Millers Falls as OEM for Planes

There are places on the web to find information concerning most (but not all!) planes made by the Millers Falls Company beginning in 1929 and ending somewhere near 1984.

Millers Falls made planes for other outlets beginning around 1935 or 1936. The most striking difference was the removal of any reference to the make and model from the castings. In the initial release, the name “Millers Falls” was cast into the raised ring that marked the seat for the front knob, and somewhere behind the frog the model number was also cast. These features disappeared at this time. Also changed was the bedding for the front knob from a smooth seat to a ribbed one (presumably to prevent the knob from unscrewing during use, the cutter depth adjustment yoke changed from a cast yoke to a stamped one, and the make/model was from that point on stamped onto the left cheek of the plane near the sole.

Planes with the original set of markings are termed “Type 1” and those directly after this change “Type 2.” I believe that the reason for these changes was to enable the company to rebrand their products for the secondary market.

There are a few items which are common to all of the rebranded bench planes. Millers Falls kept a few features for their own line, namely the jointed lever cap and the frog/mouth adjustment screw, but many of the planes in the table below reflect type changes from later in the premium product runs that help to date them. I will include this information to the best of my ability, but take my dating with a grain of salt. I have no black and white source for that information that does not originate with the accepted Millers Falls typing timeline established by Randy Roeder at www.oldtoolheaven.com.

The differences between the Millers Falls bench planes and their rebranded counterparts boils down mostly to this list:

1. There is no frog adjustment screw (the castings have the space for the holes, but the holes are not drilled and tapped)
2. They all feature a 1-piece lever cap,
3. The name stamp is different
4. The frog is not always painted red
5. Cocobolo was not used for the wooden parts.

Millers Falls supplied the earlier-produced bench planes with a bit less in the fit & finish department. They spent more time on their own planes than they did these. For example, in the planes they made for Sears bearing the Fulton name, they did not mill the seat in the main casting for the frog, and they did not take the time to round over the transition made by the roundover cutter for the tote – they left it hard. In the lesser-priced lines with the Millers Falls name (for example the 900, 90, 814, etc.) the roundover blend was also ignored so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they’d done the same with anything rebranded. Saving a buck to make a buck, one would suppose.

There is an interesting aside concerning the cutter lateral adjuster lever for many of these planes. In the original Type 1 planes, the end of the lever is not the riveted washer that it is on later examples, but one stamped with a bulge in the end and then folded over to make the bearing surface for the slot in the iron to make contact with. In the “late Type 1 period,” this switched to a riveted washer like that of the Stanley planes of the same era. The secondary lines initially used the folded lever and continued to do so until the late 1950s it seems, while the premium line switched to the riveted slightly before the rest of the Type 2 changes appeared. This in itself isn’t worthy of much note, but what is is that the secondary lines for Sears used both for at least two decades!

Millers Falls also used steel depth adjustment knobs for the bulk of the rebranded lines. But I have personally seen examples that carried the premium brass knob. The same goes for the brass nut / steel post combo for attaching the knob and tote. The early Fulton brand used a steel knob but brass nuts exclusively, but others used different combinations at different times.

The block plane typing follows the parent Millers Falls typing. Generally, after the Type 1 -> Type 2 changeover, precious little changed in terms of details until the individual products were discontinued. The only way I know how to date a Millers Falls block plane after Type 2 is by the stamp on the iron. There was a change made to the 07 skew rabbet block plane’s cutter depth adjustment mechanism, but this does not figure here due to the fact that Millers Falls appears never to have made this plane for anyone else. As far as dating the rebranded lines, we have to use logo or stamp recognition rather than a list of known feature changes. There is a single exception to this concerning the Craftsman 107-37032B and the Millers Falls 16C noted in the table below.

Note item #1: some of the model numbers for the Sears planes were also used by Sargent, and at least one (the Craftsman 3705) was used twice for two completely different planes – a 6″ knuckle block plane and a tiny model-makers mini plane.

Note item #2: when I am giving the equivalent model numbers for these planes, I am aiming for consistency. In the Fulton line more than any other, there is a model overlap where the model I give is not as “feature-identical” as another produced at the same time. The reason behind this is that during that period, there are two rebranded planes that did not have feature-identical models bearing the Millers Falls name at all, the 3708 and 3709, while the 3710 and 3711 are feature-identical with the Mohawk-Shelburne versions of the 900 and 814, respectively. I left the table showing the premium line and not the secondary line as Millers Falls never made a secondary line with equivalents for the two smaller planes.

Bench planes made for Sears: