Why Do Hand Planes Have Numbers? The Story Behind Stanley

Walk into any hardware store, any workshop, any woodworking forum, and you will hear the same strange language: a number four, a number five, a number seven. Not a brand, not a model name, just a number. That numbering system, and the metal plane behind it, began with a New Hampshire cabinetmaker named Leonard Bailey. But it was a Connecticut hardware company that started out making bolts and hinges that turned his design into the world standard. Bailey ended up suing the company that made his invention famous. This is the story of Stanley: the 1843 bolt shop in New Britain, the adjustable plane, the 1869 deal, the patent fight Bailey lost in 1878, the Bedrock planes, the 1920 merger and the 2010 union with Black & Decker. Chapters: 00:00 Cold Open — The Numbers on Every Plane 00:58 Thesis 01:17 From Bolts to Hinges: The Stanley Works 02:16 The Plane That Adjusted Itself 03:29 The Deal and the Numbers 05:22 The Fight 06:19 The 1920 Merger 07:07 Stanley Black & Decker 07:48 Coda 08:16 Outro Who deserved more credit in the end — the inventor, or the company that made his idea a standard? Tell us in the comments. And which tool or company should we cover next? Sources: Wikipedia — "Stanley Black & Decker", "Leonard Bailey (inventor)", "Hand plane" Lemelson-MIT Invention Index — Leonard Bailey New Britain Industrial Museum (nbindustrial.org) — "The Patent King" (Justus Traut) and Stanley Works Funding Universe — "The Stanley Works History" Connecticut History (connecticuthistory.org) — New Britain, "Hardware City" Internet Archive — Stanley Rule & Level catalogues and price lists (1859, 1870, 1892, 1900, 1909), Bed Rock planes brochures (1900, 1923), "The Stanley Rule & Level Plant" (1920) and "The Stanley Works: Wrought Hardware" (1921) Credits: Music: "History Documentary" by leberch (Pixabay Content License). Photographs, prints, documents and footage: archive.org, commons.wikimedia.org (public domain unless listed below). Images requiring attribution: "Bailey-type No. 5 jack plane" — Aerolin55, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons "Joiner's shop museum display" — NiddMuseum, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons "Old wooden tool chest with hand tools" — Museokeskus Vapriikki, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons "Stanley Black & Decker HQ building, New Britain" — Leefisher91, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons "Stanley block plane with brass adjuster" — Luke Milburn, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons "Stanley block plane on wooden bench" — Jomegat (assumed, no machine-readable author), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons "Stanley jack plane in wood shavings" — Phil Gradwell, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons "Stanley No. 6 fore plane on pine bench" — Andrew Fogg, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons "Stanley No. 71 router plane" — J Jongsma, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons "Stanley No. 78 duplex fillister and rabbet plane" — Jameslwoodward, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons "Stanley No. 92 cabinet maker's rabbet plane" — Jameslwoodward, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Narration: AI-generated voice (ElevenLabs). No AI-generated images or video.