Its easy in hind site to say the bedrock was just a marketing stunt, but what I'm led to believe and I have no reason to disbelieve it.
Stanley at the time just before the bedrock had a problem with the planes chattering.
Now this could have been the answer to the problem, if you look at normal Stanley bench plane the frog connects to the sole just behind the mouth and at two maybe three points behind that and fastend to the sole with two cheese headed bolts.
The bedrock has a machined bed on the sole and on the frog dovetailed on the sides so there is no side ways movement and two pins with holes in the end that drop through the frog into the sole.
On the sole there are two threaded bolts with tapperd ends that fit into the holes in the pins and fastern the frog down so it just aint going to move.
But the secret to the whole thing is the central adjusting screw, the bedrocks where the first to have this and Stanley with one eye on the patents introduced this to the other bench planes.
In reality this solves the problem but makes the bedrock over engineered but if people want to buy it well sell it to them,later on cut down the cheeks and man it looks cool.
Just recently Stanley reintroduced the Sweathart plane JMHO but they missed the bus, if the had cut down the cheeks they would have sold a lot more.
Record had a plane with cut down cheeks they called it the T5 the 5 because it was a jack and the T for Technical they sold the plane to schools it had a tapped hole in each cheek that a handle screwed into and then it could be used on a shooting board.
So is the Bedrock better than a normal bench plane JMHO no but it sure is cool.
But if there is no difference, why are all the top end planes based on the Bedrock?
Could it be just the cool factor?
