Greetings. I am interested in purchasing a Stanley #7 Type 15 from an online vendor but I determined that the frog in this plane is actually a Type 16 frog.
My question is, are they interchangeable and is this still a good buy? Thank you and happy new year!
Replies
A " good buy " depends on what your paying. Other than a loss of collector value, of which old Stanley bench planes have very little of anyway, the frogs on those planes should be interchangeable. 15 was early 30s for a couple of years and the 16 was made up until WWll. The 16 frog was actually an improvement over the previous models, they changed the hole shape so that the frog was less likely to slip and was about the only difference other than where the writing appears.
Stanley didn't make "types." They assembled lots of planes with what they had, particularly around the world wars and depression. So a lot of components didn't "match" straight from the factory. That's just modern collects trying to impose an order that didn't exist.
Having said that, there are a lot of FrankenPlanes out there. They were put together from parts of broken and missing tools. I always passed those by. At some point they were mistreated, and there are too many good examples out there.
Is it a good buy? Well, we don't know the price, or condition, or anything. But there is no shortage of those planes out there.
Thank you both for your comments. The seller is standing firm at $210. Plane looks in good condition but also has a later kidney shaped hole in the cap of later planes.
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Patrick Leach's latest list dropped today. He has a #607 bedrock for $235. In the 10-15 years I've been dealing with him I have never had an issue.
http://www.supertool.com/forsale/janu2024list.html
Patrick lists and sells tools honestly. If there is an issue, he discloses it.
I would also add The Vintage Tool Shoppe to the list of excellent online dealers.
And about 6 right now on ebay for under $100. Maybe, just maybe if someone was offering that plane and it was competely rehabbed and set up, and by someone that knows how, it might be worth that.