elephant and nonpareil stamps on the back. So it would suggest its newer than 1949/50. I found an S. Tyzack catalogue from 1957 and the only back saws in it are by Spear & Jackson. By 1972, W Tyzack was part of Record Ridgeway, and the No 14B is no longer in the catalogue, in fact the there are only 3 Tyzack back saws in the catalogue, the only one with a wooden handle is a No. 120, the other two have plastic handles. My guess is that the saw is from sometime between 1950 and 1972.
I have a number of Tyzack back saws myself, one was made for John Hall of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport by Tyzack and that also has the Elephant and nonpareil stamps on the back but my only John Hall catalogue doesn’t have a date on it.
Cheers,
Malc.
17 January 2020 at 8:14 pm #645313Hi Paul,
When I first found Mr Sellers and started this hand tool journey 5 years ago in the UK vintage ebay hand tools were fairly reasonably priced. My first acquisition was a pretty mint in box, 1950’s Stanley No.4, for which I paid £25 including P&P. Since then I’ve branched out and the best bargain’s I’ve found have been via car boot sales. My second Stanley No. 4 looked like a real junker, rusted to bits, but at £4 I thought it was worth a punt. It cleaned up a treat and is now my go to plane. Car boots have produced some fantastic buys, a 1940’s/50s Stanley No 7. for £30, a mint boxed 1960’s No. 4 1/2 for £15, and many more. The real bargains at car boot sales are things like Stanley braces (a couple of quid a time), I got a job lot of 40+ auger bits for £5, and marking gauges for 50 pence. Hand saws (Tyzacks, S&J etc) go typically for a £1 to £2, and usually clean up and sharpen really well. That said, its not always sweet pickings and I might go 4 or 5 visits before I find anything.
At my local car boot in North London, there are a lot of house clearance guys selling off what they consider to be the dross and left overs of a clearance. In most cases they are to lazy to find out the value of what they have and thus for us hand tool aficionados there are real bargains to be had. A beautiful box wood and brass Rabone folding rule was a quid and a like new Schroder hand drill cost me 20 pence for example. In many cases I buy old tools not because I need them but because I want to save them, restore them, try them and share them with our grandchildren.
Gum tree is also good, I recently brought a 1950’s Stanley No. 5 1/2 for £30. Prices are double that on ebay. It’s a gem, and was being sold by a lady cabinet maker who was thinning out her tool collection.
To answer the question of the stupid prices on ebay, brings us to the Stanley and Record No. 71. I brought two complete ones (with boxes) off ebay a few years ago, and they were relative bargains at £70 and £80. I was watching one on ebay last week which got to £150 with 4 days still to run on the auction. This was clearly caused by autobids. It eventually went for £155 plus p&p. So my advice is don’t auto bid, and only bid at the very end of the auction if the price is still within your range. I avoid items which have very high p&p, as in the UK the seller has up’ed the p&p in case the auction doesn’t get to a reasonable figure. As others have said there are bargains to be had on ebay, and you would be surprised what some sellers will take if you make an offer but you have to be very patient.
My advice is go to car boots or flea markets and rummage, as thats where the real bargains are.
1 December 2019 at 11:08 pm #632542I use Ultex double sided diamond stones, 8″ by 3″ from ITS, and I’ve got no complaints. I’ve got a course/medium (300/600) and a fine/extra fine (1000/1200). I’ve had them about three years, and they are still working well. I’m a weekend warrior and so they don’t get used that heavily but they are still cutting fine. If i’m restoring a plane iron or setting up a chisel for the first time I tend to start with a 60 or 80 grit abrasive paper before moving on to the diamond plates. I finish off with 2000 grit wet and dry (used dry) and my strop, and when done I can shave the hairs on the back of my hand.
I bought an Ultex plate for my son recently, a medium/fine, and on sale it was about £16. Before it got gift wrapped I checked it for flat, and there was a bit of a concave on one side. I took it back to the store and they swapped it for another one which was flat on both sides. The advantage of being 7 miles from the store is you get that old fashioned thing called an in-store shopping experience.
I’ve just looked on the ITS website https://www.its.co.uk/Hand-Tools/Sharpening-Tools.htm and they have the Ultex single sided stones on sale for £10.19 inc VAT. The stones come with a padded nylon pouch and a non-slip mat. The double sided ones seem to have been rebranded as Vault and aren’t on sale at the moment, but are still pretty good value at £29.99 in VAT. That said you could get 3 single sided stones for the price of one double. Their black Friday sales ends on the 6th December.
If you’re not in a rush ITS have regular sales, so you might want to wait until they roll around on offer again.
25 September 2018 at 12:59 pm #313183Hi Dinabandhu,
If you haven’t already acquired one, here’s my experience. I bought a Stanley No. 50 about 6 weeks ago off eBay. I’d have to agree with @HowardinWales that these were probably trophy tools when new, as most of the ones I’ve looked at are still boxed, complete and in excellent condition. The ones that have seen real action seem to have pieces missing. Unfortunately some of the parts are pretty important to the plane working properly.
As Howard said the cutter holding screw is both an unusual thread and has a knurled head to allow you to adjust it, and I suspect would be very difficult to find a replacement for. Without it you can’t use the 2 narrowest cutters. From my limited usage of the plane so far, it works just as well with or without the shaving deflector.
The parts that I think are very important are the cutting spurs, which are both tiny and have even smaller screws. They really help starting a cut and keeping the plane on track. They are meant for going across the grain, but think they make going with the grain easier too.
The No. 50 I sourced is immaculate, the only thing missing was the instructions (which I downloaded from the web). For something that had ended production in the UK in 1962, both the box and it’s content look like it has just come straight from the factory. Only a couple of the cutters had been used, and a couple of screws had a smidgen of rust that just rubbed off with a kitchen scouring pad. The cutters looked a bit mucky/rusty but this turned out to be the greasy waxy coating that Stanley had covered them in.
In terms of pricing, I won mine at £55 including the postage. Buy-it now options start at £75 and go up into silly 3 digit territory. I think you should be able to pick up a tidy complete one for about £55 to £75. The thing to remember is that the No 50s only came with the straight cutters, and the beading cutters were optional extras. There are lots of No. 50’s out there so I would be patient until you can find a complete one for a reasonable price.
I was offered a Record 050 at my local car boot sale last week and even though it had it’s original box, it had to many parts missing to make it worthwhile.
10 January 2018 at 12:09 am #431906I completely agree that some tools, especially the No. 71, are going for silly money. I think this is partly the Paul Sellers effect, but also that a lot of eBay “traders” spot the popularity of something (what’s trending) and see the opportunity for a large profit. It’s reflected in the poor, or lack of, descriptions (they clearly don’t anything about the tools), the very high starting bid or buy it now prices, and the ridiculous postage charges.
I picked up an immaculate, complete, No. 71 about 9 months ago on eBay for £80 and thought that was expensive. Now they are selling for £120+ for poor, incomplete ones, and buy it now prices of £150. You certainly have to question the value when you could get a new Veritas or LN for the same price.
I’m personally having more luck at my local car boot sale, where a Tenon or Panel saw is about a quid. They are usually rusted, paint splattered, and look a mess but clean up and sharpen a treat.
The Saturday before Christmas, was Christmas come early, when I got a Tyzak brass back Tenon saw for £1.50, an immaculate, boxed, Stanley No. 4 1/2 for £15, and a really clean Stanley No. 78 10″ Brace and 41 bits (yes, 41) for a fiver, oh, and a wooden marking gauge for a quid.
This past Saturday I got a well used but clean Stanley No. 7 for £30 (the seller wanted £50). I don’t really need it, and I probably won’t use it much but I couldn’t resist. As it turns out, it was clearly owned by a real Joiner or Cabinet Maker, as it is cutting a treat without doing anything to it. It’s so nice to use that I suspect I will find it hard to part with even though No.7s are listed on eBay at £75+. I’m not buying tools to profit but to use, even if it might only be occasionally.
The downside of car boots, is you have to get up early, you can’t predict what will be there and you can go for weeks without finding anything. That said, you get to see and handle the item first hand, you can haggle, and there is a great satisfaction in spotting something at the bottom of a box of junk.
7 November 2017 at 11:04 pm #358782My pleasure. At the weekend, I flattened the back and sides of the large chisel, and then ran the edge over some abrasive paper, before sharpening on my stones and then stropping. It came up a treat and I was shaving the hairs off the back of my hand. As an experiment, I flattened the back of a second chisel, and then just stropped it. To my surprize it came up as sharp as the one done on the stones. There’s no doubt that blades are excellent quality for the price.
As for the protective coating, I wiped it down with some meths on a rag and with a bit of elbow grease it comes off. I also discovered that you can scrape it off with a sharp edge, and that meths and fine wire wool works very well too.
1 November 2017 at 12:32 am #345541Here in the UK, Lidl have the chisels back stock (29th October 2017) for £7.99 for a set of 4 (8mm, 13mm, 18mm & 24mm). They are still made in Germany by the same manufacturer, but the quality isn’t as good as the set I bought from Lidl this time last year. The handles are now Beech rather than Hornbeam and are not very well finished, but nothing that a light sanding and a coat of your favourite finish won’t cure. The blades however, while still chrome vanadium steel, and pretty well shaped and square, have some sort of protective coating on them that hasn’t been very well applied and has left run and drip marks. It also doesn’t seem to want to come off. Again, some time on abrasive paper and your stones and I suspect they will come up OK. For £7.99 I will forgive the quality issues and persevere with the effort required to get them up to scratch, as they are still a lot better than any other chisels you could buy for the money. It’s just a shame the quality has dropped since last year but still great value for money.
10 July 2017 at 11:59 pm #313641Hi Mike,
I tried your suggestions and I’m now taking great shavings with it. I think the big offender was the paint on the sole. Once the paint was removed, and before I sharpened the blade it was already taking shavings. The paint does hide a multitude of sins, so perhaps that’s why they were painted in the first place.
22 June 2017 at 10:33 pm #313182Hi Mike,
Thanks for these tips. I brought a spokeshave in what I thought was excellent condition at a car boot sale for £2. The blade was pretty sharp but I have been unable to get it to take a shaving. The last time I used a spokeshave was at school about 40+ years ago, and I seem to recall they were easy to use. I’m going to try your suggestions at the weekend and see how I get on.
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