Who made this scrub plane?

[heimlaga]

I bought this plane at a flea market today. It is obviously a knock off of a Stanley scrub plane. The casting is a lot coarser that Stanley castings and the paint is schriveling and flaking. The only marking is a rised capital B encirkled by two diamonds. This is cast into the body between the frog and the tote.
My plan is to put it into use. There isn't much that can be wrong on a scrub plane.

Can anyone identify the maker or tell me in which country it is made? Kommunist era East Europe would be my guess?

 

[Ed Bray]

I just converted my #4 Anant into a scrub plane, works well.

 

[J_Cramer]

...
Can anyone identify the maker or tell me in which country it is made? Kommunist era East Europe would be my guess?

Hello,

according to Wolfgang Jordan's site it's from Russia:

www_holzwerken_de/museum/hersteller/voskova.phtml

(for some reason I am not allowed to post proper links, so please replace underscore with dot)

Cheers
Jürgen

 

[heimlaga]

Thanks Jürgen
That's the same maker's mark B with two diamonds behind.

Is seems like it came from the same factory as the famed Mosin Nagant riffles that were used by the Finnish army in both world wars until gradually replaced by the more modern Finnish made Pystykorva.
B is of cause the russian letter V which stands for Voskov.
СЕСТРОРЕЦКИЙ ИНСТРУМЕНТАЛЬНЫЙ ЗАВОД is the name of the factory, which should translate as Sestroretsk Toolworks.

That factory was barely inside the border of the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland before we got independence in 1917-1918. In the peace negotiations the riffle factory and the land around it was given to the Soviet Union in exchange for the Petsamo area and the harbour of Linhammar by the Barents sea.

 

[Racers]

I have their copy of a No43 in my fleet.




'tis the black one, Svetlana I call her.

Pete

Found a better shot.

 

[heimlaga]

I saw one of those some 10 years ago.

That black pant on her does allude to the heavy makeup often worn by Russian women...... :wink:

 

[dickm]

Interesting sidelight from this topic here. Wonder how many knock-offs the Russians/East European satellites made? And were there originally high quality toolmakers in the satellites whose tooling gradually got worse over time? As happened with East German Zeiss photographic equipment, where the original Zeiss factory which made superb cameras gradually made cheaper and worse models over time. The West German counterpart kept up quality, but then almost all European camera manufacture disappeared under the onslaught from Japan.

 

[jimi43]

AH yes...the STEALTH PLANE!

I remember it well! :mrgreen:

Jimi

 

[Vann]

for some reason I am not allowed to post proper links...

I believe after your third post you can attach links and photos - so just one post to go...

Good work on finding the maker so quickly.

Cheers, Vann.

 

[heimlaga]

Some high quality tools and machinery came out of Checkoslovakia before the war but under Soviet rule their quality started to go down. Right now I cannot remember any brand names.
The same thing happened in East Germany.There were many high quality toolmakers but they were shut down or assimilated into big government owned companies making not so good tools.

 

[AndyT]

New readers wanting to see the sort of quality plane available from East Germany might like to look back at this old thread

https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/ugly-duckling-t54430.html