Marples Deluxe x4?

[patrick]

Saw this interesting plane on Ebay but decided not to bid as I know nothing about it.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....MEWA:IT&viewitem=&item=260139858527&rd=1&rd=1

Does anyone know anything about these planes and are they any good? The pictures on the listing are poor but from what I can make out it has a Norris style enclosed handle. The lever cap also seems to have an interesting device on it and I can not make out if there is adjustment for the mouth or lateral blade movement.
The description mentions that it is designed by David Pye who I presume is the same David Pye that wrote Nature and the art of Workmanship and The Nature and Aesthetics of Design so it should be pretty special???

 

[Smudger]

It would have been nice if the seller could have put up some decent pictures - I had to look hard to see the enclosed handle at first.

Would be nice if someone here has won it and could tell us all about it.

 

[Scrit]

I wouldn't necessarily say it's a "Norris-style" handle - for starters you can use the X.4 with yer gloves on! (A Norris A5, A6 or A14 closed handle smother reduces me to a 3-finger grip) The iron is a standard thin iron like any other metal plane iron and the odd knobly device on the lever cap just fulfils the same function as the cam lever on a Bailey-type plane. Because the iron is bedded on a solid wooden frog the throat adjustment is more like that found on the ECE Primus wooden planes, i.e. a movable plate in the base to the front of the blade. I didn't win it, although I had an X.4 and it was OK, but nothing to get excited about. There was even an article in The Woodworker many years back about how to make your own........ In addition to the X.4 there was also, I'm told, an X.5 jack plane - same style but the length of a conventional jack plane - although I can't recall ever seeing one. They were obviously such a great improvement over existing planes in the 1960s and 1970s which is why they are so common :roll:

Scrit

 

[Jarviser]

I presume the £103 price tag is purely down to the "rarity" of this plane, and nothing to do with its condition, design or intrinsic value which I would put at about £8 tops.
Then people pay £100 for stainless steel toast racks from the right designer.

Daft I call it.

 

[Smudger]

Or £200 for a Record scrub plane.

I really fancy one of those as a user, but I can't compete with collectors on price...

 

[bugbear]

Saw this interesting plane on Ebay but decided not to bid as I know nothing about it.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....MEWA:IT&viewitem=&item=260139858527&rd=1&rd=1

Does anyone know anything about these planes and are they any good? The pictures on the listing are poor but from what I can make out it has a Norris style enclosed handle. The lever cap also seems to have an interesting device on it and I can not make out if there is adjustment for the mouth or lateral blade movement.
The description mentions that it is designed by David Pye who I presume is the same David Pye that wrote Nature and the art of Workmanship and The Nature and Aesthetics of Design so it should be pretty special???

http://www.jhorobin.freeserve.co.uk/unusualplanes.htm

It was claimed that this plane was a partial progenitor to some of the Lee Valley bevel down bench planes.

BugBear

 

[Jarviser]

Oh alright then, it's quite a nice improvement on the no. 4 of its day, in having the adjustable mouth. There must have been a reason they didn't sell too well, especially as a Marples plane. That was before Record took them over surely. Many of those "patent" designs had some flaw that stopped them selling, usually I suspect because they were not standard no. 4's that tradesmen were comfortable with. Maybe they were expensive at the time too.

 

[Scrit]

Maybe they were expensive at the time too.

I can vaguely recall seeing one in the ironmongers at the bottom of Colchester High Street in the mid to late 1960s and they were a lot more expensive than the standard Marples/Record product of the era. Sales can't have been helped by the huge shift away from woodworking content in many products following WWII (for example car bodies became all steel, as did railway coaches and wagons, plastics replaced timber in many products) which meant a major reduction in market potential and which was why Marples, Ridgway and Woden were all eventually absorbed by Record.

Scrit