Louis Rodier's Patent Smoothing Planes
C1880

"Rodier received a patent for his plane on March 4th, 1879. They were only manufactured (by Laflin Manufacturing Co. of Westfield, Massachusetts) for a few short years, and judging from the surviving examples, they didn't sell well at all. The planes, like so many others' patents, couldn't match those made by Stanley, which was a flourishing tool juggernaut by the time Laflin Mfg. Co put Rodier's planes into ful production during the early 1880's.

Rodier's idea is to regulate the mouth and the set of the iron simultaneously and proportionately via a single adjustment. The planes have a spoked wheel adjuster that rocks the iron's bed about an axis near the throat; turning the wheel to the right reduces the iron's set by lowering the iron's pitch and consequently closes the throat, while turning the wheel to the left raises the iron's pitch to increase the iron's set and opens the throat. This same notion, coincidentally enough, was used by Leonard Bailey on his earlier bench plane designs, but it was accomplished via a different means. Rodier claimed that the ease of adjustment made it possible to convert the plane from a jack plane to a smoothing plane; i.e. a single plane could serve two functions, where the rank set of the jack and the fine set of the smoother are but a simple turn away." (Patrick Leach; "A Better Mousetrap?; The Superior Works; www.supertool.com)

Rodier's Patented Vertical Post Smoothing Plane c1880	Rodier's Patent Smooth Plane Rodier's 1879 patented "rocking frog" design and using a vertical post adjustment similar to L Bailey's patented design	Rodier's Patent vertical post smooth plane
Rodier's Patent smoother c1880 Faucet handle design depth adjusting mechanism.	Rodier's Patent Frog adjuster Likely the latter production design. c1880s	Rodier's Patent Smooth Plane The design is sound and the priciple proven by L. Bailey's vertical post planes. Neither of Rodier's plane designs were commercially successful and he went out of business after just a few years.
Rodier's Patent Smooth Plane Solid performance, (affer a bit of practice and a lot of blade sharpening.	"Squiggly" corrugations Do corrugations actually do what they are purported to do? Depends on who you talk to. Apparently, in the late 1800s a lot of folks , including Louis Rodier believed that they did and went out of his way to prove his point.	Rodier's Patent corrugations Form or Function? Theoretically, corrugations reduce friction between the plane bottom and the work piece. Over the decades many different designs were introduced before the even cut parallel lines were made the standard. Rodier's planes all had "squiggly" line cuts. Was he trying to be different or did it have some unknown friction reduction advantage?
Rodier's 1879 Patent Smooth Plane	Embossed friction cap	Rodier's 1879 Patent Smooth Plane