Comparison of tool prices over time.

[G S Haydon]

I did Matthew, it was a bag o' dung. If you could get it for free ok. The silverline I tried was miles ahead and £12.00.

As a general question we often discuss the merits of changes made over time. Is there any reason why the depth adjustment wheel on Stanley type planes could not be made from something harder? Stainless perhaps? I know nothing about making a tools but brass is pretty soft and I've seen these get heavily worn over time as the brass is relatively soft.

 

[rxh]

I did Matthew, it was a bag o' dung. If you could get it for free ok. The silverline I tried was miles ahead and £12.00.

As a general question we often discuss the merits of changes made over time. Is there any reason why the depth adjustment wheel on Stanley type planes could not be made from something harder? Stainless perhaps? I know nothing about making a tools but brass is pretty soft and I've seen these get heavily worn over time as the brass is relatively soft.

Plated carbon steel has been used, as in this Stanley 4 1/2, which I believe is "war issue" (WW2).

 

[Trafalgar]

Double post, see below.

 

[G S Haydon]

Cheers rxh, seems a nice solution. Dad's number 4 is about to require a new adjustment wheel, everything else is pretty good.

 

[Trafalgar]

1960 USA Stanley was bad enough, UK made Stanley would have likely been worse as is its reputation. Not sure the focus on a decade clearly past the company's plane making prime regardless of location.

 

[G S Haydon]

I quite like the 60's one I have. Humble beech handle & knob. Workmanlike and works great! Adjustment wheel is big allowing easy adjustment, the earlier versions had smaller wheels I think. Can't think of a defective part really.

 

[Trafalgar]

You need mid to late 1920s era USA Stanley.

I have my son's kit packed away and it's all Stanley Sweetheart era: jointer (7c), panel (6c), jack (5c), smoother (4), low-angle block plane. Original irons, too. Sweet, sweet, sweet...

If any planes were worth, comparatively speaking, what today's L-N planes are it's these.

 

[MIGNAL]

I have a Stanley 5.5 from the very early '70's. Works extremely well, can't fault it. I draw the line at the ones with the pressed metal yokes. We are getting dreadful. The one with the brown plastic handles were very poor too. That's the very first plane that I bought, around 1978. It went in the bin around 1990. Can't think what took me so long.

 

[G S Haydon]

What makes them better Charles?

 

[Mr_P]

Just for Matthew and Charles here is the 1925 Melhuish catalogue

http://toolemera.com/Trade%20Catalogs/t ... gs192.html

Big pdf but the answers are near the top (page 10).

Stan no.4 = 14/10 Bedrock 604 = 18/3

 

[Downwindtracker2]

Here in BC ,a portable circular saw, Skilsaw ,cost $135, 2 days wages in '74, I bought one this spring for $100, 3 hours wages. Union tradesman rate. Chinese, but not junk. That's likely why I'm buying old tools I never could have afforded when that were new.

 

[JimB]

Dredging my memory here but I think I paid around $12 for my Record No 4 about fifty years ago. I was taking home around $60/week at the time. Australian dollars of course.

 

[matthewwh]

Just for Matthew and Charles here is the 1925 Melhuish catalogue

http://toolemera.com/Trade%20Catalogs/t ... gs192.html

Big pdf but the answers are near the top (page 10).

Stan no.4 = 14/10 Bedrock 604 = 18/3

Thank you Mr P.

According to wirksworth a days wages for a skilled craftsman in 1925 was 15 shillings, so you'd have tuppence change (about enough to buy a paper) on the Bailey, or you could do a few hours the following morning and get yourself a bedrock. Still very much in Quangsheng territory rather than the LN.

Looking at infills, the most common A5 type comes in at 46/-, just over three days wages, a little more than you'd pay now for a Lie-Nielsen but nowhere near the prices that new infill planes command.

It's also interesting to note that well cared for bedrocks and infills have held their value over the last 100 years, while baileys have at best halved.

 

[Trafalgar]

What makes them better Charles?

Fit and finish I suppose. Frogs seem to click into place, soles flatter, just a more solid feel. The mouths are tighter.

 

[Trafalgar]

Matthew, purchasing power parity has more to do with the value of one currency vs. another and exchange rates rather than the number of days wages needed to buy a tool.

 

[AndyT]

Well, this is a potentially interesting thread, but there are so many possible directions it could go in!

I shall try to stay on the topic Paddy started with and offer a few more data points.

I've scanned a supplement to the Woodworker from May 1960 which surveyed the planes still available and gave retail prices for them. ("Retail Price Maintenance" - the system by which the manufacturer set a price which was held to by all resellers - still applied then.)
(There is a different problem when looking at prices in many old catalogues which were wholesale catalogues intended to set prices that toolshops would have paid when buying their stock. This is further compounded by application of discounts or plussages or both to list prices. )

Here is the page with prices of bench planes:

(I've scanned the rest, as it is likely to be of interest for other topics. Here are links to the other pages:

http://sloot.co.uk/bucket/ww_planes_1961-2.jpg
http://sloot.co.uk/bucket/ww_planes_1961-3.jpg
http://sloot.co.uk/bucket/ww_planes_1961-4.jpg

I also have a similar supplement on portable power saws - much more expensive - which I could scan. There's one on hardboard too, but that is not so interesting!)

And for another price comparison, when I bought my first plane in 1979, it was a made in England Stanley no 4, with plastic handles, (which performs beautifully). I bought it in Barnitt's in York, which is still trading, and I am pretty sure I paid about £16 - 20 for it.
At the time I was temporarily working 48 hrs a week at the local glass factory, grossing about £100 a week which was a very good wage - £50-£60 was ok to live on. My rent for half of a 2 bed flat was cheap at £5 a week. Beer was about 28p a pint, petrol was, I think, about 38p a gallon.

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

If a Stanley cost a days wages or thereabouts in 1960 and an LN costs two and a half days wages now, does a current equivalent Stanley cost around 40% of the price of a £230 LN?

No, it's about £40

I think that these calculations cannot reflect something approaching reasonableness as they contain added expenses that detract from the true price.

The problem is that Stanley Bedrock planes (which you need to consider as a match for the LN, another Bedrock design) reached their heights in the early part of the 20th century in the USA, not the UK. The LN is a USA-made plane, and subject to import duty in the UK, and so any calculation will be affected by this.

It seems more appropriate to examine a (say) 1920 Bedrock #604 sold in the USA against the weekly wage of a USA cabinetmaker of that time, and then a (say) 2015 LN #4 price, as sold in in the USA.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Trafalgar]

Yes, by and large.

But a cabinetmaker's wage where? A small Mississippi Delta town? New York? The panhandled of Texas? North Dakota? San Francisco? Miami? Muskogee, Oklahoma?

France is about the same size as Texas. The U.S. is huge.

California, alone, was the world's eighth largest economy as measured a few years ago. California's economy is bigger than Spain's and Canada's.

Be careful not to end up with a set of numbers you could trust about as far as you could throw a piece of cheesecake underwater.

 

[whiskywill]

Be careful not to end up with a set of numbers you could trust about as far as you could throw a piece of cheesecake underwater.

That is a very good point. Now, how far can you throw a piece of cheesecake underwater today compared to the 60's, what proportion of a day's wages would it cost and which flavour cheesecake can be thrown the furthest? Is stale cheesecake better than fresh and is homemade better than shop bought? So many variations and so little time.

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

Yes, by and large.

But a cabinetmaker's wage where? A small Mississippi Delta town? New York? The panhandled of Texas? North Dakota? San Francisco? Miami? Muskogee, Oklahoma?

France is about the same size as Texas. The U.S. is huge.

California, alone, was the world's eighth largest economy as measured a few years ago. California's economy is bigger than Spain's and Canada's.

Be careful not to end up with a set of numbers you could trust about as far as you could throw a piece of cheesecake underwater.

Don't just pick one. Choose three cities, say, New York, San Francisco, and Oklahoma.

Go.

Regards from Perth

Derek