Hand Plane Restoration // How To

hey everybody how's it going my name is Chris this is my shop partner oats and today I'm going to show you how to take an old rusty hand plane and turn it into a nice usable tool just like this one here so let's get started I'm first gonna completely take the plane apart and when buying an old plane you should take the plane apart as much as you can and really inspect all the components for damage before you buy it a lot of times old planes get pieced together with different parts from other planes and most of the time these Franken planes they work just fine and it doesn't hurt the functionality but if having a completely original plane is important to you then it's something that you might want to research and look out for before buying throughout the years Stanley made changes and improvements to the planes each different version of the same plane is classified by a type number this plane is a number five Jack plane which indicates its size and general use but it's a type 11 number five which means it's the 11th version of the plane and I'll talk more about that and the different types at the end of this video so stay tuned if you're interested in learning more about that once I have all the pieces taken apart and the loose debris and dirt brushed off I'll scrub the parts in some soapy water using a plastic bristle brush to remove as much grime and dirt as I can I take this step because next I'll be submerging the parts in a rust remover the rust remover will work a lot better if the parts are cleaned and degrease first plus I don't want all that extra dirt and gunk in the rust remover or solution because I can save that and reuse it again later here you can see the parts look a lot better already but there's still a lot of rust on there I've used plain old white distilled vinegar in the past as a rust remover but I saw this wd-40 rust remover at Lowe's the other day and decided to give it a try and honestly I was super impressed not only did it work incredibly fast but it's pretty much a harmless biodegradable non-toxic solution I was thinking that something like a rust remover was gonna be really caustic and really harmful but that wasn't the case at all so while those parts soak I'm gonna work on the broken tote the top flange was broken which is very common but the piece had been reglued and screwed back into place so I'm going to scrub away the loose glue and dirt with a wire brush and then clean then prepared the surfaces with some sandpaper so that I can reglue them using epoxy the toe and front knob were actually in pretty good shape but I decided to sand them anyways to see if I could brighten them up a little bit I just removed the outer grime with some 320 grit sandpaper and I'm gonna add some walnut oil later on and with an odd shaped piece like this a rubber band makes a really good clamp then I'll go check out my pieces that have been soaking for about two hours and all the rust had literally vanished before assembling the plane I'm going to do some work on its components I'm gonna start by flattening the face of the frog which is the piece that supports the plane blade it's important that this surface is nice and flat so the plane blade has a solid foundation I use a coarse diamond stone to do this flattening but you can use a water stone or sandpaper on a flat surface the lateral adjustment lever will prevent you from putting the entire frog on a stone at once so I'm constantly going to move the Frog around so that I get even cutting on all areas once the face of the Frog is flat I'm gonna make sure the points that make contact with the plane body are also flat there are two areas that make contact with the plane body and it's important to only remove equal material from each area or your frog will not seek properly again later on I usually do about ten strokes on one area and then do the same number on the other area to keep them in proper alignment I'll go back and forth doing about the same number of strokes on each area until I'm happy and I have a nice flat surface here I'm showing where the two areas of contact are after flattening those areas on the Frog I'll seat the Frog into the plane body and with light pressure I'm gonna see if there's any rocking or wobble in the Frog think of it when a four-legged table has one leg that it's too short it will rock it that's the same thing you're looking for here you want a nice solid seat and no rocking if there's any kind of rocking or wobble you'll need to find the high areas and bring them down then I'll add the screws that secure the Frog to the plane body and these need to be loosened any time you want to move the Frog forward or backwards you move the Frog to open or close the mouth of the plane with an adjustment screw at the rear of the Frog I'll be talking more about that and why it's important in a separate video on how to set up a hand plane I'll be publishing that video in about a week or so after the date of this video when assembling I'll add a little oil to all the threads and all the screws then I'll add some Mahoney's walnut oil to the tote and knob which really brought the Rosewood back to life off-camera I polished the brass and screws with some 600 grit sandpaper and then strop them after that I'll be adding the blade and chip breaker and I made a separate video on sharpening the blade and how to do it with both sandpaper and stones which I'll be posting in the next couple of days so if you aren't already please consider subscribing and if you hit the bell icon you'll be notified of any new videos before I start flattening the bottom of the plane I want to make sure there is proper tension I do this by setting the tension on the lever cap I'll adjust the lever cap screw when the lever cap is released I just simply turn it until there's proper tension I'm looking for a nice firm audible snap when setting the lever cap you don't want it too loose so that the blade moves while trying to use the plane or too tight or it makes it hard to adjust the blade then I'll back the blade up so that it's not protruding out of the bottom to flatten the bottom I'm gonna use some 120 grit stickback sandpaper on a piece of folk glass you can use a granite block or even your table saw if it has a nice flat cast iron top stick back sandpaper has been hard for me to find and so a nice alternative is to just use some spray adhesive and some regular nonstick back sandpaper I change the sandpaper frequently and I like the rolls because I can make my sheets as long as I want I make a few passes and look at the bottom of the plane to see where the sandpaper cut I will keep rubbing on the sandpaper until I've flattened the majority of the bottom the front and rear edges are usually worn much more than the rest of the plane and it would take a lot of extra work to get those areas flat and in actuality I want the front and rear edge to have a slight curve in them so they'll actually ride up in over different levels of wood rather than crash into them when I'm happy with the bottom I will clean up the sides luckily this plain sides were at 90 degrees to the bottom so it's really easy for me to use this as a shooting plane if the sides are not square you can still use the plane for shooting by adjusting the planes fillet the lateral adjuster until the blade is 90 degrees to the shooting board it's not ideal that way but it still can be done now I'm going to round all the edges of the sides in the front and the back of the plane again this is to help the plane ride up and over any different levels in wood such as the corners of a cabinet door or the boards and a table top after it blew up next I will take some 600 grit wet and dry sandpaper and remove some more of the aggressive scratch marks that were made from the 120 grit sandpaper I used earlier I will also go at all the edges and sides to give the metal a nice smooth finish and I don't think you need to go any higher than 600 the final step is that I rub any bare metal and wood with the crystalline wax such as Renaissance wax this stuff makes a really nice protective barrier to moisture I actually put it on all my tools and cast-iron power-tool tops twice a year and I've never had any problems with rust it also adds a nice luster to the toe and knob when hand rubbed in it's absolutely amazing to me that this tool is over a hundred years old it's really cool to think about all the different craftsmen who have held it and use this tool over the last century and with proper care and a little periodic upkeep this plane should last another hundred years and it's hopefully passed down to my kids and my grandkids as well well I hope you learn something and this video helps you restore one of these amazing tools for yourself I'll stick around if you want to hear a little bit more about this plane and the different types now I got this plane at a flea market I got a really good deal on it I got it for $12 the great thing about this plane even though it's all rusted I think most of it is superficial surface rust the body and everything looks like it's in pretty good condition but this is a type 11 which is a really desirable I guess your class of this plane every so often Stanley would improve these planes and every time they made an improvement or change something it would be called the different type so started at essentially you know type 1 which is the very first plane and every time they made an improvement you know the second improvement would be type 2 and so on and so forth type 11 is considered one of the more desirable ones out there because there's some features on it that Stanley made throughout the different iterations before it where it had kind of all the bells and whistles but the manufacturing was still really high-quality and they weren't starting to skimp on anything yet so the type Elevens are one of the more sought-after ones and I got really lucky and I got one here so I'm gonna restore that and when I say to restore there's always gonna be people that get their panties in a bunch anytime you're restoring an antique and you're not like keeping it original or whatever but I'm gonna restore this plane for me I own it and I'm gonna keep it probably for the next till I hand it off to my grandkids someday and I'm gonna restore this plane to use I'm not a tool collector I'm not an antique dealer and I didn't buy this plane to restore and trying to turn a profit on it I think the value of these things is very subjective to each individual you know when I restore this I'm gonna put a lot of effort into this and turning this plane into a beautiful working tool again and the value of that it's gonna be probably you know ten times more what the planes actually worth so I'll probably never sell it to me I think this is a tool that should be used and not you know bought and restored and sold so that's what I'm gonna do and if you don't like the way I restore it sorry too bad this is mine and I get to do with it what I want so now I'll show you I'm gonna zoom in real quick and show you some of their differences kind of give you some examples about how the plains have changed over the years before I don't jump into restoring it so let's let's zoom in so the first thing you'll probably notice is the front knob height on these older ones they were low knobs and later on Stanley changed the knobs to higher in the front another thing and the reason why these older planes are a little bit more desirable is if you can see the amount of material compared between the two this older type of Leven has a home an almost double the thickness of the bottom of the sole compared to this type 15 which was my grandfather's now I mean both of these will work really really well I use this plane on almost every single project there's no nostalgia value that's my grandpa's and that's why I reach for it all the time but even though this is a thinner sold plane and not quite as heavy duty is this it works just fine so don't get caught up thinking you need a type of leaven or 12 or some of the older ones any of these planes will work just fine if you put a little effort into tuning them up okay some of the other features that make these a little bit different is on the back here if you can see down in there there is some and we'll get some better shots that later patent dates there's three patent dates you know it's gonna be either a type 11 or type 12 my grandpa's doesn't have any so anytime you run across a plane that has no patent dates there there's either gonna be none one two or three if there's none then it's either type one through eight or a type 15 through I don't know what it is 19 or 20 or something so but I know this looms a little bit older there's some other features that tell me that but the knob here the depth adjustment knob of the plane is wider than on this older one that's another telltale feature and there's other things like the raised circle around the knob you can see this older one doesn't have one and the newer one does so there's just a I mean that's a rabbit hole you can go down and research there's all sorts of really cool information out there studying these planes and learning about them

Channel: Third Coast Craftsman

Views: 251,366

Rating: 4.9499817 out of 5

Keywords: restoration, handtoolrescue, hand tool, plane, handplane, planing, restore, repair, how to, diy, stanley, hand, jack plane, woodworking, woodwork, craftsman, maker, make, build, create, rosewood, rebuild, how to restore a hand plane, how to restore a plane, diresta, crafted, rescue

Id: HqydI5Wmd4A

Length: 15min 55sec (955 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 12 2018