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Forgotten Tools: Leonard Bailey's Victor Bench Plane, 1876-1884 [1]

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Date: 2022-07-24

They sure dressed them up back then.

Leonard Bailey is more or less the father of what most people see when they think of a hand plane. In 1867, he patented his design for a cast iron-bodied plane with a mechanically adjustable cutter depth, and a thumb-operated lever cap. Basically this:

A 1930’s Stanley Bailey branded plane.

Bailey sold most of his 1867 patents to Stanley in 1869, in return for royalties from the sales of his design. The relationship soon soured, Bailey contending that Stanley’s introduction of additional hand plane lines was cutting into his royalties. Bailey severed ties with Stanley in 1875.

So what does Bailey do? He starts up a new company and introduces the Victor and Defiance planes. Marketing and branding subtlety was not on Mr. Bailey’s mind at the time, apparently.

Bailey was soon embroiled in a deluge of patent infringement lawsuits by Stanley. Stanley had deeper pockets and more influence, and they eventually prevailed in 1884, giving them control of Bailey’s factories and designs. Stanley then ceased production of the Victor and Defiance models. They did resurrect these brands in the 1920’s-30’s, but they were of low-end quality. Avoid “Stanley Victor” or “Stanley Defiance” planes if you’re looking for a good vintage user..

Bailey quit inventing after all that shit drama. He went on to manufacture copying presses, a mechanical forerunner of today’s office copier. He died in 1904. In 1905, Stanley put the Bailey name on the bench plane line he originated. That Bailey branding remained until 1961. This story would make for a great mini-series on TV..

So, here’s one of the Bailey’s Victor planes from that 1876-1884 period. This is a No. 3 size with a 1 3/4” wide iron — A medium size tool.

The first thing you see is that this tool is rather ornate. So cool. The second thing is that it’s entirely made of metal. The rear tote, lever cap screw, and front knob were once nickel plated, but next to none of that is left. Overall though, it’s in very fine condition. The black Japanning is almost all still there; I’d say 98% remains. There’s some rust pitting in a few spots, but it’s clean and solid for its age.

Pretty much how I got it, not a lot of clean-up to do. Time for a bowl!

Naturally, the first thing I do with any tool is take it apart:

This came with the iron mated to the chip breaker backwards. Obviously sold by a pro..

Here’s a look at some of the parts:

They spent some bucks on this knob, for sure. A little pin at the top of the link arm engages one of those holes in the iron to advance or retract it. Clever. The depth adjuster. Just a couple simple gears moving a linkage on a cam.

These planes aren’t all that common, so I opted to only give it a mild cleaning, waxing, and oiling. But, the iron needed some attention — There were several nicks, and some rust pitting along the cutting edge. No plane is worth a shit if it’s not at least sharp, so:

Resetting the bevel angle.

I re-ground the iron’s bevel to 25 degrees, using a honing guide and a diamond stone. It’s slower, but more accurate than using a bench grinder. Then I went berserk with sharpening, all the way up to 16000 grit and leather stropping. I also give my irons a secondary 30 degree bevel. That makes it easier and faster to re-hone. Eventually, that secondary 30 degree bevel will get too wide, and the original 25 degree bevel will have to be re-established, but not in my lifetime. Not with this plane.

I went kind of overboard on polishing that 25 degree bevel. It doesn’t have to be that shiny. I blame the weed..

Normally, I would flatten the sole, but beyond lightly sanding off a few rough spots along the edges, I left it alone. I didn’t want to remove any more metal than necessary. After all, this tool is going on 150 years old..

Takes nice onion-skin shavings, even without flattening the sole.

I noticed this little round spot on the sole up near the toe. Somebody drilled a hole, then later plugged it and machined it smooth. It’s covered with the black Japanning on the top side, so it was done at the factory. There had to be a reason - Those extra manufacturing operations cost money. But I’m stumped, I have no idea why they did this.

WTF is that round plug at the front of the sole for?

All that said, I love this plane. It’s well-made and with just a little tune-up work to the iron, it does a really good job. Not that it’ll be a regular user (That adjuster mechanism does look and feel a little delicate); I’ll just continue to preserve this little piece of mostly forgotten tool history.

Glorious Industrial Age ornateness. I love it.

Stay safe, everyone!

ER

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/24/2112222/-Forgotten-Tools-Leonard-Bailey-s-Victor-Bench-Plane-1876-1884

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