First Stanley Plane Rehab

I have been leaning towards the neanderthal side recently. Don’t get me wrong, there will always be a place in my shop for stuff like routers and tablesaws. But there are just some things that plain work better without a cord. Something about sneaking up on tennon thickness with a 2-5HP tablesaw is just one of those sore thumb examples. You want to take off .005”, pick up a hand plane.

Okay, off soap box. There are a lot of more qualified people who can preach from there. Me, I am gonna hang out in my garage-shop.

My plane life started with a hand-me-down Stanley block plane and some sort of rasp plane. Those were not inspirational at all. I recently picked up a Groz set. They work well, but I am wanting to get some more sizes and specialty planes. So off to e-bay I went. I snagged up a handful of planes (some transitional, a woodie, a #5, and a #78). I kept it reasonable and the #78 was the only one I paid more than $10 for. Well, the #5 arrived yesterday. So naturally today I wanted to see if it could make shavings.

First step, try it out. Horible. Wow, not even functional.

Step 2, see what we are up against
Honestly nothing too bad. There is surface rust and the tote is wiggling. Of course the blade is dull and far from usable.

Step 3, get out the sand paper. Collectors will cringe, but personally I would rather use than let it rot on the wall. So I took a 120 grit belt sander belt and laid it out on my cast iron router table. I flattened the back of the plane iron, squared up and fixed the chip breaker, flattened the sole (mostly, I didn’t go ape on it), and flattened the bottom of the tote and handle.

Step 4, make it sharp. Off to the HF sharpening grinder. Setup was a little fiddley, but I was able after a couple of minutes to be setup for proper bevel and th square the blade back up. I spent a goot 30 minutes at the grinder, then transitioned to the wet stones to polish the back and add the micro bevel.

Step 5, oil and clean. File, sand paper, and scotch brite are your friends. Throw in some wire brush for good measure as well. Oil the threads and anything that can rust. Items in contact with wood need to be wiped clean so you don’t soil your future projects.

Step 6, assemble it. Take care to reassemble your plane.

Step 7, wax the sole so it glides.

Step 8, test your handy work.

Step 9, resharpen the blade. Yep, got a little cocky and tried to take on a couple of knots. Knots 1, micro-bevel 0. I recommend establishing a heavier micro-bevel from the start. The uber-fine is just too fragile.

Step 10, marvel at the fact that a tool that is over 40 years old is actually far superior to what is cranking out of China and India.

Alright, check the pictures. Hit me back if you have any questions.

-- Doug, woodworking in Alabama