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Repurposed block plane !!

AndyP

AndyP

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just happened to catch this on afternoon telly earlier (my excuse for watching is that I am only on day 2 of 6 days of antibiotics for most severe manflu and chest infection)
Anyway I kid you not this was described as a block plane and was cut up and repurposed as a bedside mobile phone charger.
Photo taken from tv so excuse the quality.
IMG_3869.jpeg
 
There's a lot of this sort of thing. There's a shop near here that has a load of old planes made into lights. They look horrible (in my opinion).
 
Almost sacrilege! We have a shop locally selling "upcycled" products. It's a concept I detest - to me it all seems like junk which has been slapped together by a tastelesss, talentless moron (with a ridiculous price on the tag to boot). They took over from a business selling "crystal healing products" who'd gone bump. Hopefully there's a pattern emerging...
 
There are always plenty of people happy to buy tat at unrealistic prices unfortunately.
 
There is an antique shop in a village down near Rye, that sells old tools. Last time I went in there they had maybe 30 old wooden planes like this, plus moulding planes and old smithing tools. All for a couple of pounds each. The guy said he frequently gets them brought in by people wanting to sell, but no one buys them. On a forum like this, some people perceive value, but no one else does.
 
In 2022 my friend's family woodworking machinery business became insolvent. I bought my SCM machines from him, as well as all but a few of my Festool machines. The business was established by his late grandfather in 1947 and was the largest distributor and service center in the area for Altendorf, SCM, Homag, Festool, Mafell, Makita, Bosch, Stihl, and Bessey. Unfortunately, the pandemic and an unexpected decision by Homag to centralize all sales and service to its headquarters resulted in unsustainable losses. The inventory of the 4,000 square meter showroom and warehouse, as well as the 2,000 square meter office space, was auctioned at a liquidator's sale in bulk lots. Any lots that were not sold became the property of my friend and had to be removed so the building could be cleaned and sold. It took us about three months, working six days a week, to clear and broom sweep the building and offices.

One of the casualties was a collection of over 200 wooden moulding, smoothing, and joining planes. They had been his grandfather's tools when he was a master cabinet maker (Schreiner) and were on display in the main lobby. Most were in great shape and still had a century or two of useful life, but no one was interested in them at no cost, so they went into the skip on the last day.

I would have been pleased to have these planes repurposed for something decorative rather than to to the landfill never to be seen again.
 
In England, we can at least count ourselves glad that we had the late Ken Hawley. He lived and worked in Sheffield and as the great tool making companies merged, closed or modernised, he was on the spot, ready to carry away such collections of old tools, along with the tools that had been used to make them and the company records.
He filled his house, garage, several sheds and then a warehouse at the university. His collection is now housed at the city's industrial museum at Kelham Island, where a team of volunteers continue his work, cataloguing, researching and displaying them. So much of what he collected would have been scrapped otherwise, as it was of no commercial value at the time.
 
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