Stanley Block Planes with Richard Gilbert’s Patented Lateral Adjuster

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Stanley Block Planes with Richard Gilbert’s Patented Lateral Adjuster

A question about these Stanley block planes made in England comes up once in a while. Here is some information.

Here is a #60 1/2 and a #9 1/2//220A

Information thank to Leyton Chan

Research time… Stanley UK 9 1/2A, 60 1/2A, 220A, 110A block planes…

Richard Gilbert’s patented lateral adjuster was the main reason for introducing the ‘A’ suffix block planes. They were apparently a bit too ahead of their time for conservative woodworkers, and Stanley’s own executives back in the US.

When doing type studies you must refer to factory documentation. No one can argue against those as they’re the best evidence available.

It’s taken a few months but I’ve assembled a small collection of Stanley UK price list catalogues from 1978 to 1995, this was to find out when the short-lived Richard Gilbert designed and patented A-suffixed block planes were offerred. His patent, GB 240 046 650 A was filed 17 April 1979, and published 19 November 1980.

Sure enough, the small series of block planes which featured his patented lateral adjuster make their first appearance in the July 1981 price list, very likely to have gone into production a few months earlier. The photo of that page is here. The old style block planes were not offerred concurrently (why would they), so we can assume they were discontinued when the new style replaced them.

They were a very short-lived offering however, last appearing in the January 1984 price list. That’s only 3 1/2 years. I have no information as to why they were discontinued – were they too costly to make? or did they simply look too modern for conservative woodworkers of the time?

The January 1985 price list depicts the more familiar shaped 9 1/2, 60 1/2, 220, now re-tooled and re-introduced to feature the Gilbert patent lateral adjuster, and these are to my knowledge still being manufactured today by Stanley.

Additional info thanks to Robert McPhail @oldtoolmart
About 4 years ago, I had the good fortune to be doing some business with a chap, who turned out to be the last factory manager of the Sheffield Works until it closed in 2008.
Being a dealer in old hand tools, I took the opportunity to have various conversations, and also exchanged emails regarding Stanley Tools made in Sheffield. I have taken a couple of quotes from an email regarding the re-designed block planes, that you mention in your post. ” the block planes went into production late 1980 and were sold up to 1985 when they were discontinued.”
” It was decided to return to the traditional style of block planes which the hierachy in Connecticut said that the end users preferred. The re-designed block planes can still be found on the internet, they have an “A” suffix eg. 10-220A.”
In conversation, expanding on those words, it was alluded to the real cause of dropping the design was because, until that period of time, Stanley had a very heavy commitment to holding stock of all the spare parts for all of their ranges worldwide, ready for the end user to buy. The new design meant that there would be a very large stockholding of obselete stock, and at the same time the need to invest great sums of money in creating and distributing the new design type spares, something that the beancounters did not like – so new design dropped!
Straight from the horses mouth, as it were!

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Additional Stanley Block Plane Examples

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