Marsh planes

Re: Marsh planes

L. Hanson

>I have an old Marsh transitional plane my grandfather owned... it's a favorite. The company was based in Rockford Ill. They were bought out by Stanley in the early part of the century, and their factory made Stanleys after that. I believe they were the same company that made miter boxes that eventually Stanley made...

There's some good info on them here:

Oldtools link

HTH

Leif

NorseWoodsmith.com

Re: Marsh planes

John Snyder, Pocono's PA

>A buddy of mine has two of them (a #4 & #5) - IMHO, they're every bit as good as most pre-WW2 Stanley's I've used/owned. The tote is shaped slightly different as I recall. There are Marsh collectors out there - they predictably go for more than a Stanley of the same era. Nice planes ...

JS

OT - miter box

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>They also made a miter box that strongly resembles the Millers Falls Langdon Acme box - two vertical posts, hollow, with split rods in which the backsaw runs, known as the "Marsh Ayers" box according to the maker's badge. I own one that I bought some years back needing some repair (the cast iron right leg had disappeared and the prior owner had put bolts in as a substitute, very unstable; I'd planned to make a wooden substitute and rename it the "Marsh Ahab" box), and promptly forgot about, subsequently purchasing a Stanley 150 (good for small picture frames, too light for much else), M-F Langdon Acme box (bought, haven't used yet due to lack of suitable projects, but understand the "Acme" is appropriately part of the name), and later Stanley 360A (hey, it was only $10).

I'd intended to sell the Marsh at our upcoming garage sale, but with this history am now tempted to keep it...