| Blog series by dfdye | updated 1159 days ago | 6 parts | 5368 reads | 20 comments total |
Part 1: Getting Started
A while back I posted a review of a cheap #4 Footprint plane I bought and tuned up. During the discussion, I mentioned that I was looking to buy a #7 plane, and WayneC generously offered to sell me one of his bargain finds. He warned me that it was pretty dirty, and that there were some minor defects, (but that is of course to be expected of a tool of this vintage) but that it was in good user condition, so I jumped at the opportunity and had him send it along. A few days later, an extre...
Part 2: Final stripping and paint
Last night I left off with some stubborn japanning still on the plane, but with most of the lose crud and japanning stripped. Tonight I started off by attacking the last remnants of the japanning with some Zinssner stripper (somebody asked, so here is a picture of what I used) It was pretty aggressive with the japanning the first time around, but the stubborn spots really didn’t seem to want to come off. I had to go to town with a brass brush to get things clean, but eventually al...
Part 3: Grunt work
Just like the title says, I did a lot of grunt work tonight. First things first, I cleaned the paint off of the surfaces I should have taped off in the first place. I noticed some of the spots that should have been flat had a little bit of a burr on the edge from getting dinged through the years, so I pulled out a small file and flattened a few surfaces. A wire brush attachment on my Dremel cleaned out of the crevasses pretty nicely, but I did have to resort to dental picks for a few spots...
Part 4: Putting it all Together
That’s right! The plane is put together for the first time since I got it. For reference, here is the picture I got from Wayne when he first offered the plane (my plane is the one in the foreground): Here is what it looked like when it got to me: And here is the plane now: I skipped a few picture taking opportunities (namely the refinishing of the handle and filing/truing of the frog parts), but there are a few extra pictures in the photobucket folder if anyone is...
Part 5: Grumble Grumble
Well, it had to happen. I started cleaning the rust off the base of the plane getting it ready for filing and sandpaper, and I noticed a couple of pitting spots I hadn’t noticed before. I couldn’t easily get the gunk off, so I had to get pretty aggressive with a wire brush. I did get all of the scaling off, but underneath were a a pretty gunky arc of pits down one side of the plane. I should have guessed that is what was under the flaky rust spots. I forgot to take pictures, ...
Part 6: Call it done!
After a little soul searching (sorry for the pun) as to whether to grind the sole completely flat and get rid of some of the pitting, I finally decided to leave the pitting and just “lightly” flatten the sole of the plane. It took a while, but after killing several sheets of 60 grit sand paper (mounted end to end on my table saw) I started getting “flat” lapping on the entire length and width of the sole. Boy, that took a long time, and sure did generate a TON of b...
My wife, son, and I moved into a new house last year, and there is lots to do! Before I start the major remodeling, I have to get the new shop situated! There will be some "real" projects thrown in, but mostly I'll be sharing the setup of my new shop, and how I am getting along sharing my shop (AKA garage) with my wife's car.
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