@billstan
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Finally got the weights for the planes! For the No 4s the lightest are around 1560-1590g and the heavier ones up to 1750g. I have a 1930 USA no 4 which weighs 1494g (surprisingly low) and a UK No 3 at 1475g.
They are all assembled apart from the one I’m working on so I’ll try to get out and weigh them when I get a chance. Belt sander sounds good.
Hi Larry,
Many thanks for your advice/interest. I’m not too worried about looks, although for the planes I want to keep, I’ll maybe make them look nice as well as functional. The rest of the planes, once working to an acceptable level, can hopefully be given a new lease of life with new owners, although some of them are in poor condition.My post was a bit unclear, I have only worked on one of the job lot planes so far, but have examined the others to identify how much work is involved to bring them back to fully functional use. That was the real issue for me, just how critical is the shape of the mouth, to the plane’s operation. It’s interesting that you highlight the front of the plane as the key area. I suppose as long as the iron is fully supported on the frog the rear of the mouth is not too important. With regards to the front of the mouth,I have read that this can be made a bit bigger for a conversion to a scrub plane.
So far the flattening has been with 80 grit. However, I was watching a video by theorboguitarmaker titled “Restoration/Tuning of a block or hand plane to highest accuracy w. files, scrapers, edge & plate” where he starts by filing the sole of the plane, which has a much higher stock removal rate and checking progress using a granite block/bluing. I gave this a try and was able to remove the wear around the mouth after about an hour of careful filing and bluing and checking against a straight edge as well.I quite fancy playing with scraping on one of the soles, purely for fun as it is probably ott. What would be interesting would be to flatten the sole using this technique with the frog and blade in place and the lever cap tensioned as recommended by all the plane “gurus” and then remove them from the plane and see if the bluing pattern changes significantly. I have not seen anyone check this out.
As you say I plan to keep a couple of the No 4s (one smoother and a scrub) a 5 and a 51/2 but I would also like to dedicate a plane for a shooting board (set it up with completely straight blade profile), but not sure whether the 5 or the 51/2 would be better suited.
Purely for interest, I also weighed all of the No 4s and recorded their casting batch ids and there was a considerable variation in the weight of the bodies (completely stripped down) – from 759g to 904g as shown in table below (apologies for poor formatting) – the underscore “_” is where the number/letter is obscured by paint/japanning.
Weight of
cast iron (g)
body Cast No Other Numbers
759 6 _Q
761 F
762 Q
767 7 XQ
772 5 XQ
777 _ 3Q
811 Q19
830 9Q
830 Q17
830 Q20
844 F
845 12Q
853 10Q
856 10Q
866 Q15
867 Q13 G12-004
878 15 G12-004
904 90 G12-004Apologies, but this turned out to be a bit longer than I planned!
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This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by
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This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by
thanks for the info and links Larry and Rolf, I’ll follow up and if I make any progress worth sharing I’ll post to the appropriate area of the forum.
Hi Gregor, Thanks for reply but I can’t see link!?
Hi Rolf,
I am in a similar situation. I bought a job lot of 23 Stanley planes, mostly No 4s and unfortunately they were all disassembled and the bits jumbled together. I now want to try and reassemble them without creating the so called “frankenstein” planes but i’m struggling to find any info to assist in this. Just wondered if you’d made any progress in dating your planes?
Just picked up a set in Vienna (Austria!!) – still not available in UK!!
I took a deep breath and ordered 3 eze-lap diamond stones (coarse, fine and superfine), after years of persevering with an old carborundum double sided oil stone. Using Paul’s convex bevel I was amazed at how easy it was to sharpen my plane blade. No more honing guides for me.
Also, I ordered the Silverline spiral stitched buffing wheel and compound – fitted to my grinder (had to use a rubber washer to take up a small gap) and wow – it’s great for polishing up the plane parts when restoring planes _ I recently bought a job lot of 23 Stanley planes (1 x 5 1/2, 4 x No 5’s, 1 No 3 and 13 x No 4s) – something to keep me busy when I retire next year!!
Least favourite – Triton saw table bought about 20 years ago – never really did it for me.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by
