While the mark is quite unusual and poorly made, Norris was a plane maker in London, established in 1860. They usually made steel planes, but I there are with wodden body aroud, usually really old ones. These guys might be able to help you confirming the brand :
http://www.antiquetools.co.uk/articles/norris.htm
(That article also shows how riddicoulously expensive these things were.)
madd0ct0r wrote:I was thinking maybe it wasn't a paired tongue and groove plane, but something that cut a precise groove with a precise shape down a length of wood like a rifle stock - perhaps something to do with the rifle barrel interacting with the stock below it? Your suggestion sounds good, maybe it was just something he marked with his usual tool stamp then? (or he worked as a carpenter post army...)
I doubt it, this one looks like a standard size to me - 3/8 or 1/2 inch (with a good bit of +/-, like all of them). Also, since the late eighteenhundreds, rifle stocks were made in bulk by specialized copy-lathes, and the little bit of work that needed to be done to fit them would be made with a chisel.
Just an Idea:
A different example of these planes carries the brand, worker's and the company name.
So it might be that the VC stamp was the commander/company stamp and "Norris" the worker. (I doubt it, but it might be.)
A minute's thought suggests that the very idea of this is stupid. A more detailed examination raises the possibility that it might be an answer to the question "how could the Germans win the war after the US gets involved?" - Captain Seafort, in a thread proposing a 1942 'D-Day' in Quiberon Bay
I do archery skeet. With a Trebuchet.