Once I got home from the mall on Saturday afternoon, I started cleaning these up.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take true “before” pictures, so you can’t see all the original grunge.

First, I used a razor scraper to clean off obvious dirt and clumps of rust.  Then I wiped them down with mineral spirits to remove any latent grease or oil.  I liberally coated with naval jelly rust remover, waited 25 minutes (I was actually cleaning up a couple of “new” saws at the same time), and washed with clean water.  The largest gouge required a second round of naval jelly to spot treat a couple of places.

I then made a gouge strop from a piece of scrap wood for the 3/4″ gouge.  See Paul’s instructions here: http://paulsellers.com/2011/04/restoring-woodworking-gouges-project-2-part-1/, or in Working Wood 1/2.  I worked the gouge through 80, 120, 220, 320, 500, 1000, 1500 sandpaper grits.  The edge was a little fractured, but not badly enough to get out the electric grinder.  I used a file to straighten out the edge.  At that point, the land left from the file was not too large, and the existing bevel looked okay to me, so I went straight to the diamond stones.

After sharpening the bevel, I finished making the strop form and stropped both inner and beveled faces on the 3/4″ gouge.  It was at this point that I took the original pictures.

I then repeated the process for the 1″ gouge.  This afternoon after church, I followed through for the 2″ gouge.  As you can see from the initial pictures, the 2″ gouge has some serious fracturing on the edge.  I did get out the grinder for that one.  I ground off the edge to even it out, then reduced the land and reformed the bevel freehand on the grinder, following the existing bevel.  I burned one small spot, which ground out in the first sharpening.  After the land was reduced down to about 1/64″, I took it to the stones and sharpened using Paul’s figure 8 method.  Then finished the strop form, stropped, etc.

I sanded off the finish from the 1″ and gave it several coats of cherry tinted Danish oil and a coat of wax.  I didn’t try to “make new”, just refresh, while keeping most of the existing dings and dents.  I’m not sure yet, if I care for the renewed handle, so I haven’t carried through on the others.  I also polished all the ferrules using a paste of Bar Keeper’s Friend brass polish.  In the pictures, you can see that I’m in the middle of making the strop form for the 1/2″.

The test wood in the pictures is black locust.  One of the harder, tougher American woods.  Not as hard as Paul’s beloved mesquite, but certainly the equal of hickory.  As you can see, there is just a little tear-out on the left side of the close-up.  I think that was mostly my form.  Otherwise, very nice.

Thanks Juryaan.  Some things are more fun to restore than others.  Mostly I find that when I’m confident in what I’m doing, it goes pretty quickly and seems fun.  If I’m encountering a lot of frustrating challenges, it is not so much fun in the moment, but when I finally overcome, the struggle increases the value of the experience.

I have an old wooden plough as well.  Handled/screw arm type.  Mine’s a little unique in that the handle is right-handed, not generic.  I have had to do a little fettling to get it to work… tighten the fence screws, file the skates to even out front and rear vertically, and I need to make a new wedge since the one it came with is not original and not the correct taper.  I suppose I could really clean the wood and refresh the finish, but it has not seemed necessary.  Good luck with your restoration projects.