Stanley 45 Combination Planes – Buying Tips

I recently got bit by the combination plane bug and ended up with three different Stanley 45(ish) planes. I have since been working to restore and use these planes in my workshop.

I made a couple important observation that I wanted to share with anyone else who may be interested in combination planes.

  1. There are TONS on ebay. Don’t be too eager and wait for the perfect one.
  2. Don’t rule out antique stores. One of mine was purchased in this way.
  3. The earlier models (although much more ornate) lack a TON of features the more recent ones have.
  4. 9 our of 10 times you will only get one cutter with this plane. If that’s okay with you then you should consider a Stanley 78 or something else less expensive. If it’s not okay, expect to spend another 100-200 dollars USD for the cutters.
  5. In the spirit of number 3, consider a Craftsman 3728. Ebay often has them NOS with all cutters for much less than a Stanley 45 (and are often made by Stanley anyway).

Now that I’ve got that out of the way I wanted to share my finds. I’ve been trying to date and type them and have each down to within 5 years.

These are my babies starting with the one closest to the camera.

Stanley 45 and Craftsman 3728

This is the Craftsman 3728. It came ready to use out of the box (the original box, I might add) after sharpening up the cutters. It performs beautifully and required no restoration. This is my every-day-user. I haven’t had a chance to do much research on these planes, but the manual was copywriter 1950, so it’s at least that old. It also has all of the bells and whistles you would find on the most recent Stanley 45s.

The next one I haven’t had a chance to de-rust yet, but is from 1890-1895. It has all of the ornate flower designs. It has almost zero features including a depth adjustment screw. This one will accept slotted and unslotted cutters and you use a mallet for depth adjustment. It kind of sucks to use. Adjusting the cutter deeper is easy, but bringing it back up is all by hand. The fence screws into the body so you can’t move it to the opposite side of the body.

The last one (partially restored) is from 1910-1915. This one is more on par with the Craftsman as far as features, but is still not as pleasant to use. This one is also missing the front knob.

In the end I may keep number 2 for display purposes, number 1 for using, and sell number 3 after I finish restoring it.

Presentations

I realized that I have a few presentations but don’t have them linked on my site. I’m a bad webmaster.

Live Fire data breach incident drill – Constance Snelling and Bryan Murphy
Lansing ISSA Chapter
November 19, 2020

This session walked through the actions taken by various parties throughout a company during a ‘Live Fire’ data breach incident drill. In this drill, a threat intelligence vendor notified the Company’s Threat Intelligence department, through established communication lines, that customer data was for sale on the Dark Web.


Account Take Over (ATO) Threat Actor: Tactics, Techniques, Communications, and Underground Culture
January 9, 2019

Account Take Over (ATO) has become a large attack vector and many infosec professionals find themselves plunged into this unfamiliar world. One day you are working malware, IDS alerts, and employee misuse, as you always have. Suddenly you are in a world of financial fraud, tracking digital transactions, listening to phone calls and model threat actor TTPs. This presentation talks about the problem of ATO, how an organization can prepare themselves to deal with the issue, and most importantly, how the underground works. This will include how fraudsters communicate, tools of their trade and, how they monetize and launder their money. A good time will be had by all. No punch or pie will be provided.


The Semi-Coherent Ramblings of an Over-the-hill Incident Response and Forensics Guy
February 14, 2018

An InfoSec/IR veteran passes on valuable lessons, learned over the course of long and exciting career. The diversity of my work has lead to some interesting situations. From universities to defense; financial services to web hosting. Chances are I have seen it and learned something worth passing on about it. I will try to keep the ramblings as coherent as possible, but can’t make any promises on limiting the number of memes.