Cooper's Plane and other stuff

[stevemorris]

new member here from canada, i recently acquired this old coopers plane

anybody have any historical info?

i have reground the iron and honed it, needs more honing but works nicely

110 lbs, solid cast iron, 5 1/2 ft long!!

 

[novocaine]

stick a tote on it and your set for smoothing that board room table.
very nice, not seen a cast one before, they were typically wooden with stand at 1 end.

 

[stevemorris]

yes cast ones seem pretty rare, lots of wooden ones on utube
way too heavy for handplaning the "traditional " way!!

 

[novocaine]

was meant as a bit of a joke, sorry.
anyway, john fearn ltd. was also denoted as J Fearn Ltd. which might help in a hunt for information. long gone now though.

 

[stevemorris]

no worries about the joke, i got it!!!

i did google john fearn ltd, obviously long gone

i have other tools from the same cooper, draw knives etc etc

 

[arnoldmason8]

We are looking forward to seeing the first barrel / cask come off the production line (with pictures).

Arnold

 

[sunnybob]

Back in the late 80's I worked at Taunton Cider in Somerset. There was a large warehouse in one corner of the 22 acre site filled with canadian cedar barrels. Not ordinary barrels mind. They were 16 feet tall and about a dozen feet across at the top. Never found the exact date of manufacture but must have been just after WW2.
We used to climb up on top and hide from the foreman if we fancied a rest.

But the elfin safety got involved and said they werent safe to walk on any more. and they were roped off and it was a sacking offence to walk up there.

And THEN the environmental elf came round and said it was not hygenic to ferment cider in wooden casks so they had to remove all the tops and coat the insides of those monsters in white nylon.

All gone now, just another housing estate there.
I expect that plane could well have made some of those barrels.

 

[StuartofAlbion]

no worries about the joke, i got it!!!

i did google john fearn ltd, obviously long gone

i have other tools from the same cooper, draw knives etc etc

new member here from canada, i recently acquired this old coopers plane

anybody have any historical info?

i have reground the iron and honed it, needs more honing but works nicely

110 lbs, solid cast iron, 5 1/2 ft long!!

Steve
My father owned John Fearn in its later stages. It was by then a part of Sheffield Cooperage Ltd, making tools and sundries while the cooperage madeand/or repaired barrels by then mostly for whisky. I remember watching him making shaves as a kid, he used to pay me and my brother to sweep and (if we were lucky) to paint the chimes.

It all shut down in the early 1980s. You can still see some remants of the bottom yard where the coopering work was done but most of the site was demolished and became an old person's home.

I have never before seen a 'plane like yours nor anything with that John Fearn plate on it. It is a handsome thing.

Stuart