Dovetailed Steel Smooth Plane By E. Preston & Sons

Here’s a nice and crisp dovetailed steel smoother from Edward Preston & Sons in Birmingham. The Brazilian rosewood infill is colourful and closely grained, and contrasts beautifully with the steel and gunmetal. Indeed much of the appeal of infill planes is due to this contrast and not just the working properties of the plane itself.

Though some may feel that a plane without a rear handle might be difficult to use, this is simply not the case in practice. Unhandled versions of infill smoothing planes always remained popular amongst woodworkers over the course of their manufacture, and Preston’s planes were no exception.

The dovetailing is particularly tight on this infill plane, and I can’t say I’ve seen too many Prestons that haven’t been — unless, of course, they’ve been heavily abused. Thankfully this one has escaped that fate.

The overall length of the plane is 7-1/8″ and the width is 2-5/8″. The gunmetal lever cap is stamped with the “E. PRESTON & SONS, E.P, BIRMn., ENG” stamp, placing its date of manufacture at around the turn of the 19th/20th century. The front infill is also marked with the same stamp, and the toe is stamped “STEEL” to differentiate it from cast iron and malleable planes. The cutting iron is 2-1/4″ wide and made by Ward.

The Preston company was a major competitor of Spiers, Norris and Mathieson when it came to infill planes. While American manufacturers were busy following the innovations and designs of Leonard Bailey and the Stanley Rule & Level Company, in the U.K. it was all about the infills (though wooden planes were still the most popular types of planes in the U.K. for a long, long time). While they would’ve started off making the same designs made popular by Stewart Spiers, Prestons would soon become innovators themselves — especially when it came to some of the non-infill shoulder and bullnose planes the company manufactured.

Edward Preston was originally a planemaker until his son (also named Edward) joined him in 1850. It was at this time that the firm expanded their interests by manufacturing other tools, including the rules and levels for which the company would soon become quite famous for.

By the end of the 19th Century Prestons were making all kinds of planes — not just infill planes. The range included traditional wood planes, American inspired cast iron block planes and smoothing planes, traditional style malleable iron planes such as smoothers, shoulder and bullnose, as well as the aforementioned top of the range dovetailed infill planes.

Edward Preston & Sons continued making handplanes and other tools right up to the early 1930’s, when the planemaking side of the business was then bought out by C.J. Hampton Ltd in October 1934. While most of the plane line was dropped, some of Prestons designs were incorporated into the then fledgling Record Tools brand, and continued to be manufactured for many years.

Click the following link to read more about the firm and to see a reproduction of the hand planes offered by Edward Preston & Sons in their 1901 Catalogue.

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