Here is a selection of Routers
The Old Woman's Tooth or The Granny's Tooth are
terms used for the old fashioned wooden Router Plane. They
were used to clean up the bottoms of housing or dado joints.
Most wooden routers that are found have been user made, often from pieces
of hand-rail and sometimes just from odd scrap blocks of hard woods. They
can be in a variety of timbers. Wooden Routers were also factory
made by many of the large plane & tool manufacturers such as Preston.
How they were used....
Before the days of the electric
router, a housing joint had to be cut using a tennon saw to saw
down both sides of the housing (dado) and then chipping out the
waste with a chisel. If, for instance, a bookcase or dresser was
being built with several fixed shelves, it would be necessary to have
each housing in the sides, exactly the same depth throughout their length
and that is where your Granny's Tooth comes in. The cutter is selected
for width, usually from a set of plough cutters, and then set in the
router for depth of cut and worked along the chanel that has been
chopped out. Each
housing will be finished to exactly the same depth.
Stanley and Preston amongst others, went
on to develop and improve Router planes in the late 19th century and produced
cast iron models. See the Stanley No.71 in the Stanley Gallery. Later
development saw the Screw Adjuster being added.
The hole or cut-away at the front of most of them, was useful to see the
ends of stopped housings or dadoes.
With their various shapes and forms, they make for an interesting collecting
subject
and given their low price range, usually between £7 and £15 each, you can
have a good collection for very little outlay.
