Genealogy of a wooden plane – Veit

Probably about 10 years ago I bought a lot of four wooden planes on eBay. One was marked from plane manufacturer John Veit, so let’s explore its genealogy a little. It’s a 22″ (fore?) plane, made of either beech or applewood, with plane makers mark on the toe. It has a double-iron. John Veit was a plane maker from Philadelphia (whose address is clearly marked on the plane), from around 1860 to about 1904.

Smaller plane makers like this probably didn’t have their own catalogs, and therefore often sold through dealers. One such catalog was J.B.Shannon – the planes of John Veit appeared in the 1873 “Illustrated Catalogue and Price List of Carpenters’ Tools“, as “Veit’s City Made Warranted Bench Planes”.

 

The blade and cap iron are from W. Greave & Sons. William Greaves was a cutlery manufacturer, anf razorsmith in Sheffield, who started in 1787, with his sons joining the company in 1817. In 1823, the Greaves family built the Sheaf Works, the first integrated steel works in Sheffield. They were manufacturing table knives, razors and edge tools. The company was dissolved in 1850, and steel and tool side of the business was bought by Thomas Turton & Sons, who continued using the Greaves & Sons’ mark. The cap iron is stamped “SHEAF WORKS”.

So how did an English plane blade and iron get onto an American made plane body? Well it turns out Greaves & Sons exported a good amount of their production to America, and the Sheffield directories actually listed them as “American merchants”.

NOTES:

Carl Bopp, “Made in Philada: No. 4”, The Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, March (2004)

Exploring British planemakers

If you are looking at exploring British planemakers, I previously mentioned W.L. Goodman’s “British Planemakers from 1700” as a good resource. I have a copy of the 2nd ed. (1978) and on the weekend I managed to buy a battered copy of the 3rd ed. (1993) for $20. A bargain considering third editions run at US$350 online. The first edition (1968) is almost impossible to find. The 3rd edition, expanded by Jane and Mark Rees is a massive 514 pages, compared to the 182 pages of the 2nd edition.

The book contains a extensive amount of new information – planemakers history, and makers marks, and trademarks. Below is an example of a page from the 3rd edition. It contains 1650 makers and dealers, as opposed to the 880 in the second edition. There are ample versions of the 2nd ed. at reasonable prices, but the 3rd ed. is out of print, so if you find this copy somewhere for a reasonable price, snap it up!

Book info:

• William Louis Goodman, British Planemakers from 1700, D. McKay Co. (1969)
• W.L. Goodman, British Planemakers from 1700 (2nd ed.), Arnold and Walker (1978)
• W.L. Goodman (author), Jane and Mark Rees (rev.), British Planemakers from 1700, (3rd ed.), Astragal Press (1993)

The basics of identifying wood (ii): rings and pores

As mentioned in a  previous post, the rings form the most visible structure in a transverse surface, or cross-section through a tree, or branch. Can it be used to identify a piece of wood? Only vaguely in so much as some trees have very distinct rings, for example oak, ash, douglas fir, maple. Others have more obscure rings, e.g. birch, beech, ebony, purpleheart, poplar. This is very evident in tropical hardwoods where growth can occur all year round.

More important are pores.  Pores, or vessels, are the small circular holes visible on a cross-section of wood, and do not appear in softwoods. These vessels serve as the tree’s plumbing, transporting sap throughout the tree. The size and distribution of these pores helps determine the type of wood. So ask the question – does a cross-section of the wood show pores? YES – then it’s a hardwood, NO, then its a softwood. Some pores have contents, sometimes a result of transforming from sapwood to heartwood. One of these fillers are tyloses- which grow in open pores and can completely fill them. A good example is the difference between red and white oak. White oak contains tyloses, and does not absorb water the way red oak does, making it better for shipbuilding (check out this video to see why).

Hardwoods have three different types of pore arrangement:

• ring-porous: pores occur mainly in the earlywood, causing an abrupt transition to latewood which is very distinct. Latewood pores are more difficult to see. (oak, ash)
• semi-ring-porous: The pore transition from large to small diameter within a growth ring is gradual. (black walnut, hickory)
• diffuse-porous: The pores are uniform in size across the entire growth ring. (poplar, maple), often with no clear earlywood/latewood pore arrangement.

Here are some examples:

Three types of pore: ring-porous (oak), semi-ring porous (walnut), and diffuse-porous (hard maple)

And a close-up of what the pores would look like: