Restoring a late model Bailey no 5
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Hello, this is my maiden post here and I was hoping someone could give me some advice on squaring up the cutting edge of the iron. I believe it was honed with a bevel for use as a jack plane, but even so, it is considerably out of square. I must move the lateral adjustment all the way to one side in order to square it up to the throat, which leaves no room for further fine tuning. I do not own a grinder, and I was wondering if it would be possible to use a file to square it up, or if I should just obtain a new iron all together. Thank you for your time, -Chad
7 August 2014 at 8:12 pm #60175Hi
I will sharpen my plane irons free hand as per Paul’s method on diamond 8″ x 3″ plates , but if I found that the cutting edge was not square or that the bevel angle was way off I would use a honing gauge to get it back to were it should be.
If there was a lot of material to remove I could use a sanding disc machine I have taking great care not to overheat the blade or very course wet & dry attached to a pice of float glass,Once the angles have been rectified I would revert back to the diamond plates either with or without the honing guide7 August 2014 at 11:24 pm #60180The iron can be squared on any coarse stone. I don’t think the file will do as the iron is hardened steel, but you may try if you have a vise.
Just draw a square line with a marking pen and grind to the line.
Then you can do the bevel, by hand or with a guide.
Also, check that the frog is not badly assembled, tilted sideways.Hi, I had a similar problem with a no 4. I had honed the iron square but I couldn’t set it straight in the plane. My problem was with the frog. It was somehow tilted by a fault in the casted main body… I also had to move the adjustment lever all the way to one side.
As there are no ways to remove material from the cast iron body in a controlled manner, I finally decided to give it up and converted it to a scrub plane. That works very well.
I now have a scrub plane with a very flat sole :/So I would advise you to check with a square blade from another plane to see if it’s not a problem with the frog / main body first.
HTH Diego
Thanks for the tips guys! I’m a bit of a tinkerer, so every time I get a new tool (or new to me tool), I take it apart completely and reassemble it to familiarize myself with it and its functions. That being said, I did try to insert another iron of the same width into the frog, but it was much thicker and did not work. Even with the frog set further back from the mouth, the notch in the center of the frog determined the broadest setting, and the tip of the iron would not protrude from the mouth. I found an inch and a half diameter sandpaper grinding wheel that was made for a power drill, and carefully ground the cutting edge back into square, being careful not to overheat it. Then I honed a razor sharp, mirror edge on it with a double-sided wet stone. Now, it glides almost effortlessly! Although this method was effective, do any of you know any good sources for replacement irons?
8 August 2014 at 8:19 pm #60188Replacement irons, I recommend the ones by Veritas/Lee Valley.
Or maybe the original Stanley (new or old) irons, at eBay, but you may pay as much as the Veritas ones however…
8 August 2014 at 9:54 pm #60189Hock Tools makes an *excellent* series of replacement irons. I have a couple and if they are not the best available, they are certainly on the short list.
10 August 2014 at 6:37 am #60214I have hock as well, they are thicker. You can find stanley ones on ebay and I have seen other places sell them.
You can reset the bevel on a grinder is the easiest. I don’t have one yet, waiting on a low speed with norton cool wheels. In the meantime I used a Rigid oscillating benchtop belt sander outside. Can be a bad idea if there is sawdust in it so most people don’t recommend it but mine is clean.
Grinder is the quickest, I have used the stones and I don’t have that kind of time to reset a messed up ebay iron.
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