Plane and Simple

A few months back a member of my extended family (on my wife’s side) decided to sell their house and move south.  In the basement of the house was a collection of old tools from a grandfather who had passed away, and I bought a whole kitten-caboodle for $100.00 (see This Post from January).

Well, hidden in that lot was a little filthy dirty block plane that I didn’t really pay much attention to.  However I recently bought a set of dremel cleaning bits and decided to clean up some of this older stuff.

After really looking at this for first time I noted some unusual things about this block plane.  It has a lateral adjuster for the blade, the blade depth wheel is oriented horizontally:

And little tiny knob up front has some kind of adjuster I have never seen on a plane before:

I disassembled the plane, blew the dust out, and took every piece of it to my drill press that has a brass wire cleaning wheel installed in it right this second (I got it at the Big Blue store for $0.70).  After about 15 minutes I had everything de-gunked and pretty much rust free.

Imagine my surprise when I got enough gunk off of the cap iron to see the engraving stating this was a vintage Stanley Sweet Heart block plane.  I’m not sure exactly what the model is, I am pretty sure it is not a #102.

I’m also pretty sure it still works.

-- Kerry Drake, Loudon NH, http://thenickedfinger.wordpress.com/