Day 5, A Union combination plane

Published on 2025-04-19 by Mark VandeWettering

I have a modest collection of wood planes. This example is a so-called transitional jack plane made by Union Manufacturing Company of New Britain, Connecticut. It's a No. 26, which is 15" long. These transitional planes are somewhere between the earlier wooden planes, and the entirely steel planes which were made popular by the Stanley company. (Without doubt, some of my rather pedestrian Stanley planes will feature in this series at some point).
Transitional typically have a combination of a wooden body and verious iron parts.
Jack planes are general purpose planes, used for dressing wood to size in preparation for final truing or edge jointing. Union Manufacturing was founded in 1866, but only started manufacturing transitional planes after 1900, but had at apparently stopped advertising transitional planes by 1919. That means this plane is at least one hundred years old.

In terms of collectability, transitional planes appear to be rather less desirable than some, so they can often be had for less than their more popular Stanley brethren, or older entirely wooden planes. This set me back $10, in good working condition.

I doubt I will be in as good working condition when I am one hundred years old.