Stanley 151 Spokeshave and Box

A coworker of mine who is both a good friend and a woodworker was laid off from our company a few weeks ago. I wanted to give him some sort of retirement / going-away gift but didn’t have anything in particular in mind. Driving back from Newport News (VA) with my son, we stopped at the “Virginia Bazaar” and at one both I found a number of interesting old tools, including a type 2 Stanley 151 flat spokeshave from circa 1915. I fixed it up a bit and built a gift box for it.

The box is a larger variant of my pencil boxes, made out of 1/4” red oak from the local big box store. Since I made my last set of pencil boxes I acquired a Record #044C plough plane, so I was able to make this box completely by hand. There was some stopping and re-starting while I wrapped my mind around the end joints and the dimensions of the sides and the ends, but it worked out pretty well in the end.

I shopped up a Stanley Sweetheart logo for the end of the box and put an advert for the spokeshave from the 1936 catalog on the inside of the lid. (Catalog from here.) I doubt Stanley ever sold these in wooden boxes, but I thought it added some flavor.

The last photo shows the spokeshave and a #4 I picked up at the same time before restoring. (It took about 4 hours of manual sanding to flatten the sole of the #4, but it now works beautifully.)