ad preserved its
integrity of design since the Middle Ages. At the Centennial, however,
only a few examples of the old-type plane were exhibited. A new shape
dominated the cases. Designated by foreign observers as the American
plane, it received extended comment. Here was a tool

constructed with a skeleton iron body, having a curved wooden
handle; the plane iron is of the finest cast-steel; the cover is
fitted with an ingenious trigger at the top, which, with a screw
below the iron, admits of the plane iron being removed for
sharpening and setting without the aid of the hammer, and with the
greatest ease. The extensive varieties of plane iron in use are
fitted for every requirement; a very ingenious arrangement is
applied to the tools for planing the insides of circles or other
curved works, such as stair-rails, etc. The sole of the plane is
formed of a plate of tempered steel about the thickness of a
handsaw, according to the length required, and this plate is
adapted to the curve, and is securely fixed at each end. With this
tool the work is not only done better but in less time than
formerly. In some exhibits the face of the plane was made of beech
or of other hard wood, secured by screws to the stock, and the tool
becomes a hybrid, all other parts remaining the same as in the iron
plane.[20]

The popularity of Bailey's patented planes (fig. 65), the type so
praised above, was by no means transitory. In 1884 the Boston firm of
Goodnow & Wightman, "Importers, Manufacturers and Dealers in Tools of
all kinds," illustrated the several planes just described and assured
prospective buyers that

These tools meet with universal approbation from the best
Mechanics. For beauty of style and finish they are unequalled, and
the great convenience in operating renders them the cheapest Planes
in use; they are SELF-ADJUSTING in every respect; and each part
being made INTERCHANGEABLE, can be replaced at a trifling
expense.[21]

By 1900 an advertisement for Bailey's planes published in the catalogue
of another Boston firm, Chandler and Farquhar, indicated that "over
900,000" had already been sold.[22]

Other mass-produced edge tools--axes, adzes, braces and bits, augers,
saws, and chisels--illustrated in the trade literature of the toolmakers
became, as had the iron-bodied bench plane, standard forms. In the last