Bench&Brace

Identification

Identifying and Dating a Sargent Plane

The 400 and 700 series numbering, what VBM on a lever cap tells you, and how to recognise the Sargent castings hiding under hardware-store badges.

  • updated 2026-08-29
  • 3 min read
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Sargent & Company of New Haven was Stanley's most serious American rival in planes for the better part of eighty years. It built a full Bailey-pattern range, answered the Bedrock with a premium line of its own, and quietly made a great many of the planes that hardware chains sold under their own names.

That last point is why learning to recognise a Sargent solves more identification problems than the brand's own market share would suggest.

The numbering

The 400 series is 4 followed by the sole length in inches. A 409 is a nine-inch smoother, a 414 a fourteen-inch jack, a 422 a twenty-two-inch jointer.

The 700 series is the Auto-Set line, numbered the same way: a 709 is the Auto-Set nine-inch smoother.

SargentSoleStanley equivalent
4077"No. 2
4088"No. 3
4099"No. 4
41010"No. 4-1/2
41414"No. 5
41515"No. 5-1/2
41818"No. 6
42222"No. 7
42424"No. 8

Measure the sole and confirm it matches the last two digits before you rely on this for a purchase. The rule checks itself, which is the best property a rule of thumb can have.

VBM is the most useful mark on the brand

VBM cast into the lever cap stands for Very Best Made. It is Sargent's trademark rather than a quality grade, whatever the words claim, and it was in use for roughly the 1910s and early 1920s.

That makes it the closest thing Sargent has to Stanley's Sweetheart: a mark that brackets the plane to about a decade at a glance. A VBM lever cap on an otherwise unremarkable plane is worth a modest premium and is the first thing to look for.

Treat it the way you would treat a Stanley iron logo, though — it dates the lever cap, and lever caps get swapped. Confirm against the body castings before drawing conclusions.

The Auto-Set line

Sargent's answer to the Bedrock. The frog registers on machined seats rather than floating on pads, so it returns to its previous setting when you reassemble after sharpening.

That solves the one thing that genuinely irritates people about a Bailey plane. Whether it justifies the premium is the same argument people have about Bedrocks, with lower stakes — the Auto-Set premium is a fraction of the Bedrock one, because far fewer people are chasing them.

Auto-Set details on this site are marked as unverified drafts. The line is real and well attested; the specific introduction dates and the exact set of sizes offered are not something I have confirmed against a catalogue, and the site does not publish figures it has not checked.

Sargent under other names

Sargent made planes badged for Sears (Fulton, Dunlap, and some Craftsman), Simmons Hardware (Keen Kutter), and others.

This is the practical payoff of learning the castings. A hardware-store plane is usually the same tool as the branded one, and it sells for less because the badge means nothing to collectors. If you are buying a plane to use, hardware-store Sargents are among the cheapest routes to pre-war American quality on the market.

To confirm one, compare the frog seat, the lever cap profile and the lateral lever against a known Sargent. The badge tells you who sold it; the castings tell you who made it.

Buying notes

Sargent castings and machining are a fair match for Stanley's of the same period. The price is not, and that gap is the reason to be interested.

Check the usual things — sole flat and untwisted, casting uncracked, mouth unfiled, iron with life left in it — and then check the lever cap for VBM, because it is free information and it moves the price.

Sources