Stanley Sweetheart Rabbet Plane (SW12978)

[wood2woodknot]

Can anyone comment on the Stanley No. 78 10'' (SW12978) Duplex Rabbet Plane?  Quality? Complaints?

[Handplanesandmore]

Can anyone comment on the Stanley No. 78 10'' (SW12978) Duplex Rabbet Plane?  Quality? Complaints?

this help?

https://paulsellers.com/2016/05/rebate-plane-1-closing/

Simon

[Admiral]

The 78 is a really simple plane, can be tuned for finer work but is intended for more rough work; it has its limitations, not having a skewed iron.  But frankly, I see little benefit from vintage examples, and the new production will work just fine so long as the sole is square to the sides and the iron is properly heat treated.  In short, its hard to screw up this plane design.  That being said, I prefer the Record 778, which has a dual post fence and if you can find one of those used, buy it (it took me 5 years of looking before I found mine), and Anant makes an A78 based on the Record tooling, if you can find anyone in the states that carries it; Highland used to but I don't know if they do anymore.  The ne plus ultra, of course, is the Veritas skewed rabbet......

http://www.leevalley.com/us/Wood/page.as...48945&ap=1

[Admiral]

The 78 is a really simple plane, can be tuned for finer work but is intended for more rough work; it has its limitations, not having a skewed iron.  But frankly, I see little benefit from vintage examples, and the new production will work just fine so long as the sole is square to the sides and the iron is properly heat treated.  In short, its hard to screw up this plane design.  That being said, I prefer the Record 778, which has a dual post fence and if you can find one of those used, buy it (it took me 5 years of looking before I found mine), and Anant makes an A78 based on the Record tooling, if you can find anyone in the states that carries it; Highland used to but I don't know if they do anymore.  The ne plus ultra, of course, is the Veritas skewed rabbet......

http://www.leevalley.com/us/Wood/page.as...48945&ap=1

Also, check out Griz, they have a 778 model, likely sourced from Anant....

https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzly...lane/H7567

Also, check out this thread here:  https://forums.woodnet.net/showthread.php?tid=7265276

[Greg Jones]

Millers Falls also made the No. 85, which is an identical version of the Stanley 78. I see them often on eBay in new/nearly new condition for not much money. I bought one new in the box about a year ago, even though I have, use, and highly recommend, the Veritas Skew Rabbet plane. I only played around with my Millers Falls, but my limited experience with it mirrors what Admiral says about the Stanley 78.

[Bill_Houghton]

Can't speak to the new one, but my English-made version is an excellent tool.  People talk about it being useful for rough work only, but I've done quality work with it.

[bandit571]

I use my Ward's Master 78 a LOT.    Faster and easier to set up than my Stanley #45....Mine was MINT when it arrived  a long time ago.    Made by Stanley for Montgomery Wards.

Zero complaints with mine....once I figured out how to hold it.....no more sore left thumb....

[Tony Z]

I use my Ward's Master 78 a LOT.    Faster and easier to set up than my Stanley #45....Mine was MINT when it arrived  a long time ago.    Made by Stanley for Montgomery Wards.

Zero complaints with mine....once I figured out how to hold it.....no more sore left thumb....

Among the rabbet planes I have, my mostbused is also a Ward's Master 78. Inherited from my deceased father (2004) many years before his departure. It was what I learned with, and what I'm most used to-never fails, provided I don't fail it!

[adamcherubini]

Can anyone comment on the Stanley No. 78 10'' (SW12978) Duplex Rabbet Plane?  Quality? Complaints?

Ok, I'll bite.  I don't like it.  I've owned one for years and never liked it. I feel the same way about Stanley as I do many modern tool manufacturers. I figure they are machinists or founders who decided their vast experience in metal made them qualified to redesign an ancient woodworking tool with which they had no experience.  BTW, to the best of my knowledge, Tom Lie Nielsen was a machinist who experimented with castings.  Unlike so many others, he stuck to tried and true original designs and made small improvements that really worked and helped woodworkers. He built Stanley planes better than Stanley.

The #78, like the 45, 55, etc are finicky machines. So here are the specifics- note- not looking for converts or agreement.  If you love this tool and it works for you, great.  This is just my peculiar knothole:

1) I don't see the value of a fence on a true, run-with-the-grain, rabbet. It just gets in the way and slows me down.  I finger fence most planes. Oh and BTW, the original rabbet looks like a molding plane.  Just a block of wood with a sharp steel cutter.

2) The blade/plane is unnecessarily wide. I think this comes back to the fact that Stanley was trying to produce a tool that made multiple cuts, bad at all of them.  In all the years I've worked wood by hand, I can count on one hand the number of rabbets I've made wider than 7/8". Most were 3/4" or less because that is std modern stock thickness. A 1" wide rabbet plane is fine.  Why do I care?  Because the portion of the blade we use wears, but you have to sharpen its entire width at each sharpening.

3) I've used my wooden rabbets for everything under the sun.  Its a hunk of sharp metal in a darned convenient block of wood.  Rabbets by definition are almost never show surfaces. I'm not looking for fine work, not that a woody can't do it.  But 99% of the time, I need to remove 3/4" X 3/4" X length of the project amount of wood.  I want to do that as quickly as possible.  That means, sharp iron and an open mouth/throat. Not looking for wispy shavings.

4) No skew. Skew rabbets are a little nicer to use. Yes, they work stupid grain or cross grain, but the basic skew blade geometry throws waste better than a non skew blade, in my opinion. This makes the tool work faster.

5) Ergonomics suck. I guess I don't prefer most handled planes.  I typically hold my planes from the top of their bodies and press down a good bit when I'm working.  The low handles break my wrist and put me behind the plane instead of on top of it where I want to be. When you finger fence, you gage shoulder and thickness then work as best you can as fast as you can.  Before you finish, you turn the plane on its side and work back to the shoulder.  I pull rabbets, push them, upside down, vertically on a job site. And the speed with which I use a rabbet is like stroke, stroke, stroke. Not stroke, clear shavings, reset plane, stroke.

On wooden plane speed - There aren't a lot of guys who do what I do, representing average working class woodworkers.  Most of the 18th c guys are artists producing the super high style stuff.  So I always felt it fell to me represent our(your) ww ancestors not in slow motion. I recall cutting dadoes for drawer dividers at a ww show in front of a large audience.  I nailed battens onto the carcass sides to tie them together and to serve as a fence for the dado plane. Inside maybe 1 or 2 minutes those three dadoes were done, perfectly aligned, thanks to the battens.  I recall an audience member near the front gasping and many remarks about the speed with which this tricky joint could be cut by hand.

Rabbets aren't quite that fast. If you had a router set up, it would beat me every time. I know going fast isn't everyone's goal. But I guess my point was that a tool that worked that quickly was also efficient and easy and FUN to use. I don't get that from the #78.  Its not a terrible tool.  Its just not better than the 1000 yr old tool it sought to replace.

Last- keep in mind that Stanley wasn't initially looking at improving planes when they started making metal planes.  They were looking at mass producing and redesigning to eliminate the complexities of a wood plane's throat, which really can't be made easily by machines.  So just to repeat myself, Rob Lee if you are listening, I think now more than ever a business case could be made to either 3d print or injection mold wooden plane bodies. I think HDPE or UHMW would make an outstanding plane body (if the wedge would work). And I feel like once a mold was made, all sorts of profiles could be machined onto them to make whatever molding plane was required. I think I would also like a plastic jack plane.

[wmickley]

 BTW, to the best of my knowledge, Tom Lie Nielsen was a machinist who experimented with castings.  Unlike so many others, he stuck to tried and true original designs and made small improvements that really worked and helped woodworkers. He built Stanley planes better than Stanley.

Lie Nielsen would have done better copying Stanley planes than making fake improvements. He made the planes heavier because he thought that extra weight was helpful. It is not. If more weight were better, 18th century craftsmen would have added weight to their wooden planes.

He made the irons thicker because he thought they would work better. They are more work to sharpen and offer no advantage. 18th century irons are rather thin. He used A2 steel for the irons, a downgrade from what Stanley used. And he redesigned the cap iron to make it ineffective because he had no idea how to use a double iron plane. High angle frog? Useless to those who know how to use a plane. 

There are certainly a lot of faults to the Stanley rabbet planes. They are not very comfortable to use in a production situation. 

However, a fillister plane (fenced rabbet) is very helpful. That is why we have been using both common fillisters and moving fillisters for centuries. Fast and repeatable. And we sometimes make rabbets wider than one inch. And a square mouth rabbet is helpful when we clean up a rabbet in the left handed direction. A skew rabbet will only work in one direction. That is why both kinds are historic. And we sometimes have rabbets on show surfaces. On mouldings as an example.