Stanley never put a year on its planes. It kept making small changes to the Bailey bench plane for about a century, a new frog seat here and a taller knob there, and collectors later sorted those changes into twenty Types. Learn a handful of them and you can date most Stanley bench planes from three or four listing photos, usually to within a few years.
The study grew out of Roger Smith's books on American metallic planes and Patrick Leach's Blood and Gore listings. Jay Sutherland turned it into web pages in the 1990s, and they live on at Hyperkitten. It's written around the No. 4, and most other sizes follow it with small differences. The No. 1 and No. 2 skipped many of the changes, so date those more loosely.
The Types at a glance
- Types 1–4 (1867–1884) have no lateral adjustment lever. Type 1 was made in Boston, before Stanley bought Bailey's patents.
- Types 5–8 (1885–1902) have a lateral lever but nothing cast behind the frog.
- Types 9–10 (1902–1909) have two patent dates cast behind the frog.
- Types 11–12 (1910–1924) have three.
- Types 13–14 (1925–1930) have one.
- Types 15–16 (1931–1941) have none, and a raised ring holds the knob.
- Types 17–19 (1942–1961) are the war and postwar planes.
- Type 20 (from 1962) is painted blue.
Start behind the frog
The quickest check is the patent dates cast into the bed just behind the frog, under the brass depth nut. In 1902 Stanley redesigned the frog seat with a rib that keeps the frog square to the mouth, and cast MAR-25-02 and AUG-19-02 there. Type 11 added APR-19-10 in 1910, making three. Type 13 (1925) dropped back to APR-19-10 alone, and from Type 15 (1931) there's nothing. Ask the seller for a photo taken from behind the plane, looking down past the tote.
Two dates leaves Type 9 or Type 10. Type 10 (1907–1909) has a bigger, arched rib under the frog and the frog adjusting screw, which Stanley first offered on its Bed Rock planes. Three dates leaves Type 11 or Type 12, and the knob settles it.
Knob, lever cap and paint
Through Type 11 the front knob is low and squat. Type 12 (1919–1924) brought the taller high knob, along with a bigger 1¼-inch brass depth nut. High knobs split at the base even more than the low ones, so in Type 14 (1929–1930) Stanley cast a raised ring into the bed to seat the knob, and that cured it. A raised ring with no patent dates behind the frog means Type 15 or later.
The lever cap helps from 1925. Type 13 is the first with STANLEY cast in a notched rectangle on the cap, and the background of that rectangle went through japanned black, plain nickel, orange, reddish and yellow over the following years. In Type 16 (1933–1941) the hole for the lever cap screw changes from a symmetrical keyhole to a kidney shape, and broad flat ribs appear on the toe and heel of the body. Blue paint on the body means Type 20.
The body castings help too. From 1902 BAILEY is cast into the body as a nod to the inventor. In Type 14 MADE IN U.S.A. appears at the toe, and in Type 15 it moves behind the frog while the size number moves in front of the knob.
Iron logos and older planes
The trademark stamped on the iron changes with the Types. Type 10 has a four-line STANLEY RULE & LEVEL CO. NEW BRITAIN CONN. U.S.A. stamp, and Type 11 a V-shaped STANLEY NEW BRITAIN CONN. U.S.A. logo. From about 1920 to the mid-1930s irons carry the Sweetheart logo, STANLEY in a notched rectangle over a heart with S.W. inside, which came from the 1920 merger with the Stanley Works. Type 16 drops the heart. Irons are easy to swap, so use the logo to check the rest of the plane rather than to date it on its own.
Older planes date by the lateral adjustment lever. Types 1–4 have none. In Type 5 (1885–1888) it's a one-piece lever with a straight end where it meets the iron, and from Type 6 (1888) that end is a round disc. Early levers carry patent dates, and Type 8 has only 7-24-88, while Type 9 and later have none. Type 19 has STANLEY stamped vertically on the lever, and Type 20's lever is one bent piece with no name. Through Type 6, patent information is stamped on the brass depth nut.
War years and after
Type 17 (1942–1945) is where the study gets loose. Wartime planes can have hardwood handles stained red or painted black, a small depth nut of steel or hard rubber, a lever cap without nickel plating and thicker, heavier castings. Some have no frog adjusting screw at all. Stanley was using up prewar parts, so rosewood and brass turn up on war planes too. Type 18 (1946–1947) brought back brass nuts with diagonal knurling, and Type 19 (1948–1961) brought back rosewood, often heavily varnished, with a Y-shaped frog seat in the bed. Later Type 19s went back to black-painted hardwood, and irons with rounded tops showed up in the mid-1950s. Type 20 replaced the cast-iron adjusting fork with a two-piece pressed-steel one.
Hybrids, swapped parts and Bed Rocks
Stanley made parts in batches for new planes and for its replacement-parts business, and leftovers went onto the next batch. A plane with a part from a neighboring Type is very likely original if its finish and wear match the rest. A plane assembled from several different planes, the kind collectors call a Frankenplane, is another matter. Leach's warnings include No. 3 lever caps ground down to fit a No. 2, depth nuts from bigger planes on small ones, and early No. 4½ bodies fitted with an old No. 6 or No. 7 frog to pass as a rare early version. Japanning that doesn't match between frog and body is the thing to look for.
Don't confuse a Bailey with a Bed Rock. Stanley's 600-series Bed Rock planes (1898 until World War II) look much the same from above but have a frog that seats along its full length on a machined slope. Their lever caps read BED ROCK until about 1925, and later ones have flat-topped sides and two extra screws behind the frog for clamping it. A Bailey with a frog adjusting screw is still a Bailey.
What to ask for in a listing
- A photo of the bed behind the frog, showing any cast patent dates.
- A side view, to judge the knob height and look for the raised ring.
- The lever cap from the front, for the screw hole shape and any STANLEY or BED ROCK lettering.
- The iron's logo, in good light.
- The toe and heel, for BAILEY, the size number and MADE IN U.S.A.
Then line up what you see against the list at the top. If the features agree, you know the Type. If they don't, you've found replaced parts before paying for them. To see which Types make good users and which matter to collectors, read user grade vs collector grade, see the between-the-wars planes, or look through every Stanley listing we track on browse.
