Restoring the Holy Grail of Vintage Planes (Stanley No. 1)

today i have a special treat we are going to be restoring a fantastic and very rare tool but not this one this one this is the mythic stanley number one the smallest rarest and most valuable bench plane stanley ever produced the number one is so small there isn't even room for a lateral adjustment lever these planes were made in small numbers and very few of them survived they're also undeniably cute which might explain why they're so collectible these planes typically cost one thousand dollars or more i've got a pretty healthy collection of planes but this is the first number one i've ever held in my hand the last one i saw was in a locked glass case and the seller wanted fourteen hundred dollars for it so how did the world's rarest stanley bench plane end up in my shop well a couple of weeks ago one of my viewers emailed me and said rex i just got a number one plane but it needs significant restoration do you have any tips and i said yeah i've got a tip box that thing up send it to me and i will restore it on camera problem solved i haven't done a good metal plane restoration video in a few years and i've learned a few new tricks so in addition to being a video about stan lee's most sought after bench plane this is also going to be an updated plane restoration video and this is a good one to use because this restoration presents a few challenges this plane is complete and undamaged but it also has a lot more rust and dirt than you would like to see on such a valuable tool i asked the owner what kind of restoration he wanted and he told me to make the plane look as new as possible of course i want to honor that request but taking it that far might be a bad idea i've seen a lot of rusty tools that were scoured back to bare metal and they don't look good over-restoration doesn't fool anybody and it ruins the value of a precious collectible throughout this whole project i've got to walk a fine line between giving the owner what he wants while protecting this little piece of history for future collectors no pressure any good restoration begins with careful disassembly i always start by dabbing three in one penetrating oil on all the screw heads and moving parts this plane is pretty frozen and you don't want to force delicate threads especially where there's rust and dirt now you might be tempted to oil the screws that hold down the handles but don't do that those screws are threaded into the body of the plane and you can't reach that with the oil can throughout this restoration i'm going to be using a bunch of solvents lubricants waxes and abrasives but i will link to everything down in the description now you just want to take apart every little piece and put every screw and washer into a clean container so nothing gets lost once the frog is free you can take off the adjustment wheel just by spinning it backwards on its post until it until it um it should come right off so the little y-shaped yoke that moves the blade usually has enough travel to let the adjuster wheel pop right off but in this case it doesn't i have never ever seen this before so i guess it's a quirk of the number one okay plan b the yoke is held into the frog with a tiny tapered pin it's just a friction fit so you find the wider end get a punch that fits and hammer it out hammer it out of a tiny piece of brittle hundred-year-old cast iron okay let's go the first few hits don't do anything and it's easy to lose confidence but you need to keep going with controlled small taps from an appropriately sized hammer resist the urge to hit it harder just keep tapping until it starts to move once it moves a tiny bit you have room to add a bit more oil which helps a lot after it starts moving things go pretty smoothly pull it out with a pair of pliers and be very sure to put it with the other parts after that all the pieces come easily apart the knob and tote usually come right off even without lubrication now i can turn my attention to the body and i've got my work cut out for me the first step is a thorough cleaning with mineral spirits and a couple of small brushes the owner wants the japaning left alone and it's in surprisingly good shape anyway there's a lot of dirt and maybe a bit of overspray it looks like this thing got a bit too close to something that was being spray painted white still most of the gunk lifts off without too much trouble for the extra tough bits i use a cheap pick and i even use a screwdriver as a little scraper i would generally never be this fussy for a tool i was going to use but this is a rare collectible so i'm giving it extra attention next i need to get the rust off the outside i usually use a high speed bench grinder and a medium wire wheel for this kind of work but i'm afraid that's going to be too aggressive for this delicate little plane instead i'm going to use this small fine wire wheel in my drill press this tool spins more slowly and it's much easier to control how far you strip away the surface i keep steady light pressure against the wheel as i work off the worst of the rust you could also do this with fine sandpaper after the heavy rust is gone i switched to this red scotch brite wheel which is much gentler when i'm done i've taken off the rust but left a lot of the staining in the cast iron this way the tool is clean but still looks like an antique to finish the body i'm sanding the bottom using a piece of glass to keep things flat this isn't the final lapping which i'll do later i'm just getting rid of the rust and the paint splatters back at the drill press the scotch brite wheel takes the rust right off the lever cap the cast iron here is heavily stained but i'm not willing to be any more aggressive this is an old tool and age has just left its mark onto the wood the handles on this plane are made from top quality rosewood and really don't need a finish but they were obviously varnished at the factory and that old finish has cracked with age i want to be as gentle as possible in taking it off but this 400 grit sandpaper simply isn't getting the job done so here's a better technique i lay a scrap of yoga mat on the bench and put a piece of 150 grit sandpaper on top this gives me a firm surface to support the paper but enough flexibility to allow the paper to conform to the curves in the handle this setup removes finish more quickly but it also prevents flat spots and helps to keep me from over sanding for the details i move my paper to the edge of the bench so that i can roll the tote as i sand and work my way around all the curved parts then i can move to 220 and finally 400 grit which would be overkill on anything but this dense tropical hardwood once it's fully stripped the tote kind of looks like garbage but a quick application of boiled linseed oil is just the thing to bring back that rich chocolate color rosewood is naturally oily but this piece is old and it needs a little help hand sanding the knob would be very challenging this part was turned on a lathe and you really want to preserve its perfect roundness a good trick here is to take a bolt or a piece of threaded rod that fits snugly inside the mounting hole add a washer and a nut to the top and then chuck the whole thing into the drill press because i have the power of the machine doing the work i don't need aggressive sandpaper i can go directly to red scotch brite to remove the varnish and then follow up with quadruple steel wool to remove scratches and give me a silky surface then the knob gets the same treatment of linseed oil and i leave both parts to dry overnight the next day i follow up with two coats of clear shellac and a coat of paste wax applied with steel wool this gives the handles a very smooth feel without making them too slick now stanley frogs are rarely as flat as you would like and since i took out the adjuster yolk anyway this is a great time to lap that surface flat this will give the iron more support and a better surface to fit on there's no reason to go crazy here even a mostly flat surface is a lot better than what we started with the last parts are the blade and the chip breaker and for those i'm going with my aggressive wire wheel there's no reason to leave any rust on the parts that do the cutting and it doesn't take very long because they're super tiny the iron is badly chipped it's one of the worst i've ever seen so i hold the blade parallel to the ground and work just the edge on the grinding wheel this way i can quickly square the edge while minimizing the amount of blade in contact with the wheel and reducing heat buildup this is also a good time to make sure the edge is perfectly square to the side of the iron i always keep my tool rest set at 25 degrees and i slide my iron up until it just makes contact with the wheel i apply light pressure and constantly move the blade back and forth while feeling for heat build up with my thumbs i know a lot of people are nervous about ruining the temper on their blades with a high speed grinder but a patient and gentle approach combined with frequent cooling in water will give you a consistent even bevel without any burning of the steel this might be the lightest most delicate blade i've ever ground but i didn't have any problems now we're going to prepare the iron and chip breaker these next steps are the key to good plane performance so be a perfectionist first i need to flatten the back of the iron if you use your sharpening stones for this it might take half the day so i start with 150 grit sandpaper i hang most of the iron off the edge of the glass and put firm downward pressure on the end you only need the last half inch or so to be flat but it needs to be really flat this one is mostly done and i'll use my sharpening stones to finish that back to a high polish you also need to prepare the edge of the chip breaker drop the body below your lapping surface and work that edge back and forth until you develop a bright knife edge that's square all the way across honing the iron is straightforward and i've always used inexpensive oil stones for this work i've got a whole video on my freehand sharpening technique and a tutorial on assembling an inexpensive oilstone sharpening station i'll put links to those down in the description it only takes a few minutes to get that iron deadly sharp while i'm at the stones i'll continue to work the knife edge of the chip breaker again keeping it below the surface of the stone this work usually forms a burr on that soft steel and i work the back of the chip breaker against my finer stones before stropping the edge front and back a polished surface will help the chips slide up and over the chip breaker people often come to me complaining that their planes aren't performing very well the biggest complaints is that the plane is jamming clogging or they're getting shavings in between the iron and the chip breaker when you have any of those problems it's because those two parts aren't correctly fitted together so here's a well-prepared iron and you can see that the edge is perfectly flat and well polished there are no low spots anywhere along that edge then with the chip breaker it's been prepared to that knife edge that we just did there are no burrs anywhere along the edge and this curved portion here is well polished once you have those two parts prepared you can put them together and test the fit i've got the chip breaker on top and the iron underneath and i'm going to hold them up to a bright light the stanley chip breaker has a bit of a curve a hump right here and that lets you see in between the two pieces as i hold them up to the light i'm going to look into that gap and look along the cutting edge and that should be completely dark i don't want to see any little bits of light coming through the human eye can detect light coming through a gap about a thousandth of an inch and that's enough to get little bits of shaving underneath these two parts so you want to see no light at all if it's perfectly dark all the way along you probably have a good fit and your plane is probably going to perform well now that we've got the iron and the chip breaker fixed up on our number one we're ready to reassemble now i need to get that pin back into the frog and that could involve a lot of guesswork but i took a picture of the frog with the correct orientation of the pin and my pliers left light marks on the wider end so it's easy to figure out which way it goes everything needs to be reassembled before the pin goes in but it's all clean and well oiled so that's easy i clamp the frog to the edge of the bench get the pin started with my hammer and then finish it off with a large punch using the punch lets me direct my hammer blows right onto the pin and eliminates the chance that i might miss and hit the fragile edge of my frog by mistake the inside of the body is as clean as i can get it but it still doesn't look great so i'm going to apply a bit of paste wax on a q-tip and buff it with a paper towel now i've restored the color and the shine this is the best we're going to get without stripping the japaning and starting over now it's just a matter of screwing everything back together i've taken a lot of time with all the individual parts so there are no surprises remember to put a dab of oil on any threaded parts so the next person who works on this plane can get it apart again oh quick tip on the frog this plane doesn't have a frog adjustment screw but lots of planes don't have those so to get the frog aligned i just use a little steel rule to make sure i have a straight line down the frog to the back of the mouth i set it by hand with the screws a little bit loose recheck it tweak it and tighten it down it's really not difficult with the plane assembled and the iron retracted all the way i do the final lapping of the bottom the plane needs to be under tension when you do this just like when you're actually planing wood this plane has some unusual wear at the toe but that's not going to affect performance especially since the rest of the sole is dead flat this plane is pretty much done after all this work it makes sense to ask what is the ultra tiny number one even intended for what are you supposed to do with it i mean the obvious answer is that it's for holding in one hand and for doing small parts but that doesn't make a lot of sense you could just use a block plane for those tasks and block plane is roughly the same size and much more comfortable to hold so i don't think that's it some people have suggested these planes were actually intended for children who were learning the craft of woodworking but i don't think that's true james wright did a great video about his own number one restoration and he actually had his five-year-old child tried to get her fingers around the handle and she couldn't there wasn't enough space so i don't think these were for children here's my best theory on what's going on i have a lot of wooden planes a lot of coffin smoothers and the smallest is this one here it's quite tiny and if i take this one and the number one and match them up well they are exactly the same size like down to a sixteenth of an inch what i think happened was when stan lee went to make their complete line of bench planes they just went and found every single wooden plane they could find and copied all the sizes that's why there are eight sizes of these well 11 really but a lot of them stanley just copied everything i think this is the smallest wooden plane they found so they made a copy of it they were in business anyway enough talk let's check out the final product here's where we started and here's where we ended up [Music] man that was satisfying i mean for me this restoration was a little bit ridiculous i usually just get them up and running and i don't worry too much about all the little cosmetic details on the other hand this video has pretty much every single trick i know so you can do as much or as little as you want with your own restoration for me i'm most concerned about performance getting the plane cutting so does this number one cut it sure does this plane is nearly impossible to hold and i am terrified that i am going to drop it on my concrete floor but it cuts a feathery shaving and leaves a beautiful surface this is what you would want from any size plane so it is no secret that i like old tools just as much as i like furniture building sometimes i like them even more old tools are just they're fun they're interesting so getting a number one should have been a huge thrill for me especially because i'm a massive stanley guy i own tons of their planes and when i got it i felt nothing really i just wasn't that excited about it which is weird to me when i got my norris a5 a super famous legendary smoothing plane when i took this thing out of the package i literally felt chills go up and down my spine this is a famous historical tool completely different construction than the planes i'm used to and actually useful i've built pieces of furniture with this this thing really gets my blood pumping the number one not really i think because well you can't do very much with it i know i know some people use number ones for things i get it but most people don't this one you can see how much iron there is it's pretty much never been sharpened i don't think this plane saw a lot of use because it's not very useful if you buy one of these it's probably going to sit on a shelf and for me tools that sit on a shelf just aren't that interesting i'm not going to spend a thousand dollars on something that i can't use i'm going to save that money and spend it on cool old tools that i can build furniture with which is even more fun anyway if you like restoration videos like these i have a ton of other restoration videos including videos about fixing up pretty much every type of plane imaginable those are all linked down in the description i also have to mention my new book everyday woodworking a complete guide to woodwork for absolute beginners i am very excited to say the first printing of the book is already sold out thank you so much for that the publisher has rush ordered a bunch more books they are going to be in stock again very soon and you might as well order the book now that way you'll lock in the low price that you can currently get on places like amazon they're selling it at a big discount so go ahead and order it now and you'll get it when it comes in just like always i have to thank my patrons on patreon they make these videos possible and they're also an amazing supportive friendly group of craftspeople i'm really proud to have them on my side if you'd like to be one of those people go on over to patreon.com rexkrueger and check out all the rewards and early access i have for the people who make these videos possible i'll see you next week thanks so much for watching

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 134,318

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Id: 3-xHCyEyTPk

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 14 2021