Restoring A Hand Plane - vintage Stanley No. 4

[Music] in this video I'm going to restore a vintage family number forehand plane I picked this one up on ebay for just under 20 pounds it has a few problems some surface rust on the bare metal parts a loose handle that won't tighten because the wood has shrunk over time a sole that isn't flat old lacquer on the wooden parts that dried up cracked and badly worn and at the moment the Frog is too far forward which means that the cutting iron is protruding too far through the mouth this plane is around 60 years old dating from between 1948 and 1961 and I know that because I found a really good website where you can answer multiple questions about the build of the plane and it works out for you the date range of when the plane was made I'll put a link to that site in the description box below this video just in case you've got your own stanley plane that you'd like to know the age of let's get started I removed the lever cap cutting iron and cap iron and that revealed some more rust on the Frog next I removed the wooden handles I unscrewed the Frog which revealed more rust on the underside to I wiped the surfaces of the body and the Frog clean with an oily cloth next I removed the tension screw from the Frog and cleaned up the surface of the Frog with some 80 grit abrasive paper then I wiped on some oil to protect it from rust I did the same again to the metal parts where the underside of the Frog meets the body of the plane I added some oil to the threads of the Frog adjustment screw I made sure to back off the Frog adjustment screw from where it was originally as when I got the plane it was too far forward and the cutting iron was protruding from the mouth far too much next I could refit the Frog and I applied more oil to the screw threads I used a knife blade to scrape off the old lacquer from the handle it was quite difficult to get it off the side grain but it came off the end grain of the wood really easily then I did some sanding with some 80 grit paper to clean it up as much as I could for finish I used teak oil on the handle the front handle had very little lacquer left on it so it was easier to clean this one up and the front handle got soaked in teak oil - at this point I found that the end grain on the handle had blackened so I decided to try and stain the side grain of the handle with some dark teak wood stain so that overall the color was more consistent ideally this would have been done before oiling but I just dabbed a stain on there liberally and it's soaked in eventually and once the stain had dried I gave it another wiping with teak oil next I needed to shorten the bolts that held down the back handle to get rid of the wobble that was there previously I took a very slight amount of each end on the grinder and I expected to have to come back later and take some more off I added oil to the threads and refitted it and actually it cinched the handle down tightly so no further adjustments were needed then I refitted the front handle again oiling the threads the next job was to flatten the sole and to do this I refitted the cutting iron cap iron and lever cap so that the body of the plane would be tensioned while I flattened it I backed off the cutting iron so that it didn't protrude through the mouth then I clamped some 80 grit abrasive paper to a piece of 18 millimeter thick MDF and made some Sharpie marks across the sole of the plane which would help to show where material was being removed from the sole and then I sanded and the sole was badly out of shape you can see here that there's a big hollow in the middle of the sole so this took a lot more sanding and a fresh piece of abrasive paper until I was happy that the sole was flat enough I also sanded the sides and fortunately they took less work to get flat I also put a slight bevel on the sole by holding it at roughly a 45 degree angle and making a few passes on the abrasive paper this is just to break over the sharp edges and make it more comfortable in the hand then I'll the sole and the sides next I needed to clean up the rust from the cap iron again I used 80 grit abrasive paper for this and then I needed to clean up the rust from the cutting iron I cleaned up the bevel - this was just - removed the rust rather than sharpen it next I could concentrate on getting the cutting iron sharp and surprisingly this didn't take too much work links to all of the products that I used for sharpening will be in the description box below this video I started by making more Sharpie marks on the back of the iron had the very tip and then flattened the back of the iron on a 360 grit diamond plate there was a tiny corner where the Sharpie marks were still visible so I did some more sharpening until that had gone then I rotated the plate to 600 grit I then moved to the water stone sharpening at 1,000 and then 6,000 grit and finally I polished the back on some leather charged with green polishing compound next they set up the cutting iron in my honing guide and I just looked at it by eye to check that I had the right angle I made some more Sharpie marks and after a few passes on the 360 grit diamond plate I could see that I was sharpening the very tip of the blade basically putting a micro bevel on it and I can already see a burr on the cutting edge by this point here's another shot of the burr on the cutting edge then I moved on to my water stone at one thousand and six thousand grit I then removed the honing guide and polished the tip of the cutting edge on the leather just with green polishing compound once again I removed the burr by rubbing the back of the cutting iron onto the leather I had a really nice mirror finish on the cutting edge and I checked it was shot by cutting through some paper next I applied oil to the cutting iron and cap iron and then I all the threads of the screw that holds the cap iron and cutting iron together I set the tip of the cutting iron so that it was about two millimeters from the tip of the cap iron and then I could install them to the body initially the Frog was set too far back so I advanced it forward a bit and refitted the irons once again I like to set the Frog so that the cutting iron is around two millimeters from the front of the mouth and that gives me the best results after aligning the cutting iron through the mouth I advanced the cutting iron until I got a thin shaving then I added some candle wax to the sole of the plane and then took a few passes and I was getting really nice thin shavings now that the family is in good shape I no longer have a use of all my other number four and plane which is this one here and this is nothing special it doesn't have a brand name on it it's not in perfect condition and it's probably not worth much money but it does work well and the cutting iron is nice and sharp so if this is of use to anyone please put a comment below something along the lines of I want it and I'll pick someone at random get in touch and ask for your address and I'll send it over to you this restoration took a couple of hours one evening and I'm really happy with how it turned out if you're a subscriber then I'm sure you'll be seeing this a lot in my future videos you [Music]

Channel: Rag 'n' Bone Brown

Views: 31,222

Rating: 4.9490447 out of 5

Keywords: woodwork, rag, 'n', bone, brown, keith, salvaged, restoring, hand, plane, bench, stanley, number 4, no. 4, bench plane, restoration, rust, sharpen, cutting, iron, blade, handle, bailey, rag n bone brown, hand plane restoration, restoring a hand plane, restoring hand planes, restore hand plane, rag and bone brown, restoring hand plane, hand plane, sharpening, woodworking, vintage, restoring old hand planes, restore, how to restore a hand plane, stanley plane restoration, restore a hand plane, diy

Id: 0iR-YVyF2iI

Length: 11min 49sec (709 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2017