I have a Standard Rule & Level Co. 26 inch long level with Ripley's Adjustment.

The level had been used and abused and the Ripley's Adjustment removed. I have not been able to discover anything about Ripley's Adjustment and would appreciate any leads about it.

The level has been restored to the point where it can be displayed. I doubt that it has much value because the adjustment was removed and many of the original brass screws were missing..

 

john.neff.ic.64@gmail.com

Hey John, welcome to our community, glad to have you here, I went ahead and split this question off into your own topic so it may get some more attention, the post you replied to was pretty old. I wish you the best of luck in your history search of this level, I did a little hunting and pecking as well and couldn't find much, perhaps someone may be of help here.

 

On that note, would you be able to post an image of your level here?

 

 

Welcome to The Patriot Woodworker, John. Glad you found us. Hope to see more about your collections and passion.

 

I have no real knowledge of your rule. A couple quick searches didn't yield much either. I personally don't subscribe to Worthpoint but did find THIS.

Maybe it will help going forward. Keep the thread going as you find more information.

 

Great to have you here.

Thanks I had seen that. However, when I asked about level the reply was from a computer.

The level belonged to my great-grandfather who owned about 40 ships during his lifetime and many of the were on the Great Lakes and they all had a set of tools that were used by the crew as needed. The crew members were not skilled woodworkers and the tools were not doubt abused. I was given a box of old tools by his granddaughter and since my sons were asking about family history and I have great-grand children I had the level and a Bailey No. 27 plane restored by a local woodworker with 40 years of experience in restoring furniture.

 

Standard Rule & Level Co. of Unionville CT. sold more rules than levels so I think the level is rare. Later they started making planes and that caught the attention of Stanley and they bought them from Upson Nut. Co. and shut them down.

Thanks for coming back with the pic John.  Please do keep us in the loop if you should find any additional info.

I am fairly confident that the Ripley's adjustment was a failure and was replaced by better design. The problem was to adjust the spirit levels the brass plates had to be removed. No doubt people at the time figured out that you needed to be able to make the adjustment without removing the plates. The was one of the features of the Stanley levels. There is a YouTube video of the restoration of 125 year old Stanley level that had that feature.

Wonder if Stanley bought the rights to their level like they did the planes? Laws were different then when it came to "eliminating" the competition.

Stanley started out as Stanley Rule and Level so they had early  levels but some of their later levels looked a lot like Standard levels.