Restoring a Stanley #4 Hand Plane

[Music] hey guys welcome back to the other craftsmanship my name is Dustin and today in the shop we are going to be restoring this old Stanley Bailey number 4 hand plane now this hand plane the number 4 was the most widely used hand plane size these you can find everywhere I got this one from a yard sale for under $20 and they're just great hand planes they're super versatile you can use them for trimming off a little bit of wood on a door if you have a door that's sticking if you need to you know chamfer an edge of a piece of wood for a threshold into a room just lots of things that I would say any handyman could use this plane for it's super versatile super widely used and you can find them all over the place so this one's in pretty good order there's no cracks in the handle in the wood which is really nice you want to look for and it has the stanley cap on it and it has the brass adjustment knob so it's got some nice qualities to it that I really like but it's still it's pretty rusty the blade needs sharpening all the brass needs cleaning up so we're gonna go ahead and take everything apart clean it all up put it back together and I'm going to show you guys how to do it how we can restore this back to its former glory usually your screw here on your cap is set to the right tension so that way all you have to do is intention the cap and then it'll come off we'll see if this one will a little bit of rust but not bad apart this should come out by hand but it's a little tight so okay and this is just sitting in there that I didn't have to take that screw out for this but it's held together we have our actual blade attached to the chipbreaker by just a thumb screw which usually can just be tightened and loosened by hand this one's a little rusty but not too bad next part is the Frog and this is what holds your blade at the right angle just held on by two screws into the base so get them out just coming apart pretty nicely which is good the front handle is just held on by C a brass nut and this is a threaded rod which will grab maybe a pair of vise grips to get that out [Music] [Music] [Music] this is the adjuster knob this can adjust your blade depth or how far in and out it's going out of the throat on the sole of your plane this is a nice one sometimes later models you'll find plastic ones or iron or aluminum this one's an earlier one so it's nice cast brass I have everything now taken apart and I owe this great website wooden shop calm you can go and there's a really nice page how to identify your Stanley hand playing date so I'm gonna go ahead and go through each question now and narrow down what type this is and what date it was made so first thing it's gonna ask me is how many patent dates do I see behind the hand playing frolic and there's nothing there so I'm gonna put 0 goes on the next one now it asked me do I see a raised ring surrounding the knob receiver just here I do see a raised ring so yes next question is the plain bed painted dark blue and it's not the Japan hang on it is black so I'm going to say no and it says do I see a raised rib or toe on the front or the heel and no this does not have erased toe so no and it comes out to Stanley Bailey type 15 hand plane and it is manufactured between 1931 1932 so it's great super easy website wouldn't shop good it'll walk you through the steps and they'll tell you exactly when your plane was made and what type of dinner first we want to do is just take all the pieces all the brass and all the steel pieces take them over to the wire wheel and clean them all up [Music] [Music] [Music] so I have a rag that I just keep soaked in wd-40 I keep it in the tin usually I use this to clean up my axes after I use them and before I kind of oil and decor I put it away but this also works to help kind of loosen up the surface rust on anything as I'm using the wire wheel so I'll just give it a wipe down then go back over it'll clean it up a little bit more [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I just spent about maybe 30 minutes 40 minutes or so taking all the stuffs of the wire we on getting all the rust off there are chemicals that you can use and rust removers like evapo rust and you can use vinegar and lots of different things you can use to just kind of dunk these and get all the rust off but I kind of like you know taking pieces and actually doing it by hand using a wire wheel I think I don't know it seems a little bit more intimate a little bit more kind of one on one fourth each piece making sure each piece is exactly how I want it so that's why I do it that way again like I said there are some other ways to do it which could go quicker but but now I have everything done so I'm gonna go ahead and just take these last few pieces and kind of clean them up with some with just an old bandana and some wd-40 now to get all the dirt and stuff grime off of the inside a little cracks of these we have a little bit of the chipping where this black paint which is called Japan Aang has come off most of its there which is pretty nice most of these old ones that I find it has a lot more missing Japan II but this is pretty good there's some missing here and some missing in here but I'm just making sure I clean off as much rust as I can I'll keep it oiled so it'll keep it from rusting more the Frog connects to the soul of the plane in two spots it sits here and it sits here so I want to make sure these pieces are nice and flat so I'm just going to flatten these on some sandpaper on this stone that I have just making sure I get a nice clean connection that's pretty good I bet there's there's no movement at all so that's a nice clean connection just using some water now just to clean up the dirt that's on the outside of these handles this is the this is the tote what slippery the tote and the knob I'm just cleaning off a new surface dirt and these are like I said these are pretty good conditions so I'm not really gonna do any other surface cleaning with them I'm not going to sand them there's a few little spots of paint and then there's an old Stanley tools logo on here which i think is pretty cool so I'm just gonna clean them up and then I'll give them a light oiling to make sure any spots where there's missing varnish will not crack and dry and then we'll get everything put back together so that I can have the full plane put back together before I start resurfacing the sole of the plane I'm just using boiled linseed oil I'm just making sure I'm rubbing rubbing it in over the entire surface like I said most of this is covered in a varnish there's not really gonna take most of it but especially at the bottom where it sits on the sole it doesn't have any runners there so that'll keep that moisturized the same thing that's the other one just make sure we're getting the whole surface that way if there are any cracks in the varnish it'll soak into the wood my next step is to surface and flatten the sole and also take care of the sides everything so but to do that I want to have my handles on and I want to have some weight to it so I'm going to go ahead and put everything back together except for the chip breaker and the cap and the actual plain iron but I'm getting everything back together just put a little bit of oil on the threads here so I'm just moving it back and forth just to make sure all the threads are nice and oiled and you see it's just spinning up and down which is really nice this is the find the find depth control for the blade this is nice to have it moving nice and freely so I want my edges of the soul all the way in there around the edges to be a little bit curved up because as you're planing across the service you don't want these edges to catch on the wood that you need to cut off so I'm just kind of putting a little bit of pressure on the outer edges here and here and then I'll also do some pressure on the front edge and the back edge before I work on the sides a little bit of pitting here right on the corner any other throat but it's below the surface so it's not going to interfere with any of the surface it's nice and flat across the top and just some other just a little bits of surface rust but again I'm not super interested in making this perfectly clean and perfectly back to brand new I just want to restore it so that way it's in good working order with this plane blade there's two sides to it you have obviously your flat side it's just the flat of the plane which you also want to clean up so I'm going to start off with just flattening the flat side of this and I have 220 grit sandpaper and wd-40 as a lubricant you can use any type of lubricant some people use like a window polish cleaning I've used that before simple green different things it's just nice to have some type of lubricant to be able to move the metal dust away from your actual blades so I'm gonna go ahead and start with 220 and I'll work my way up through finer grits of sandpaper and then we'll flip it over and I'll show you how to put it into the honing guide that I have and then we'll work on the actual bevel on the front now it's nice this actually it's pretty handy it comes with the metric measurements for your different distances here to coincide with your angles and on the box that standard measurements as well so it's pretty simple he just set it out the right depth run it flat on your surface and you get a really consistent really easy bevel along this edge so we'll go ahead and move over to the flat plate and start working this bevel down and get it nice and sharp and clean I'm going to start with 220 grit just to clean up the surface and then I'll move up to 500 and then a thousand and then 1200 grit now there are lots of really nice stones that go up to the many thousands of grits and can be really really nice and could put a really beautiful edge on it but I found that you know for what I have for what I do this works really well it puts a razor-sharp edge on the blade and it cuts well [Music] so the last step is I'm going to bring out my leather and I'll strop both surfaces the flat end the bevel well you're doing basically is this leather has just enough texture and grit to polish this edge moving back so find my bevel pull up just a little bit so I know that I'm polishing that front edge and also the flight of the bevel you want to do both sides and lay it flat on the flat and again this is doing the same thing it's actually pushing that little wire back and forth across the front edge of that bevel and then by dropping it back and forth if you do ten or fifteen aside and switch back and forth you're you know take that little wire edge off which leaves you with a perfectly clean edge which is how you get a razor sharp edge this is beautifully sharpened up now so now I'm just going to put the rest of this stuff back together gotta put the chip breaker on to the iron the plain iron and then the cap and the cap screw get everything back together and then we'll test it out so you're setting your cap iron on detention you want it to be you want to hear basically even with this to click down on with tension so right now it's there's no tension so we're just gonna tighten down on this a few turns put it back in so now it's to the point where it should I should start getting some tension and still a little soft so I'm gonna bring this back up turn it down another half turn see if that works a little a little bit too much back it about 1/4 yep and that's so nice tension on it so that's going to hold the blade in place you don't want it super tight because you want to be able to make your final adjustments with the adjustment knob here which moves your blade in and out I'm just making a few fine adjustments to make sure my blade is coming out of the throat just the finest bit won't test it alright alright guys well we finished up and this just turned out beautiful I'm super excited to have this restored and back into really beautiful working action which is what I love about these old hand tools especially this number for Stanley hand plain it's just a beautiful tool and I have something that I just think everyone has a place for in their shop it's a tool that's super versatile and I think you know everyone should have one and something like this where you restore it to a place where you just want to pick it up and you want to put your hands on it and these old tools just have the history of lots of people's stupid hands on them and I'm gonna use this and cherish this for a lot of years to come so we hope you enjoyed watching the video if you did give us a thumbs up and subscribe also you can follow us on instagram at the art of craftsmanship to see lots of other videos the things we're doing in the shop all the time so another great way to support the channel if you do like what you're seeing is you can purchase the art across from chip 2019 shirt these are available now on teespring and the link is right below the video so we hope you enjoyed watching and we'll see you guys on the next one [Music] you [Music]

Channel: The Art of Craftsmanship

Views: 57,440

Rating: 4.9267797 out of 5

Keywords: diy hand plane, restoring an old hand plane, hand plane restoration, stanley, stanley bailey, bailey, stanley restoration, stanley tools, stanley #4, stanley number 4, hand plane, #4 plane, cleaning a hand plane, wood shop, wood work

Id: 1xiEzt9EbVc

Length: 24min 15sec (1455 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2019