The Stanley No. 1 is five and a half inches long, weighs a little over a pound, and stayed in the catalog for seventy-six years without anyone at the company ever writing down what it was for. It sold poorly enough to be scarce, which is the whole reason a tool that cost a few dollars new now changes hands for the price of a used car's down payment — and the reason a counterfeit cast directly from an original has been circulating since the 1980s.
The short version
- The No. 1 is the smallest of Leonard Bailey's cast-iron bench planes: 5½ inches long, a 1¼-inch cutter, about 1⅛ pounds, rosewood knob and tote. Stanley Rule & Level made it from 1869 (Bailey himself a couple of years earlier) until 1943.
- Two Bailey patents from a single year, 1867, are the mechanical spine of every plane in the line: the brass depth-adjusting nut and forked lever of US 67,398 (August 6) and the three-point cap iron of US 72,443 (December 24). Stanley licensed them on May 19, 1869 for five percent of the prime cost of manufacture.
- The No. 1 never carried a lateral adjustment lever, never had its number cast into the bed, never came with a corrugated sole, and always used a solid brass depth nut. Any one of those features on a plane sold as a No. 1 is a problem.
- A known counterfeit, apparently cast from a real plane of about 1880, runs undersize and light (about ⅞ pound), with a depth-adjuster rod that tilts up toward the handle instead of running parallel to the sole. Lie-Nielsen's bronze No. 1, made since the late 1980s, is an honest modern tool and is marked as such.
- Dealer sales of genuine examples cluster between about $800 and $1,900. No publicly verifiable hammer price turned up in the research for this guide — the auction databases that hold them keep the figures behind a login — so every number below is a dealer's or a seller's.
On this page
What a Stanley No. 1 actually is
Stanley numbered its Bailey-pattern bench planes by size, from the No. 1 up through the No. 8, a two-foot jointer. The No. 1 sits at the bottom of that ladder: 5½ inches long, with a cutter 1¼ inches wide and a total weight of about 1⅛ pounds, according to the dimensions Patrick Leach compiled for his long-running Stanley reference. The body is cast iron, japanned black, with a rosewood front knob and a rosewood rear handle (the tote) that most adult hands can grip with two fingers and a thumb. Leach describes it as a plane for smoothing small areas that can be used one-handed, much like a block plane — which is a polite way of saying it is too small to hold the way its bigger siblings are held.
Everything mechanical about it is shared with the rest of the Bailey line and scaled down: a frog that carries the cutter at 45 degrees, a cap iron screwed to the back of the cutter, a lever cap that clamps the pair to the frog, and a brass nut behind the frog that moves the cutter in and out. What the No. 1 lacks is just as defining, and the authentication section below leans on it: no lateral adjustment lever, no model number cast into the bed, no corrugated-sole option, and a depth nut that is solid brass rather than the hollow-backed one on larger planes.
Leonard Bailey, two patents, and a five percent royalty
Leonard Bailey was born May 8, 1825 in Hollis, New Hampshire, worked as a cabinetmaker and toolmaker in Boston, and died in New York City on February 5, 1905. His patent record runs to roughly thirty grants, beginning in 1855 with an adjuster for scraper planes and continuing through 1858 — a device for adjusting plane irons on June 22, a cammed lever cap on August 31 — before the two patents of 1867 that fixed the shape of the American metal plane.
The first, US Patent 67,398, granted August 6, 1867 under the title "Improvement in Joiners' Planes," describes a nut threaded onto a vertical screw rising from the plane body near the rear handle, with a forked lever that moves the cutting edge lengthwise relative to the sole as the nut turns. That is the brass knob every Bailey plane has carried since, and on the No. 1 it is the single most-handled part of the tool. The second, US Patent 72,443 of December 24, 1867, addresses a different problem: a thin steel cutter buckles under the pressure of the cap iron and chatters in the cut. Bailey's fix, in his own words, "consists in the providing of an auxiliary point of contact between the cap and plane-iron, and at the point where the plane-iron tends to buckle or rise from its bed." A second bend in the cap iron gives three bearing points instead of two, which let Bailey use cheap, thin steel for the cutter without the vibration that thin steel invites.
On May 19, 1869, Bailey granted the Stanley Rule & Level Company of New Britain, Connecticut the exclusive right to make and sell planes, spokeshaves and veneer scrapers under his patents for the life of those patents. The contract's terms survive because they were later read into a federal court record: Stanley agreed to keep stock on hand, to push sales diligently, to keep accurate books, and to pay Bailey "five per cent. on the prime cost of manufacturing," with an accounting every six months. Virginia Toolworks counts seven Bailey patent rights in the 1869 purchase.
The relationship lasted until about 1875. That June, Bailey had his 1867 adjustment patent reissued as No. 6,498, broadening its claims; on December 12, 1876 he patented a competing plane, the Victor, which adjusted its cutter with a gear wheel and crank pin rather than a lever, and began manufacturing it in quantity. Stanley sued its own licensor. In Stanley Rule & Level Co. v. Bailey, decided June 21, 1878 in the Circuit Court for the District of Connecticut, Judge Shipman held that the Victor's gear-and-crank mechanism was a mechanical equivalent of the lever Bailey had licensed to Stanley, that it infringed the third and fourth claims of the reissued patent, and ordered an injunction and an accounting. Stanley bought the Defiance line in 1880 and the Victor line itself in 1884, and had discontinued both by 1888. Then, in the early 1900s, it began casting the word BAILEY into the toe of the planes it had been making for thirty years — a tribute, as Virginia Toolworks puts it, to the inventor it had once taken to court. The No. 1, with its tiny toe, is the one bench plane that never got the name.
Seventy-six years in the catalog, and no stated purpose
Bailey introduced the No. 1 alongside the Nos. 2, 3 and 5 in 1867, according to the chronology Joel Moskowitz assembled at Tools for Working Wood, with the Nos. 4, 6, 7 and 8 following in 1869 and the small block planes in 1872. Stanley kept the No. 1 in production until 1943. Across those seventy-six years, nobody at Stanley appears to have recorded who the plane was for, and the theories that have grown up around that silence are a collecting subculture of their own.
Moskowitz lists the usual candidates: a plane for children, a salesman's sample (he dismisses this one), and a plane for shaping bamboo fly rods, the only use for which he found documentation of an actual person doing it. Popular Woodworking's survey of the question adds beekeepers trimming hive supers, shingle and trim carpenters, boatbuilders, trade-school students, aging carpenters whose arthritic hands preferred the small grip, and makers of linenfold panels. Moskowitz's own explanation is less romantic and more persuasive: Bailey was trying to sell a complete line of bench planes covering every possible size of work, and the No. 1 was the bottom rung. When a proper one-handed block plane arrived five years later, the rung became redundant, and the No. 1 lingered in the catalog because the patterns and tooling already existed and cost nothing further to keep.
The evidence for poor sales is the scarcity itself. A plane that stayed in production for most of a century and is nonetheless hard to find was not selling in quantity in any of those years. Blood & Gore's summary of the result is the one every tool collector eventually learns: every serious collector of old tools wants one, which makes the cost of owning one steep.
How to tell a real one
Authenticating a No. 1 is mostly a matter of knowing what Stanley never put on it. The absences are the evidence. A genuine No. 1 has no lateral adjustment lever — the thin steel lever behind the frog that the larger Bailey planes gained in 1885 was never fitted to the No. 1 in any year — so a lateral lever on a plane this size means a different maker or a later marriage of parts. The model number is never cast into the bed; the only trademark on the plane is stamped on the cutter, which is also the only part that can be swapped without a trace. The sole is never corrugated. The depth-adjusting nut is solid brass with a flat back, never the hollow-backed nut of the larger planes.
The one feature that did change over the production run is the frog seat. Early examples have an I-shaped (or H-shaped, depending on how you hold the plane) receiving area cast into the bed; later ones have a broad, flat seat. Dealers describe the early form as a "first type" and price it accordingly. Stamped cutter marks date the plane by trademark the same way they date any Stanley bench plane: an early "L. BAILEY" or Stanley Rule & Level logo, the 1892 patent date ("PAT. APL. 19. 92") on cutters from the 1890s onward, the heart-shaped Sweetheart logo of roughly 1920 to 1935, and the notched-rectangle STANLEY mark of the last years.
- Measure it. A real No. 1 is 5½ inches long with a 1¼-inch cutter and weighs about 1⅛ pounds. The known counterfeit weighs about ⅞ pound, because it was cast from a finished plane and shrank in the mold.
- Sight down the depth-adjuster rod. On an original the threaded rod runs parallel to the sole; on the counterfeit it tilts upward toward the tote. Leach calls this the single most reliable check.
- Confirm there is no lateral adjustment lever and no number cast in the bed. Either one disqualifies the plane as a Stanley No. 1.
- Check the sole from underneath for cracks at the mouth and for frog screws poking through. The casting is thin and brittle, and both failures are common on real examples; they lower value without raising doubt about authenticity.
- Look at the knob and tote. Rosewood is correct for the whole run. A missing knob is common enough that Leach notes collectors substitute the knob from a Stanley No. 98 or No. 99; a replacement knob leaves the plane genuine, and a seller should say so.
- Read the cutter stamp on one side only. Counterfeit cutters have been found stamped on both faces, with letters of uneven size and an out-of-square layout. A swapped cutter makes this check unreliable on its own, so weigh it with the others.
Condition problems are not authenticity problems. Chipped mouths, cracked totes, replaced knobs and lapped soles all turn up on real No. 1 planes, and dealers price them down for it — a lapped and refinished body has sold for around $800 against $1,500 to $1,900 for near-mint examples. A plane that fails the weight and adjuster-rod checks is a different matter entirely.
The counterfeit, and the honest copies
The counterfeit No. 1 is specific enough to have been written up as a single object. An examination written up for the Pacific Northwest Tool Collectors concluded that the forger had cast every part directly from a genuine plane rather than making proper patterns, so every casting came out undersize as the molten iron shrank: the overall length short, the weight at ⅞ pound instead of 1⅛, the raised pad under the tote sitting flat with the sole instead of standing about 1/32 inch proud. The frog outline is rough and sanded on its sides. The lever cap is small all around and porous, its rivet brass where Stanley used steel, its slot cut far too deep, its screw a standard round-head where Stanley used an oval-head. The cap iron's tang hole was filed rather than punched; the knob was turned in two pieces and is too small; the nuts and studs are cut to the wrong thread pitch. From the markings and threads, the examiner judged the donor plane to have been a real No. 1 of about 1880. Handplane Central lists the counterfeits at $150 to $300 when sold for what they are.
The honest copies are a different category. Popular Woodworking notes that five companies offered a plane of this size during the No. 1's lifetime: L. Bailey himself, Stanley Rule & Level, Ohio Tool, Union Manufacturing and Chaplin. Ohio Tool's version even came with a corrugated sole, which Stanley's never did — so a corrugated plane of this size is an Ohio Tool product, and worth looking at on its own merits rather than as a failed Stanley. The modern copy is Lie-Nielsen's. Thomas Lie-Nielsen founded his company in Warren, Maine in 1981, delivering his first plane, an adaptation of the Stanley No. 95 edge-trimming plane, that autumn; the bronze No. 1 followed in the late 1980s. It is cast in manganese bronze rather than iron, marked with the company's name, and sold new, so no one is likely to mistake one for a Stanley. Its existence matters to a collector for a different reason: it is the plane you buy if you want to find out whether you actually use a No. 1, before paying antique prices to own one.
| Plane | Material and marks | How to separate it |
|---|---|---|
| Stanley No. 1 (1869–1943) | Cast iron, japanned; trademark stamped on cutter only; rosewood knob and tote | 5½ in., about 1⅛ lb.; adjuster rod parallel to sole; no lateral lever, no cast number, no corrugation |
| The counterfeit (post-1980) | Cast iron copied from a c.1880 original; cutter stamped both sides | About ⅞ lb.; adjuster rod tilts toward tote; porous lever cap with brass rivet; two-piece knob |
| Ohio Tool version | Cast iron; Ohio Tool marks; sometimes corrugated | A corrugated sole at this size is Ohio Tool, never Stanley |
| Lie-Nielsen No. 1 (late 1980s–present) | Manganese bronze body; Lie-Nielsen name cast or stamped; hardwood handles | Bronze color and modern maker's mark; sold new, an honest reproduction |
Prowl checks more than twenty vintage marketplaces at once for a Stanley No. 1, or for the Bailey bench planes generally if a No. 2 or No. 3 is closer to what you can afford this year.
What they sell for
No publicly verifiable hammer price for a Stanley No. 1 turned up in the research for this guide. The auction records exist — a Leski Auctions sale in Melbourne on June 22, 2023 offered a No. 1 with an 1892-patent cutter at an estimate of A$1,000 to A$1,400, and a Chupp Auctions sale in Shipshewana, Indiana on August 7, 2021 listed one at an estimate of $25 to $200, a figure that says more about the auctioneer than the plane — but both results sit behind the login walls of the databases that hold them. Every number that follows is therefore a dealer's asking or realized price, or a seller's claim, and is labeled as such.
The richest open record is the past-sales archive at AntiqBuyer, a dealer who has handled dozens of No. 1 planes and lists what each one sold for. Sweetheart-era examples from the 1920s and 1930s sold between $1,150 and $1,895, with the top of that range going to planes described as close to dead mint with their handle decals intact. Earlier planes with 1892-patent cutters sold from $995 to $1,695. Late examples with the notched-rectangle logo sold around $1,250 to $1,295. User-grade planes with lapped or refinished bodies sold for $795 to $1,295. Handplane Central's survey puts dealer prices at $1,000 to $1,600 and eBay results at $1,200 to $1,800, with first-type planes carrying the H-shaped frog seat reaching $1,600 to $2,800. As a live data point, Jim Bode Tools listed a first-type No. 1 with an "A" logo cutter at $765 in 2026 — an over-cleaned example with refinished wood and a repaired tote, which is what that discount buys.
For context on what the plane cost new: no Stanley catalog price for the No. 1 surfaced in this research, but a 1906 Hammacher Schlemmer catalog listed the far more common Bailey No. 4 at $2.40, and a New York carpenter in 1907 could expect about $44 for a fifty-hour week. A No. 1 would have cost less than a day's wages. If a five-and-a-half-inch casting bought for pocket change in 1906 is now worth a month of that carpenter's pay many times over, it is because almost nobody wanted one at the time.
Where the records disagree
The starting date is the clearest disagreement. Patrick Leach's Blood & Gore and the Virginia Toolworks production chart both give 1869 to 1943, dating the plane from Stanley's license. Tools for Working Wood gives 1867, crediting Bailey's own Boston production before the Stanley deal, and Popular Woodworking pushes Bailey's first metal version back to 1865 or slightly earlier. All of these can be true at once: the plane existed as a Bailey product before it existed as a Stanley product, and the 1869 date is the one that matters for the planes a collector will actually encounter. The year Stanley began casting BAILEY into its planes is given as "around 1906" by Virginia Toolworks and as Type 9, 1902 to 1907, by the Hyperkitten type study.
The purpose of the plane is the disagreement no record resolves. Every use listed in this guide is either a theory or a single documented instance, and the most likely answer — that Bailey built a full ladder of sizes and this was the bottom rung — is an inference from the catalog, not a statement anyone at Stanley left behind. Finally, one popular reference lists the No. 1's cutter as 1⅛ inches wide and describes three patent dates cast on the bed; both conflict with Leach, with the Virginia Toolworks chart, and with the plane's own lack of room for a casting behind the frog, and this guide follows the primary references on both points.
A cast-iron plane this thin ships badly, and the chipped mouths that lower No. 1 prices are often shipping damage; this shop's guide to how to pack for shipping covers the double-boxing that heavy, brittle objects need. For the rest of the library, see the Field Guides index.
Sources
- Patrick Leach, The Superior Works — Patrick's Blood & Gore, Planes #1–#8 — dimensions, 1869–1943 dates, features the No. 1 never had, the adjuster-rod check, common damage, the frog-seat redesign.
- US Patent 67,398, Leonard Bailey, granted August 6, 1867, "Improvement in Joiners' Planes" — the vertical screw, nut and forked-lever cutter adjustment.
- US Patent 72,443, Leonard Bailey, granted December 24, 1867, "Improvement in Carpenters' Planes" — the three-point cap iron, quoted.
- Stanley Rule & Level Co. v. Bailey, Circuit Court, D. Connecticut, June 21, 1878 (Shipman, J.), 14 Blatchf. 510 — the May 19, 1869 agreement and its five percent royalty, reissue No. 6,498, the Victor patent of December 12, 1876, the injunction.
- DATAMP, Directory of American Tool and Machinery Patents — Leonard Bailey — the patent list, 1855 onward.
- Wikipedia, Leonard Bailey (inventor) — birth and death dates and places.
- Virginia Toolworks, Stanley vs. Bailey: A Short History — the 1869 purchase of seven patent rights, the 1875 split, Defiance (1880) and Victor (1884) purchases, the BAILEY casting.
- Virginia Toolworks, Bailey Plane Chart — lengths, cutter widths and production dates for Nos. 1–8.
- Hyperkitten, Stanley Bench Plane Type Study — the 1885 lateral adjuster, Type 9 BAILEY casting, Sweetheart and notched-rectangle logo dates.
- Joel Moskowitz, Tools for Working Wood — The Stanley Number One — the 1867 introduction, the purpose theories, the full-line hypothesis.
- Popular Woodworking, The No. 1 Plane — documented users, the five competing makers, the Lie-Nielsen reintroduction.
- Pacific Northwest Tool Collectors, The Stanley #1 Fake — the counterfeit's measurements and construction, point by point.
- Handplane Central, Stanley No. 1 Smooth Plane — price ranges by type and the counterfeit's tells.
- AntiqBuyer, Stanley Planes Past Sales Archive — individual dealer sale prices by era and condition.
- Jim Bode Tools, Stanley No. 1 Smooth Plane, First Type — the $765 asking price and its condition.
- Invaluable, Leski Auctions, June 22, 2023 and Chupp Auctions, August 7, 2021 — estimates; results not public.
- Wikipedia, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks — 1981 founding, Warren, Maine, the first No. 95, manganese bronze.
- Woodworking Masterclasses forum, the original cost of a hand plane in the early 1900s — the 1906 Hammacher Schlemmer No. 4 price and 1907 carpenter's wage.
- Wikimedia Commons, Stanley Bailey fore planes, No. 6 iron plane and No. 28 transitional plane.
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