Era · Before 1900

Early years

Leonard Bailey was making iron bench planes in Boston in the 1860s, and Stanley bought his patents in 1869. Stanley planes from this era are Types 1 to 7. The earliest have no lateral adjustment lever, which arrived in 1885 with a straight end and got its round disc in 1888, and nothing is cast behind the frog. Patent information is stamped on the brass depth nut instead. Stanley added the No. 4½ around 1884 and its Bed Rock line in 1898. In Philadelphia, Henry Disston had started selling saws from a rented basement in 1840 and built the company into the largest saw maker in the world.

1 model we cover.