Today's buys.
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- This topic has 20 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 1 month ago by Matt McGrane.
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18 March 2015 at 4:32 am #125652
Hi guys,
I’ve been busy restoring my planes and following the advice you all so generously gave.
The no 4 with the broken tote is now my scrub plane and it does a terrific job of getting parts down to size. I followed Paul’s video and everything went easily. I took mooncabbage’s advice and just repaired the tote for now. First cleaning up the two pieces with a Dremel and then drilling several small holes into each piece to give the epoxy something to grab. Sanded it down and then BLO and wax. The iron and cap iron were both warped. This took a lot of work to get to the point where the iron would sit flat on the frog and the cap iron would mate without gaps. I was tempted to give in and order an aftermarket blade and cap iron but that would have defeated the purpose of buying a cheap Stanley and learning how to restore it. Finally got there. Very happy with the result. Knocks stock down to size very quickly.
Just finished the no 5 Jack. This one was a real bugger. Blade and cap iron were ok but the sole was convex from end to end and also twisted at the heel. I persisted with 80 grit paper on a sheet of melamine for a while and soon realised that this was going to take months. I researched scraping the sole and soon realised that I didn’t want to risk that. Finally I did two things that got the job finished. 1) I took a bastard file to the shiny areas and going lightly and carefully, knocked these high spots down. I filed a bit, lapped a bit and so on. 2) I wondered if the melamine board I was lapping on, was maybe flexing and not doing as good a job of either removing material nor staying as flat as I would have liked. So I bit the bullet, went to Amber tiles and picked up a 600 x 600 honed and polished slab go granite for $30.
What a difference!!! In half an hour, I succeeded where days of effort on the melamine had failed.
I’ve set the no 5 up with a close mouth and the cap iron set close as I already have the no 4 scrub and I want to use the no 5 as a substitute jointer rather than as a jack plane. We’ll Se how it goes with that, but for now, it takes nice thin shavings the full width.
Finally, thanks to Salko, I have some saw files on the way from Henry Ekhert in South Australia and I can look forward to restoring “the beast.” A 5 tpi Disston that needs some tlc.
Thanks to everyone for chipping in with encouragement and advice. I learned so many things restoring these problem planes and I’m far better off in terms of skill set and satisfaction than I would be if I had taken the easier route and splashed out on expensive planes.Andrew
18 March 2015 at 2:56 pm #125662Glad to hear it went well. No stop playing with your tools and make something with them!
18 March 2015 at 4:40 pm #125674Great stuff, Andrew. Restoration work can be so satisfying and rewarding.
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