Identifying and Dating a Millers Falls Plane

Millers Falls spent sixty years as America's leading maker of braces and hand drills before it built a single plane. When it finally entered the bench plane market in 1929, it arrived with castings and machining that matched Stanley's and a price that did not.

The planes never sold in Stanley numbers. That is exactly why they are worth your attention now.

The numbering is the whole trick

A Millers Falls bench plane's model number is its sole length in inches.

A No. 9 is a nine-inch smoother. A No. 14 is a fourteen-inch jack. A No. 22 is a twenty-two-inch jointer. There is no table to learn and no reference book to consult — measure the sole and you have the number.

Because the rule is self-checking, it is a safe one to rely on: if the number and the tape disagree, something is wrong with the plane rather than with the rule.

Reading the marks

The town name is a rough date. The company began at Millers Falls, Massachusetts and consolidated manufacturing at Greenfield from around 1912. Tools are marked with one town or the other depending on era, so the name is a coarse dating clue — coarse, because the transition was not clean and the marks persisted.

The red frog is original. A great many Millers Falls planes have the frog painted red. This is factory finish, not a previous owner's improvement, and stripping it costs you value. It is also a useful across-the-room identifier.

Look for the name on the lever cap as well as the body. Millers Falls marked both on most examples.

What Goodell-Pratt changed

In 1931 Millers Falls bought the Goodell-Pratt Company of Greenfield and absorbed an enormous catalogue of drills and small tools overnight. If you are working on a Millers Falls tool that is not a plane and the styling looks unfamiliar, a Goodell-Pratt ancestry is often the reason.

The "Buck Rogers" planes

In the early 1950s Millers Falls released a streamlined series that collectors named after the science-fiction serial: swept art-deco lever caps, grey-and-red finish, moulded plastic handles. The numbering keeps the length rule, so the No. 709 is a nine-inch smoother and the No. 714 a fourteen-inch jack.

These break the value rule that makes the rest of the brand attractive. They are collected for their styling and priced for it. The plastic handles crack and cannot practically be replaced, so check them before paying a premium.

Why to buy one

A Millers Falls No. 14 in good order does everything a Stanley No. 5 does, from the same era, to the same standard, for something like half to two-thirds the price. The gap is not a quality gap. It is a collector-demand gap, and it exists because the name on the lever cap is the wrong one.

If you are assembling a working set of planes rather than a collection, this is the single most effective way to spend less. Buy on condition — flat sole, sound casting, usable iron — and let the badge look after itself.

What to check before buying

The same things as any bench plane: sight the sole for twist, tap the casting for the dull note of a crack, check the mouth has not been filed open, and measure how much iron is left above the bevel.

One Millers Falls specific: the frog and its seat should be clean and mate properly. And if the red paint is intact, leave it alone.

Sources

• reference-site
  Patrick Leach's Blood & Gore (Stanley plane model-by-model commentary) — Patrick Leach
• book
  Dictionary of American Hand Tools — Alvin Sellens
• community
  OWWM.org - Old Woodworking Machines (Vintage Machinery)