Stanley #5 Tote Restoration

I’ve had these two Stanley #5’s for a couple years now and use them often. But both had broken horns (not certain if that’s the right term) on the handle/tote, making it uncomfortable to hold. I’ve been using a glove when using these planes.

Finally I got around to fixing them. I don’t happen to have any rosewood, so I used the darkest wood I had – walnut. On the first one, the fix is very obvious so I stained the walnut part on the second one and it’s a bit harder to tell a repair has been done. Also, as long as I was repairing them, I scraped and sanded off the old finish and refinished the whole thing.

I had to plane off the broken area of the tote and I made a little “sled” to plane the top off cleanly and close to parallel with the bottom. The sled was just two equal sized scraps of pine, on which I made identical rabbets on one edge. In the vise, I clamped the tote in between the two boards, with the amount of tote that I wanted to remove showing above the shoulder of the rabbet. The two rabbets made a ramp or sled for a block plane and it was quick work to clean up the broken area of the tote.

After gluing on a walnut piece, I drew a horn pattern to guide my shaping with saw, rasp, file, scraper and sandpaper. I finished with two coats of BLO, then 3-4 coats of a BLO/Tung oil/poly blend and a coat of paste wax. On one of the planes, I also refinished the front knob

I’m so happy with how they turned out. Incredibly comfortable now. Wish I hadn’t waited so long. One challenge was in getting the hole in the top the right size. Since I covered the existing hole with the new wood, I carefully drilled small holes and used a round rasp to widen the hole to match the original.