Router Plane

identity

Name: Router plane (also hand router; the wooden ancestor is the "old woman's tooth," also "granny's tooth" or "hag's tooth"; Marples' own catalogs call the shop version the "London pattern" router [R9]; not the powered router — see lineage-misuse, which exists in this entry largely because of this one name).
Family / category: Planes → joinery/specialty planes. Structurally the odd one out in the plane family: not a soled iron bedded in a body, but "basically a chisel held at adjustable vertical depths in a block of wood or metal" [R6] — an L-shaped cutter hanging below a flat sole that rides the surrounding surface, not the surface being cut.
One line: A hand plane whose sole rides the surrounding work while a narrow cutter brings the bottom of a recess — dado, groove, hinge gain, tenon cheek, inlay cavity — to a controlled, repeatable depth referenced directly off the face of the work.

✦ how NOT to use it

Not-for: jobs it should never do

• Tenon shoulders. The cutter works parallel to the sole — it cannot true the vertical wall of a shoulder. Named directly in the field: "A router plane can't be used to trim the shoulders of a tenon" (Bruce Haugen) [R7]. Reach for a shoulder plane or a chisel off a knife line.
• Edge profiles. The tool has no cutter geometry or fence arrangement for shaping an edge profile — the expectation that it might comes entirely from the name (see lineage-misuse).
• Levering waste out with the cutter. The L-cutter's slender neck is not a pry bar; the corpus's standing chisel rule applies double to a cutter with a cranked shaft.
• Taking a recess straight to full depth in one pass, on the assumption the tool "only finishes." IF the goal is a deep or wide recess (long groove, deep dado) AND the cutter is driven to final depth without incremental passes, THEN the result is chatter, torn fibers, and a plane liable to tilt and dig below the line. This entry no longer treats "it can't excavate" as an absolute — it can cut a groove from scratch (see correct use) — but doing so still requires the same shallow, incremental discipline as finishing an existing recess.

Dangerous: misuse that injures the user

• The cutter is a sharpened, exposed edge during setup, some cuts, and some storage positions — the tool's hand-powered, low-force operation does not make this hazard negligible. No injury dataset isolating this specific tool was located, and no first-person injury account was found this pass; that absence is a limit of the available research, not evidence that the tool carries no real risk, and it is named here as a research gap rather than treated as a safety finding.
• Concrete controls, rather than a safety rating: secure any workpiece that could move, tip, or shift under the cut; verify the cutter clamp is tight and the depth setting confirmed before cutting; keep both hands on the intended grips and fingers out of the cutter's travel and exit path; begin with a shallow cut and advance incrementally, reducing the cut further in difficult grain or with a wide cutter; test an unfamiliar setup or configuration (outboard, lateral, or deep-cut mounting) on scrap first; retract or remove the cutter, or dock it in a purpose-built holder, for transport and storage — merely setting the plane on its side does not protect every cutter configuration; follow the specific manufacturer's instructions for the model in hand.
• Hands holding small work in the cutter's path. Pivot-and-chop strokes on a small unclamped part put the off-hand directly in line with a slipping cutter. Secure work that is too small to hold safely clear of the cutting path — the size at which clamping becomes necessary depends on the piece, the grip, and the cut, not a fixed measurement.
• Sharpening slips. Freehand-honing an L-shaped cutter in an unstable grip risks a slip; use a honing guide compatible with the blade (see correct use) where practical.

Damaging: misuse that ruins the tool or the work

• Too-deep passes — chatter and tearout in the recess bottom, and the documented tilt-forward failure: excess depth "tilts the plane forward, causing deeper-than-intended cuts" [R13]. On a hinge gain that's a visible, unfixable overshoot — the door sits proud or the gain shows a gouged line.
• Cross-grain passes over unscored walls — the cutter exits the recess wall tearing fibers up the show face; on hinge gains the damage line is exactly where the eye lands. Score with a knife first [R13].
• Blowing out an unsupported exit edge — running a pass off the far edge of a dado or gain splinters the arris; work in from both edges toward the middle [R13].
• Cracked and incomplete vintage castings — the buying trap. The #71's slender open-throat casting cracks at the bridge, and a long production run means most surviving examples have shed parts: cutters, depth stop, throat-closing shoe, fence [R5][R6]. A #71 missing its cutters is a paperweight priced like a tool. Check the casting and count the parts before valuing.
• Over-tightening the collar / running a loose two-piece blade — crushing a fine adjuster to compensate for a dull cutter, or letting the Veritas two-piece blade work loose mid-pass and step below depth [R8].

Beginner-trap: mistakes that look fine until they aren't

• Treating the depth stop as the place to start rather than the place to finish. IF the stop is set to the target depth AND the first pass is taken straight to that stop, THEN there is no material left to correct a chatter mark or dig-in that appears at final depth. Reach the stop through incremental passes, not on the first one [R13].
• Trusting the sole where it isn't supported. Over a wide recess most of the sole hangs over air; the plane happily tips at the end of a stroke and the cutter dips — the reading on the depth stop stays "correct" the whole time. Prevention: auxiliary base on wide work, pressure over the supported rail, lightest cuts at pass ends [R13].
• Ignoring grain reversal in the recess bottom. The bottom of a dado has grain like any other surface; a pass that was clean going one way tears going the other, and inside a recess the tearout isn't visible until you look. Reduce depth, switch to shear/spear-point cutting, or come from the other direction [R13].
• Assuming any old #71 off the auction site is complete — see damaging; the missing-parts trap catches beginners because the plane looks whole with half its kit gone [R6].

Lineage-misuse: treating it like a relative it isn't

• ★ The name collision — the corpus's clearest case, and this entry's reason for weighting the class. "Router" now commonly means the high-speed powered machine; the term "router plane" is documented from at least 1846 [R15], well before the powered tool — "Before power routers existed, the router plane was often used for the same purpose" [R10]. The corpus already holds the powered Router; these are two entries, two tools, one name, and the verified evidence has the hand-tool term arriving first — though this entry does not claim to have proven the exact mechanism by which the machine took the name (see lineage). The failure runs in both directions. Direction one: a maker told "you need a router for those hinges" buys or reaches for the machine — and for one hinge gain, the machine means a jig, a bit, a setup, and a tearout risk the plane simply doesn't carry; the plane was the right call and the name hid it. Direction two: a maker expects the plane to do the machine's jobs — profile an edge, or hog a deep recess at speed — capabilities the plane has never had, even though it can (contrary to this entry's earlier draft) cut a modest groove from scratch. Recognition: any plan step that says just "router" is ambiguous until the operation is named; depth-truing an existing recess, or cutting a short/shallow groove → plane; edge profiles, long/deep grooves, templates, volume → machine.
• Treating it like a bench plane. It looks like a plane and it's called a plane, but there is no cap iron, no tight mouth over the cut, and the cutter hangs unsupported below the sole — long continuous bench-plane strokes in reversing grain tear where a bench plane wouldn't. The pivot-and-chop technique exists precisely because this is not a bench plane [R13].
• Treating the wooden ancestor like the metal plane. The old woman's tooth is hammer-tap adjusted, like a wooden bench plane — walking up to one with screw-adjuster expectations (or tapping a metal #71 like a wooden one) misreads which branch of the family is in hand [R4].
• Expecting ancestor-tool surface quality from the ancestor. Sellers' own caveat: the plough-iron-toothed wooden routers "work fine but rarely give the type of clean surface" fine inlay demands [R4] — the metal plane's purpose-made cutter is the fix, and asking the wooden tool for Veritas-grade inlay bottoms is asking the 1862 tool for the 2006 tool's finish.
• Expecting a powered router's referencing hardware (fence, template, jig) to be either present or unnecessary on the hand plane. A powered router commonly registers off the work face too; the real difference is how directly and simply the hand plane's cutter depth relates to its sole, not that only one of the two tools references the work at all (see anatomy).

correct use

(brief — the workbench holds deep operation)

• Its core strength is bringing a recess to a precise final depth referenced off the surrounding face — and it can also cut a modest groove from scratch, though it is usually slower than a plough plane or powered router for high-volume or deep stock removal. Lee Valley's own technique material describes cutting stopped and through grooves and dadoes with the tool, including plowing a ten-inch groove [R8e]. Do not treat the plane as capable of only finishing an already-excavated recess — that is a defensible default for most joinery-fitting use, not an absolute limit of the tool.
• Start with a shallow cut and deepen incrementally, tightening the increment further in difficult grain or with a wide cutter [R13][R8f]. Treat any specific numeric pass depth (such as "1/32 inch") as a conservative shop preference for a particular setup, not a fixed mechanical ceiling — the 1/32" figure some sources cite is the Veritas large plane's adjuster travel per turn, a different measurement from a recommended cut depth (see anatomy).
• Knife-score cross-grain walls first — sever the fibers at the recess edge before the cutter gets there, or the edge spelches [R13].
• Pivot and chop in short arcs rather than long bench-plane strokes, especially in dados and on tenon cheeks — reduces blade pressure and tearout [R13].
• Keep pressure on the supported part of the sole — over a recess most of the sole hangs in air; press down over the rail that's actually riding wood, particularly at the ends of a pass [R13].
• Sharpen the cutter like a chisel — flat back, honed bevel. On current Veritas planes the two-piece blade separates from its shaft and can be honed freehand or with a standard honing guide; Veritas also offers a dedicated sharpening jig for makers who want one [R8][R8f]. Older fixed-shaft L-shaped cutters can be more awkward to hone in a standard guide — treat sharpening difficulty as blade-and-model-specific, not a universal property of "the router-plane cutter."

✦ matching

(the workbench's first read)

does — levels the bottom of any recess to a uniform depth referenced directly off the surrounding face; trims tenon cheeks parallel to the show face; cleans dado, groove, and half-lap bottoms to final depth; can cut a modest dado or groove from scratch, in shallow incremental passes; cuts hinge gains and hardware mortise bottoms; excavates shallow inlay/intarsia recesses; establishes precise shallow fields anywhere "a precise depth off the face" is the spec — Lee Valley's own framing: "stopped or through dadoes and grooves, or for any work that requires an area cut to a precise depth" [R8]. Does NOT: profile edges, or trim tenon shoulders [R7] — the cutter works parallel to the sole and cannot true a vertical shoulder wall.

suits — mortise-and-tenon furniture (final tenon-cheek fitting — the cheek stays parallel to the face because the sole rides the face); casework with dados and grooves (cutting a stopped or through groove directly, or cleanup to depth after sawing/chiselling, or after a powered-router pass sniped or wandered); hinge installation on boxes, doors, and fine casework [R6][R7]; inlay, intarsia, and hardware recesses [R8]; half-laps [R13].

kit-fit — pairs with: marking knife and gauge (the scored line is both layout and tearout prevention [R13]); backsaw + bench chisel (for recesses where bulk waste is removed first, they rough the recess out and the router plane finishes it); the powered router — genuinely complementary, not rivals: the machine is faster for long runs and repeatable template/pattern work, the plane picks up one-off gains, stopped ends, and final-depth truing where setting up the machine costs more than the cut; shoulder plane (adjacent, non-overlapping — cheeks/bottoms vs shoulders/rebates [R7]). Substitutes for: a powered router + jig on one-off shallow recesses (hinge gains especially — Sellers' apprenticeship claim that a skilled hand beat the machine on speed for single hinges [R11]); a paring chisel for final tenon-cheek fitting, with better depth control; a plough plane or combination plane for a single short or modest groove, where setting up a dedicated grooving plane isn't worth it. Cannot replace: a plough plane, combination plane, or powered router for long, deep, or repeated grooves requiring efficient bulk removal; the shoulder plane for tenon shoulders — Bruce Haugen's correction, verbatim: "A router plane can't be used to trim the shoulders of a tenon" [R7].

not-for (project-keyed) — deep mortise excavation (the wrong tool for bulk removal — depth capacity tops out around one inch on the largest Veritas model [R8], and the practical limit for controlled work arrives well short of that); tenon shoulders [R7]; edge profiles of any kind (the name-collision expectation — see lineage-misuse); high-volume production grooving in sheet goods, where a plough plane or the powered descendant is the efficient choice.

access — the tool asks for basic instruction in registering the sole flat on the reference surface, taking shallow initial passes, securing the workpiece, and — on models with configurable cutter positions — understanding inboard/outboard/lateral mounting before using it. It requires no motor and comparatively low force to operate, which lowers the physical-strength floor relative to a powered router, but "low force" is not the same claim as "safe without instruction" (see how NOT to use it). The entry cost floor is effectively zero: Sellers' poor-man's version is a chisel and a scrap block [R11]. One honest caveat from the field: the Sawmill Creek thread shows usage varies enormously by working style — a power-tool-first woodworker may reach for it rarely [R7]; it earns its keep in proportion to hand-cut joinery.

revival — a strong museum→making case in the plane family. The metal tool had a long production run by any reading of the conflicting Stanley/MWTCA dates (see history), and it came back upmarket: Lee Valley thought the design worth a fresh patent in 2006 [R2], Lie-Nielsen remade both sizes, and the first-principles argument for it is unchanged since 1884 — it references depth off the actual face of the work, which a machine referencing a jig or fence typically does less directly. For a maker with one hinge to set or one tenon to fit, the plane is genuinely faster than the machine setup — a named craftsman's lived claim, not nostalgia [R11].

anatomy

• Sole / base — flat cast body (ductile iron on the Veritas [R8]; japanned or nickel-plated castings across the Stanley types [R5]). The sole's whole job is to ride the reference surface beside the recess — the tool's precision comes from this registration. A powered router's base also commonly references the work surface directly; the meaningful difference is not that one tool references the face and the other doesn't, but that the hand router plane's cutter depth relative to the sole is exceptionally direct and transparent to adjust for fitting work, without needing a fence, template, or jig the way many powered-router operations do (see lineage-misuse).
• Post — the vertical column the cutter clamps to; V-grooved on the Veritas for alignment [R2].
• L-shaped cutter — a shank with a small foot-shaped blade at the bottom, cutting edge facing forward. Variants: straight (standard), and a spear-point cutter that current Veritas instructions identify for final smoothing passes [R8b] — not a universal shear-cutting or corner-reaching tool; reaching many corners and edges is achieved chiefly through cutter position (outboard/inboard/lateral mounting), which is model-dependent (see below). A V-shaped "smoothing" cutter appeared on the Stanley at Type 9, 1916 [R5]. Two-piece on the Veritas (blade separates from its post) [R8].
• Clamping collar — locks the cutter shank to the post; spring-loaded on the Veritas so the blade is held even while loosened — the 2006 patent's signature fix for blades dropping free during adjustment [R2].
• Depth-adjustment mechanism — Schade's 1901 threaded-post design [R12]. On the current Veritas large plane, the adjuster travels 1/32" per full turn [R8] — this is the mechanism's travel-per-turn, not a manufacturer-specified maximum safe depth per cutting pass; the two are different measurements and should not be conflated (see correct use).
• Depth capacity and depth stop — model-specific, not a fixed property of "the router plane." The current Veritas large plane lists one inch of blade adjustment [R8]. The current Veritas medium plane lists one inch with its depth stop engaged, and up to 1¾ inches without it [R8c]. The Veritas small plane's depth stop is optional [R8d]. Do not describe a single depth figure, or the presence of a mechanical stop, as true of the whole tool family — check the specific model.
• Locking depth stop — where fitted, preserves a target depth so a final pass lands exactly where the last one did [R8].
• Throat — open vs closed, and the throat-closing shoe — the Stanley went open-throat (arched bridge) at Type 4, 1892, for chip clearance and sightlines, then offered a throat-closing attachment from Type 5 (1896) so the same plane could support the cutter on narrow edges [R5]. An open throat trades some sole support for chip clearance and sightlines; a closed throat trades that visibility for support on narrow work — a tradeoff, not a simple better/worse ranking. Small routers like the #271 offer switchable open/closed configurations [R6].
• Knobs — two, flanking the cutter. Sellers rates the Preston's oversized platen and knob placement as giving "optimal inline thrust directly at beside and at cutting iron level" — knob geometry is a real performance variable, not decoration [R4].
• Inboard/outboard/lateral cutter mounting — where the model supports it, the cutter can be mounted on the outside face of the post, or laterally, to work into corners the body would otherwise fence off — Cope's original 1884 claim, carried forward on the Veritas [R1][R2]. This is a model/configuration feature, not present on every router plane — do not assume a given plane offers all three positions.
• Auxiliary-base holes and optional fence — pre-drilled holes accept a wider wooden sub-base for spanning wide recesses; the Veritas fence registers straight or curved edges [R8].

variations (living)

• Full-size / large router plane (Stanley #71, Record 071, Preston, Lie-Nielsen large, Veritas large — ~1/2" standard cutters, imperial and metric blade sets from 1/16" to 1/4" on the Veritas) — the general-purpose joinery size; one inch of blade adjustment on the Veritas large [R5][R8].
• Closed-throat full-size (Stanley #71½, Lie-Nielsen closed-throat) — solid sole ahead of the cutter for narrow-edge support [R3][R6].
• Small router plane (Stanley #271, Veritas small, Lie-Nielsen small) — palm-size, for hinge gains, small hardware, inlay; "better for intricate work like hinge mortises" [R6]; the Veritas small plane's depth stop is optional [R8d].
• Medium (Veritas medium) — a modern in-between size with no direct vintage ancestor; one inch of adjustment with its stop engaged, up to 1¾ inches without it [R8c].
• Wooden "old woman's tooth" / London-pattern router — the ancestor, in catalog production 1862–1962 [R9], still made by hand today.
• Shop-made "poor man's router" — a chisel through an angled hole in a block; Sellers' free design [R11].

trades

• Furniture making / hand-tool joinery — tenon cheeks, dados, half-laps, inlay; the tool's home trade [R6][R7][R13].
• Finish carpentry and casework hardware — hinge gains, lock and strike mortise bottoms; the historic "gains" work Sellers' apprenticeship account describes [R11].
• Inlay / intarsia / marquetry — shallow field excavation at precise depth [R8][R6].
• Shipwright/boatbuilding use is suggested but unverified: the Australian National Maritime Museum holds a "Granny's Tooth Hand Router" in its collection [R14 — record located by search, not fetched this pass], which implies maritime-trades use without documenting it. Named as a lead, not a claim.

lineage

Ancestors

• The "old woman's tooth" wooden router — a flat wooden block with an iron wedged through it, depth set by hammer tap, the same way wooden bench planes are adjusted. Paul Sellers, who has used both for decades, notes the wooden form typically "housed a plough plane iron instead of a purpose-made cutting iron" and that these "work fine but rarely give the type of clean surface" needed for fine inlay work [R4]. The form is documented continuously in William Marples & Sons' own catalogs from 1862 to 1962 — a century of production of the wooden tool, overlapping the metal plane's entire production run (see proof of existence) [R9].
• The chisel itself. The minimal router plane is a chisel stuck through a block of scrap at 40–55° — Sellers' "poor man's router," which he teaches deliberately, from his own apprenticeship memory that "a skilled craftsman could set hinges much faster than a router back then" [R11]. The lineage's root is visible in the living tool: every router plane is a jigged chisel.

Contemporaries

• The shoulder plane — the tool most often cross-shopped against it, and genuinely a different tool: a directly-read Sawmill Creek thread on exactly this question has Derek Cohen stating they are "quite different tools, used for different purposes" — shoulder plane for rebates and shoulders, router plane for "level surfaces" and "stopped and through dados" [R7]. See kit-fit.
• The hinge/Butt Chisel and the side-rabbet plane — adjacent recess-cleaning tools that overlap at the edges of the router plane's territory. Built Run 652 — its own kit-fit block names this exact pairing: the butt chisel removes bulk waste and pares corners, the router plane levels the mortise floor to consistent depth.
• The plough plane, combination plane, and powered router — the tools to reach for when a groove needs efficient, high-volume, or repeated cutting rather than final-depth truing. See kit-fit and correct use — the router plane can cut a groove from scratch, it is simply not the fast way to do it.

Descendants

• The powered router — by name, and by job, though the exact naming moment is not proven. Wikipedia's "Router (woodworking)" states that "before power routers existed, the router plane was often used for the same purpose," and that the term "router plane" itself is documented in dictionaries from at least 1846 [R15] — well before George Kelley's portable, motor-driven routing-machine patent (filed July 23, 1906; granted January 28, 1908, not "patented in 1906") [R10, R16]. The verified evidence establishes that the hand-tool term predates the powered machine; it does not, on the sources fetched this pass, establish the precise act by which the power tool inherited the plane's name, or that Kelley's was definitively the first portable power router. The naming direction is the load-bearing, defensible fact: the term existed for the hand tool first, and the confusion runs deep enough today that the hand plane gets mistaken for a derivative of its own powered namesake.
• The modern precision remakes — a directly-verified, still-active patent line, evidence of design succession rather than an unbroken commercial lineage. Lee Valley's own US7950157B2, "Router plane" (inventors Terry R. Saunders and Ewan Smith, priority 2006-08-29, granted 2011-05-31) — the patent behind the Veritas router plane — cites the 1884 Cope patent (US294724A) and the 1901 Schade patent (US685411A) directly in its own references [R2][R1][R12]. Fetched and read directly: this establishes that the 1884 and 1901 patents were treated as prior art by the 2011 patent's own examiners and inventors — a documented citation chain, not proof that Cope's patent was the literal basis of Stanley's #71, that the commercial design descended continuously across the interval, or that every feature passed directly from one product to the next. The reported Cope-to-Stanley transaction is attributed to DATAMP, a secondary specialist database, not to a Stanley company record (see proof of existence). Lie-Nielsen's #71-derived large and small routers sit on the same general lineage without a located patent of their own this pass. Google Patents' legal-status field lists the Veritas patent as active with an adjusted expiration around 2029, but Google's own interface states this data "is not a legal conclusion" — carried here as an unverified forecast, not a fact (see proof of existence).

history

The genuinely-new finding — the archetypal Stanley router plane began as a Detroit outsider's patent, with a documented citation trail to the modern Veritas. The patent stamped on early Stanley #71s ("PAT'D 3-4-84") is US Patent 294,724, "Router-Plane," Henry P. Cope of Detroit, Michigan, filed January 12, 1884, granted March 4, 1884, with a one-half interest assigned to John H. Bissell, also of Detroit — fetched and read directly [R1]. Cope was not a Stanley man; DATAMP's tool-linked patent record states that "Cope sold his router plane patent rights to Stanley Rule & Level Co. in 1884" and that "this patent provides the basis for the Stanley #71 and #71 1/2 router planes" [R3] — a specialist secondary source, not a Stanley company record or the assignment document itself, and carried at that confidence level rather than as settled fact. Stanley introduced the #71 that same year, 1884. Stanley's own current support page states the #71 was manufactured 1884–1973 [R5b]; a March 1994 Mid-West Tool Collectors Association (MWTCA) type study describes English production continuing after 1974, still in production at the time of that 1994 publication, while explicitly noting that "production records were unavailable" and its dating was artifact-based rather than documentary [R5]. These two sources conflict and are both preserved here, rather than collapsed into a single 1884–1993 figure — the true end date of production is not settled by anything verified this pass. The Petroski frame is right there in Cope's own stated problem: an "ordinary router-plane" fails near an obstruction because "the stock comes in contact with the projecting piece before the iron reaches the end" — his invention lets the iron be mounted "either within or without the stock," inboard or outboard [R1]. That inboard/outboard cutter mounting survives, feature-for-feature, on the Veritas plane whose 2011 patent cites him as prior art [R2].

The second evolution, and its named Stanley engineer. For its first ~18 years the #71's cutter was set by friction alone — loosen, nudge, retighten, hope. US Patent 685,411, "Carpenter's router," Albert F. Schade of New Britain, Connecticut, assigned to the Stanley Rule & Level Company (filed March 6, 1901, granted October 29, 1901 — fetched and read directly) added the threaded post and oversized adjusting nut engaging "a recess or notch" in the cutter — a mechanism for "effecting a fine adjustment" while staying "simple and inexpensive" [R12]. Jay Sutherland's Stanley No. 71 type study independently corroborates the timing: the "cutter adjustment provision" appears at Type 6, 1902 [R5]. Form follows failure, precisely: the screw-feed depth adjustment exists because friction-setting a cutter to a few thousandths was the documented pain of the first design.

The third evolution — the modern patent names the old failures outright. The Veritas patent's own background section states that in prior router planes "the depth of cut and position of blades have often been difficult to adjust accurately and repeatably," that early planes "relied solely on friction, requiring complete loosening for adjustment" — and its spring-loaded collar (which keeps hold of the blade even while loosened) and reduced-backlash screw feed are the direct fixes [R2]. Three patents, 1884 → 1901 → 2006, each one citing or documenting a failure of the one before, each fetched and read directly this run. This is one of the cleanest form-follows-failure citation chains in the corpus.

One evolution sourced to a practitioner rather than a patent. Paul Sellers identifies the 45° cutter-stem presentation (Record, later Stanley, adopted by Veritas) as a real functional improvement — the angled stem gives "automatic locking of the corner," self-aligning the cutter vertically where square-stemmed designs (Preston, Lie-Nielsen) can sit misaligned [R4]. Sellers simultaneously deflates the broader assumption "that improved engineering and mechanical adjusters improved our lot," finding simple pinch-adjusted planes equally capable of precise depth in practiced hands [R4] — a practitioner's check on the patent-history narrative, carried here as his named view rather than settled fact.

The wooden ancestor's documented century. Marples' catalogs list wooden routers from 1862 (1/8d each, with an "Old Woman's Tooth" smoothing variant) through numbered patterns (#904 in 1873; #1032/#1033 in 1897; #2861/#2862 from 1909) to a final April 1962 price list [R9]. The wooden and iron tools sold side by side for eight decades.

An honest gap on the deep end: how far back the old woman's tooth itself goes is not established by anything verified this pass. Merriam-Webster records "router plane" from 1846 as its first known dictionary use [R15] — a firmer lower bound than the entry previously carried, but still well short of the tool's likely actual origin. The earliest directly-verified catalog documentation found is the 1862 Marples listing; the two museum examples located are undated (see proof of existence). Claims of 17th–18th-century use are plausible and widely repeated but were not traced to a period source this run — named as a gap, not asserted.

✦ human side

Henry P. Cope — the outsider whose plane became the archetype. Nothing else about Cope surfaced this pass — no biography, no other tools, only a Detroit address, a business partner (Bissell) holding half the patent, and a same-year sale to Stanley per DATAMP [R1][R3]. A tool made for the better part of a century traces to a man the record barely holds onto. Flagged as a research thread worth a future pass, not filled with invention.

Albert F. Schade — the named Stanley engineer behind the adjustment mechanism many router planes still carry in some form [R12]. Terry R. Saunders and Ewan Smith — the named Lee Valley designers of the modern Veritas plane, whose patent cites the 1884 and 1901 work as prior art [R2].

Paul Sellers — the tool's living evangelist. Sellers has written about router planes repeatedly across a decade: the history piece anchoring this entry's evolution narrative [R4], the wooden-router appreciation, and above all the "poor man's router" — a chisel through an angled hole in a scrap block, which he teaches specifically so that no one is priced out of the operation: drill at 40–55°, carve an escapement scallop, set depth by leverage, and the friction of the hole walls holds the setting [R11]. His apprenticeship framing — hand-set hinge gains beating the machine for speed on one-off work — is this entry's best revival evidence, from a named hand who was there.

Jay Sutherland — the collector-researcher whose 1996 Stanley No. 71 type study (fifteen types, spanning the tool's production history) remains a reference for dating the tool [R5]; Bill Anderson of the Woodwright's School, named in the Wood and Shop guide as the teaching authority on selecting and refurbishing these planes [R6].

The Sawmill Creek voices — the directly-read "Router or shoulder plane?" thread is this entry's best record of how real woodworkers actually rank the tool: Don Dorn ("my shoulder plane essentially gathers dust while I have used my router plane quite a bit, mostly for dados"), Bruce Haugen (the opposite experience — his router plane used "4-5 times in 15 years," plus the load-bearing correction that "a router plane can't be used to trim the shoulders of a tenon"), James Pallas (hinge gains, dados, inlay), Derek Cohen (the two-different-tools ruling), Jason Baker IX (buy both — "when you need it you are so thankful that you own one") [R7]. The honest signal in the disagreement: the router plane is either indispensable or nearly unused depending entirely on how much joinery a woodworker cuts by hand — a genuinely usage-gated tool, and this entry's matching block says so.

✦ proof of existence

• US Patent 294,724, "Router-Plane," Henry P. Cope, Detroit, MI — filed January 12, 1884, granted March 4, 1884, half-interest to John H. Bissell; fetched and read directly this run, including its Cited By table (Lee Valley's US7950157B2, 2011; Saunders' US20080085164A1, 2008) [R1]. HIGH.
• DATAMP tool-linked patent record — states that this patent "provides the basis for the Stanley #71 and #71 1/2 router planes" and that "Cope sold his router plane patent rights to Stanley Rule & Level Co. in 1884"; fetched and read directly [R3]. MEDIUM-HIGH (specialist volunteer-curated database — the single strongest statement of the Cope→Stanley link found, but not a Stanley company record or the assignment document itself).
• US Patent 685,411, "Carpenter's router," Albert F. Schade, assigned to Stanley Rule & Level Co. — filed March 6, 1901, granted October 29, 1901; fetched and read directly [R12]. HIGH.
• US Patent 7,950,157 B2, "Router plane," Saunders & Smith, Lee Valley Tools Ltd — priority 2006-08-29, granted 2011-05-31, citing US294724A and US685411A as prior art. Google Patents' legal-status field lists it as active with an adjusted expiration around 2029, but Google's own interface states this legal-status data "is not a legal conclusion" — carried here as an unverified forecast, not confirmed against an authoritative register this pass. HIGH for the patent text and citations; status/expiration UNVERIFIED.
• Jay Sutherland's Stanley No. 71 type study — fifteen types spanning the tool's production; fetched and read directly [R5]. MEDIUM-HIGH (careful collector scholarship, not manufacturer-primary).
• Stanley's own support page — states the #71 was manufactured 1884–1973 [R5b]. MEDIUM-HIGH (current manufacturer-support material, dates not independently corroborated against a company production ledger).
• William Marples & Sons period catalogs, 1862–1962 — a century of dated catalog listings for the wooden router ("Old Woman's Tooth," "London Pattern," numbered patterns with prices); fetched and read directly via the Marples research site's catalog documentation [R9]. HIGH as period-catalog proof of the wooden ancestor's continuous commercial existence.
• Science Museum Group Collection, object co433518 — "Routing plane (sometimes called a 'granny's tooth')," accession 1975-247/48, wood and steel, blade missing, acquired via J.T. Messenger; fetched and read directly [R14]. HIGH as a museum record; undated by the museum itself — it proves the object class, not its age.
• Merriam-Webster — records 1846 as the first known dictionary use of "router plane" [R15]. HIGH as a lexical dating floor; does not establish the first physical tool of the form.
• Named gaps: the Canadian Museum of History's "router plane" artifact record (id 211450) and the Australian National Maritime Museum's granny's tooth record were both located but could not be read this pass (JavaScript-gated / not fetched); Patrick Leach's Blood & Gore #71 entry — the canonical collector commentary — is JavaScript-gated and was unreachable despite two attempts. All three are honest, specific targets for a future pass.

references

[R1] Henry P. Cope, "Router-Plane," US Patent 294,724 (filed Jan. 12, 1884; granted Mar. 4, 1884), incl. Cited By table — https://patents.google.com/patent/US294724A/en | kind: patent (HIGH — fetched and read directly this run, including citation data)

[R2] Terry R. Saunders and Ewan Smith, "Router plane," US Patent 7,950,157 B2, Lee Valley Tools Ltd (priority Aug. 29, 2006; granted May 31, 2011), citing US294724A, US272801A (1883), US350352A (1886), US685411A (1901) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US7950157B2/en | kind: patent (HIGH for text/citations; legal-status/expiration field explicitly disclaimed by Google as "not a legal conclusion" — fetched and read directly this run)

[R3] DATAMP (Directory of American Tool and Machinery Patents), record for US 294,724 — https://www.datamp.org/patents/displayPatent.php?pn=294724&id=8890 | kind: specialist patent database (MEDIUM-HIGH — fetched and read directly; the source of the Cope→Stanley sale and #71-basis statements, not independently corroborated against a Stanley company record)

[R4] Paul Sellers, "Routing the Past Developments," paulsellers.com, Oct. 2014 — https://paulsellers.com/2014/10/routing-the-past-developments/ | kind: named-practitioner blog (MEDIUM-HIGH — fetched and read directly; a lifetime practitioner's account, not archival history)

[R5] Jay Sutherland, "Stanley No. 71 Router Type Study Page," Hyperkitten Tool Co. (last modified Apr. 15, 1996) — https://www.hyperkitten.com/tools/routers/stanley/stanley_71.html | kind: collector type study (MEDIUM-HIGH — fetched and read directly)

[R5b] Stanley Tools support page, "Stanley 71 Router Plane Instructions" — https://support.stanleytools.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012682818-Stanley-71-Router-Plane-Instructions | kind: manufacturer support material (MEDIUM-HIGH — states 1884–1973 production; per the review, conflicts with the MWTCA type study below and both are preserved rather than reconciled)

[R6] "Understanding & Choosing Antique Router Planes," Wood and Shop (Joshua Farnsworth; instruction by Bill Anderson) — https://woodandshop.com/understanding-choosing-antique-router-planes/ | kind: trade-education site (MEDIUM-HIGH — fetched and read directly)

[R7] "Router or shoulder plane?", Sawmill Creek Woodworking Community, started by Osvaldo Cristo, with named replies from Bruce Haugen, Don Dorn, James Pallas, Jim Koepke, Derek Cohen, Phil Mueller, and Jason Baker IX — https://sawmillcreek.org/threads/router-or-shoulder-plane.262254/ | kind: forum (HIGH as practitioner testimony — fetched and read directly, all replies)

[R8] Veritas Large Router Plane product page, Lee Valley Tools — https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/shop/tools/hand-tools/planes/router/52609-veritas-router-plane | kind: manufacturer-primary (HIGH — fetched and read directly)

[R8b] Lee Valley, "Get More Out of Your Veritas Router Plane" — https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/discover/woodworking/2020/may/get-more-out-of-your-veritas-router-plane | kind: manufacturer technique article (HIGH — demonstrates groove cutting, spear-point use for final smoothing, sole support, fine adjustment, storage options)

[R8c] Veritas Medium Router Plane product page — https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/shop/tools/hand-tools/planes/router/72080-veritas-medium-router-plane | kind: manufacturer-primary (HIGH — current model-specific capacity: one inch with the stop, 1¾ inches without it)

[R8d] Veritas Small Router Plane product page — https://www.leevalley.com/en-gb/shop/tools/hand-tools/planes/router/57677-veritas-small-router-plane | kind: manufacturer-primary (HIGH — current intended uses, optional depth stop, retract/remove storage advice)

[R8e] Lee Valley router-plane troubleshooting and techniques — https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/discover/post-purchase/router-planes/troubleshooting-and-techniques | kind: manufacturer technique material (HIGH — light cuts, skewing, grain direction, groove-cutting demonstration)

[R8f] Lee Valley, "Setting the Blade" and "Getting Started With Your Router Plane" — https://www.leevalley.com/en-gb/discover/post-purchase/router-planes/setting-the-blade and https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/discover/post-purchase/router-planes/getting-started-with-your-router-plane | kind: manufacturer technique material (HIGH — shallow/incremental cutting guidance; model-specific sharpening for two-piece and fixed-shaft cutters)

[R9] "Wooden Routers," William Marples and Sons research site (period catalog scans and listings, 1862–1962) — https://williammarplesandsons.com/wooden-routers/ | kind: period-catalog documentation via specialist research site (HIGH for catalog-listing facts — fetched and read directly)

[R10] "Router (woodworking)," Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Router_(woodworking) | kind: encyclopedia (MEDIUM — fetched directly, but its Kelley/Onsrud/Carter claims rest on citations not independently opened this pass)

[R11] Paul Sellers, "Poor man's router – It works!", paulsellers.com, Mar. 2012 — https://paulsellers.com/2012/03/poor-mans-router-it-works/ | kind: named-practitioner blog (MEDIUM-HIGH — fetched and read directly; first-person craft testimony)

[R12] Albert F. Schade, "Carpenter's router," US Patent 685,411, assigned to Stanley Rule & Level Co. (filed Mar. 6, 1901; granted Oct. 29, 1901) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US685411A/en | kind: patent (HIGH — fetched and read directly this run)

[R13] Jonathan Katz-Moses, "How to Use a Router Plane: 10 Tips for Top-Notch Technique," Katz-Moses Tools — https://kmtools.com/blogs/news/how-to-use-a-router-plane | kind: named-author trade content from a maker who also sells the tool (MEDIUM-HIGH — fetched and read directly; commercially interested but technically specific and consistent with forum sourcing)

[R14] Science Museum Group Collection, "Routing plane, sometimes called a 'granny's tooth'," object co433518, accession 1975-247/48 — https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co433518/ | kind: museum record (HIGH — fetched and read directly; undated by the museum). Also located but NOT fetched: Australian National Maritime Museum granny's-tooth record (collections.sea.museum/objects/189660); Canadian Museum of History artifact 211450 (JavaScript-gated).

[R15] Merriam-Webster, "router plane" — https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/router%20plane | kind: dictionary (HIGH — 1846 first-known-use date; lexical, not archaeological)

[R16] George Kelley, "Routing-Machine," US Patent 877,894 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US877894 | kind: patent (HIGH — filed July 23, 1906; granted January 28, 1908 — fetched and read directly; corrects the entry's earlier "patented in 1906" claim)