Interesting (?) round plane

[Sheffield Tony]

Last weekend at Mac Timbers I had an interesting rummage through the stuff Andy Tools 'n Tat had brought. (Shame he didn't want to part with the shiny adze).

Anyway, looking at the rather nice set of planemakers planes reminded me of this slightly unusual and rather sorry looking woodie that arrived in a job lot. It has suffered from woodworm, but the microwave had the last laugh - don't think many will have survived 2 minutes on full power. It seems to be made by "W. REES". Any thoughts ?

 

[tobytools]

Looks like..
A sort of side round! I have one that is craftsman made, andy has one that is used to create the hollow/round on the side top of moulding planes.

TT

 

[AndyT]

I have the advantage of having seen Andy's planes at the same time so this will be no surprise...

I am sure that this is a special sort of round, used by plane makers to make the long concave shape at the left hand side of a wide moulding plane. With Andy's collection of plane maker's planes you could fit such a round into the hollow it cut in other planes by the same maker.

So W Rees was a plane maker.

But where or when? Frustratingly, British Plane Makers has no entry for Rees, despite having been revised by Jane and Mark Rees. (I assume anyone compiling such a book would check carefully and look for a family comnection if there was one.)

Are there any clues at all from the rest of the job lot? Any other planes marked Rees or Stoneman? Where did you buy them?

 

[Sheffield Tony]

This was a job lot from ebay. Most were common - H&R, a torus, a few side beads. One crude homemade router (a lump of oak with a Maples chisel tang wedged in). Routledge amongst others, no other W. Rees.

All of them were stamped with "Stoneman" and "S. Rowe", presumably previous owners.

I notice for the first time that this plane appears to be a number 6 whatever it is.

 

[Plumberpete]

Hi Tony,

I too have had the advantage (and pleasure) of having seen Andy Toolntat's mother planes and this does indeed look like a mother plane for planing the shoulder on moulding planes, the planes can be seen at David Barron's blogspot here; http://davidbarronfurniture.blogspot.co ... lanes.html

 

[AndyT]

Hi Tony

I was intrigued enough by this to spend ten minutes looking in census data for Mr Rees.
You can do an online search with just the name and the occupation, if you choose which census to look in. I tried them all, from 1851 to 1911, looking for surname = Rees and occupation = plane* or plain* - but found nothing.
It's perfectly possible that Mr Rees was recorded as a Joiner - there are plenty of known planemakers where that is true. And there are plenty of joiners called Rees - but we sort of know that already, from the plane itself.
So I don't think it will be easy to say when or where W Rees was - but it's still a nice thing to own and understand the special use of a plane of that shape.