How did I get this Weird Job (Part 1, the plane that almost defeated me)

By Robert Porter

Alone in the shop, I found myself reflecting on what brought me to today, working through the last group of X0As.

This is my story.

Woodworking had been my obsession from the day I made my first cut on a green branch from a poplar tree at my fathers campground in Western North Carolina. I was hooked from day one. I became a designer, fabricator and woodworker. I made a good living at it. I lived it. I looked forward to it every day. Then an injury made it impossible for me to continue. I was angry and bitter. I needed something to do. Something productive. Something rewarding. Something that would erase the bitterness of being deprived of a job I loved. Something that mattered and made a difference. But all I knew was what I had lived. So I found the next closest thing. Tools.

My first plane a Stanley 5C

In 2014 I started working as a Tool Dealer but specializing in OTS or (Other Than Stanley) antique tools as well as patented oddities. I love the hard to find stuff. It’s a sickness honestly. The weirder the better! Coming from a design background makes me hyper analyze the oddities because of their complications. I feel like I’m inside the designer's head when I’m examining the tools.

My focus was on the under represented brands like, Sargent, Millers Falls, Record, Woden, Rapier and a variety of other hardware concern planes. I also honed in on the crazy Patented Planes. The ones that didn’t survive for a reason. They were super cool to look at but some were absolute dog turds at the bench. 

Millers Falls Prototype Skewed Jack Plane

In addition to dealing I also started tool collecting on my own. The brands that really intrigued me at the time were Millers Falls and Record.

I traveled a lot while gathering tools for other people, representing bids at auctions and focusing on buying inventory to keep the business alive and keep customers happy by being a solid source for their collections. It was a ton of fun. I met people that were absolutely fascinating. I heard stories I could hear over and over again and really enjoyed them each and every time no matter how many times they were told. 

Through these experiences, I started becoming very aware of subtle differences in tool designs. Subtle stuff. Details that make each tool significantly different from each other while seemingly the same. 

This is the real spark. This is what created the obsession you see today. 

So in my search for planes for my collection and searching for planes and other tools for customers, I find myself needing to know more about the tools. Both the history and what makes each tool valuable in its own right. It’s crazy to someone not involved in antique tools to see people get wound up about a replaced part or a modified tool. To some it's just a tool and to those people I would say, they in fact would be correct, it is, in fact, just a tool. But it's also not. It’s where tools came from. Everything we see today has an origin story. It came from somewhere. Those old tools are what set the basis for almost everything we enjoy today. A Chair is a Chair. BUT where did the first chair come from and how did it affect the chair you are sitting in now reading this article? 

As a Millers Falls collector, I understood and studied Millers Falls and in the process learned about some of their corporate acquisitions. One company Millers Falls acquired was  “Union Tool” located in Orange, Massachusetts. They made great tools! I highly recommend the tools they made. Some of those tools ended up in both Millers Falls and Goodell-Pratt catalogs. In 2015 as I was browsing eBay using my typical search terms I ran across a Union plane. I think to myself, Union didn't make a plane! They made squares and other types of tools. Did I just find a rare variant of Millers Falls? I couldn't buy it fast enough. Ignorance wins. So did the seller! I offered a dumb amount for this “find”. 

Example of a Bailey Pattern Union No 2 Bench Plane

The plane arrives and it looks identical to a stanley type 8. Confused would have been an understatement. Not only was this obviously NOT a Millers Falls, it was likely some Bailey Pattern in a sea of Bailey Patterns. Crap. I paid like $100 for a no name common plane. A hardware concern plane at that. Little did I know that was the tip of the iceberg and not the thing that would eventually really drive the conversation in the near future. It was just another Bailey Pattern plane and apparently much to my surprise Union Tool is a different company from Union Manufacturing Company the plane maker.

As I continued to search for Union Tool products, a Union X Plane appeared in the listings. It wasn't Millers Falls related but I looked so unique and different I had to own it. 

The plane arrived and it really got my attention. Cool like a Sargent Autoset or a Gage plane is cool from a gizmatic standpoint. I liked it a lot. It looked cool but how did it work? I couldn't wait to try it out! I sharpened it and attempted to adjust it, however I couldn't get the darn plane to adjust right. It seemed very fiddly to me. The lock nuts were confusing me and the lateral adjuster is the opposite of every other plane I've ever had. So I thought to myself, great another gimmicky tool. It was still cool looking so on the shelf it went. I’ve literally had thousands of planes go through my hands and this was the first to stump me. Maybe the Union brand just wasn’t for me. 

From left to right Union No X4-1/4, No X2 and No X3

I’m stubborn and curious. I hate losing. I hate not knowing how something works. After some time passed I finally had a moment to go back and figure this curiosity of a plane out. I pulled the plane off of the shelf with the intention of not putting it away without knowing everything about it. I had seen quite a few around since I had acquired this one so, in my mind they couldn't be that bad right? So I sat down and really looked it over. I studied what made what do what. It was actually pretty straightforward, awkwardly straightforward. Upon closer inspection it actually made more sense than the rest of the planes I had spent time studying. What was messing with me was simple. It wasn't a Bailey Pattern. It was in many ways the opposite of the most popular plane design in the market. Which naturally messed with my concept of function. It had cool and very unique features. While I was messing around with it I realized the lever cap was changing my depth of cut. It was almost as if it was made to do that. It was insanely accurate too! I was hooked. It was like a drug with instant addiction. There was no escape from there for me. The plane that had beaten me shared its secrets!

Some of personal favorite user planes

After this breakthrough discovery I started buying every X Plane I could find. Filling shelves, then rooms. Studying variants and trying to figure out what the original designers were doing and where they were going with it. I had to know everything there was to know about this amazing tool. 

This was the beginning of what has become my obsession for the last 10 years. 

One of the weirdest and coolest planes I’ve owned over the years