Rebuild or buy new plane

Just buy a new chip breaker if it needs it. If it worked well before, it should work fine after.

-- The quality of one's woodworking is directly related to the amount of flannel worn.

Being that you are used to this planeand have become friends with it, an aftermarket chipbreaker would be a good present in my opinion. Buying new is good and all, but takes a while to build a good friendship.

-- "....put that handsaw to work and make it earn its keep. - summerfi" <==< JuStiN >==>=->

Check Ebay and buy a newer chip breaker. You’ll keep an old friend and save a few bucks for you next plane.

New, old, rework the old chip breaker if possible. All good options.

-- Shooting down the walls of heartache. Bang bang. I am. The warrior.

I’m assuming the chip breaker is beyond repair? As is, a little time on the stones or grinder to refine the shape and remove the chips?

-- Don't anthropomorphize your handplanes. They hate it when you do that. -- OldTools Archive --

The edge being ragged doesn’t seem to be a deal breaker. You can grind or sand that out with coarse grit sandpaper. Then if you had to take away too much material for the breaker to seat against the iron then you can just gently bend the breaker to give it a little more tension. Just make sure to shape the chip breaker so it’s leading edge meets as perfectly flush with the iron as possible. I can’t find the link that explains it, but basically if you hold the chip breaker slightly below level as you sand it, you will put a reverse bevel on the underside so just the front edge will meet with the iron.

About the only way I can think a chip breaker wouldn’t be savable is if there wasn’t enough metal left at the leading edge so you’d have to bend it too much.

Or both. I find it handy to have a spare blade and chip breaker ready to go. I have several Hock blades and I like them a lot. Hock and several other makers produce quality blade and chip breaker combinations that are sweet (except the price). All of my chip breakers are vintage.
But I have refurbished several chip breakers that were rusted and badly pitted using sandpaper. A belt sander would be quicker. If shavings are getting caught between the blade and the chip breaker then at least the portion of the chip breaker that makes contact with the iron needs attention. After that then I usually polish the chip breaker to the highest part of the hump. Past the hump the chip breaker is covered by the lever cap and doesn’t need to be polished although I still want that part to be rust free.
If the chip breaker is moving on the blade during use then slightly bending the chip breaker will increase the tension and will allow the blade and chip breaker to be tightened more.

I am finishing up getting my set of Bailey planes working.
The cap iron-chip breaker pretty much needed some work on all the planes. They appear to be stamped out, and can have some deformation.
I work those problems out like upchuck does-just takes some time.
I have been struggling with a Wards Master #7. The plane just wouldn’t work well. Looking at planes that do work, I could see the chip breakers hump was higher then normal-in effect choking the throat off that was also higher then it should be.
I profiled the hump on the chip breaker so it was a little more gradual, and worked the throat area in the sole with a small flat file shaping it more like a type 11 plane. Working good now.

I’ve always been unpleasantly surprised at how much refurbishing planes really costs if you put a high quality plade into it. If you include a chip breaker, it’s quite a bit. You can easily spend $100 on a crappy old plane and a good blade. Then you have to work to get it set up right and everything. It is still cheaper than a Lie Nielsen, but the honest truth is that it will never work as well. It will work pretty well and do 95% of what a lie nielsen will do, but it won’t ever match it. So:

Spend $100 and get a very good plane, but put half a day of work into it
OR
Spend $300 and get an outstanding plane out of the box

I see arguments for both. Just don’t go expecting refurbishing to be dirt cheap. It isn’t

-- The Wood Is Your Oyster

It is a shame to waste a plane. Treat yourself to a Rob Cosman combo, fettle up your plane and enjoy. If I was to start again, without any plane, I would buy a Quangsheng, Wood River in the U.S.A.

Not see the chip breaker or the rest of the plane, its hard to say, but I’ve only found a few chip breakers that couldn’t be fixed. Although, if your going to replace anything in a plane, the chip breaker would get the most performance improvements.

-- http://timetestedtools.net - Collecting is an investment in the past, and the future.

I ve always been unpleasantly surprised at how much refurbishing planes really costs if you put a high quality plade into it. If you include a chip breaker, it s quite a bit. You can easily spend $100 on a crappy old plane and a good blade. Then you have to work to get it set up right and everything. It is still cheaper than a Lie Nielsen, but the honest truth is that it will never work as well. It will work pretty well and do 95% of what a lie nielsen will do, but it won t ever match it. So:

Spend $100 and get a very good plane, but put half a day of work into it
OR
Spend $300 and get an outstanding plane out of the box

I see arguments for both. Just don t go expecting refurbishing to be dirt cheap. It isn t

- TheWoodenOyster

I’ve been down the overpriced EBay/missing parts/bad blades/warped soles road too many times. One time I spend 3 hours trying to flatten the sole on a #7 and finally gave up because I could never get the mouth area flat.

The ONLY decent (by my stds) refurbed plane I have (the rest have gone bye bye) is a Stanley Bailey #4 with a Veritas cap iron/blade. Between the plane & shipping & blade I have over $100 invested just like you said. I could have bought a NEW Wood River #4 for just a little more and had a better plane.

I keep telling guys until you’ve put a Lie Nielsen plane in your hands, you won’t know what I’m talking about, but most of the time I get accused of being a snob….....I never thought there was that much diff until I finally broke down and bought a good, new plane.

Plus one thing I’ve learned is get the best tool you or don’t buy one just save up. The “best tool” philosophy has these aspects:

1) You can grow into your tools rather than have your tools limit you.
2) When your results are less than satisfactory, you know its not the tool.
3) There’s something about knowing you use the same tool the masters use that builds your confidence.

-- Everything is a prototype thats why its one of a kind!!

Expensive aftermarket blades and chipbreakers are not needed. If the breaker is done, buy several new blade/breaker sets from Stanley – The 2” for the #5 were $3.50 last I checked. Having 1/2 dozen blade/chipbreakers sharpened up will plane much more wood than any aftermarket blade.

I’ve refurbed over a dozen ebay Stanley bench planes, 4, 4-1/2, 5, 5-1/2, 7 – there were 2 that were lost cause because the mouth was cracked (I was able to get some of my $ back), Some required more work than others, but all are capable of fine smoother performance. Not as good as my BU Veritas planes, but good enough. The only negative being the depth adjustment backlash. Here’s my refurb method http://lumberjocks.com/OSU55/blog/39391.

All of the BD bench planes are limited by the 45° cut angle. While sharp blades, properly dressed breakers, and tight mouths help, these planes will struggle with tear out on reversing grain. A higher cut angle is the solution. Put your $ into addressing this (BU or scraping planes) vs a far more expensive version that has the same limitations. BU planes, with multiple blades, can have any cut angle for end grain to smoothing burl.