Vintage Stanley C73 Hand Plane

The Stanley C73 is a vintage, 9-inch to 9-3/4-inch smoothing bench plane, often recognized as a "No. 4 equivalent" manufactured by Stanley. These tools were frequently produced for hardware brands, such as Lakeside (Montgomery Ward), often featuring "C73" stamped on the base or frog, as does this one. By today's standards they are high quality tools, and with a little love this could become a reliable workhorse in someone's plane collection. With a brief WD40 application around the screws everything came apart easily. They don't make 'em like this anymore!