Fly Fishing Rick
Well-known member
Last week I spent several days restoring this 1929-30 Stanley Bailey No. 5 bench plane, made during their "Sweetheart era". I got it cheap with plans of using it, so it sounded like a fun restoration project.
First I tore the entire thing apart and put anything steel or iron into my electrolysis tank to safely remove any rust without damaging the parts. Then with a jewelers file and some wet sandpaper I carefully took all the gouges and imperfections out of the brass parts/screws and got them clean. The brass was then so clean/polished that it didn't fit with the rest of the tool, so I tarnished it slightly using white vinegar fumes in an air tight dish. Then I sanded the wood handles and applied 3 coats of paste wax. The handles are made of Rosewood, so there's no need for a tougher finish.
I worked on the blade while I was waiting on the tank to do its job, and the blade was the hardest part of this whole project. The back of the blade was nowhere near flat and needed to be honed flat. The primary bevel of the blade had been sharpened at a very askew angle for a long time and needed to be reset to 25°, which I did on some diamond plates.
Once all the iron and steel parts came out of the tank after about 24 hrs, they got a quick cleaning with a scrub brush and some Dawn soap. The main plane body and the frog both got degreased, taped off in the important areas, and painted semi-gloss black. Once the paint was dry I put everything back together and started to lap the bottom and sides of the plane body flat and made sure the sides were 90° perpendicular to the base. I did all the lapping on a glass table top with sanding belts glued down to it.
It took some time and some tedious work but it's completely flat and square, makes nice clean shavings, and looks pretty good doing it. I decided to really test it out last night and planed the top of one of my workbenches flat, and it worked great. That's about 5 gallons of shavings. This is a "Jack Plane" made for rough work, now I just need a No 4 smoothing plane to compliment it =).
First I tore the entire thing apart and put anything steel or iron into my electrolysis tank to safely remove any rust without damaging the parts. Then with a jewelers file and some wet sandpaper I carefully took all the gouges and imperfections out of the brass parts/screws and got them clean. The brass was then so clean/polished that it didn't fit with the rest of the tool, so I tarnished it slightly using white vinegar fumes in an air tight dish. Then I sanded the wood handles and applied 3 coats of paste wax. The handles are made of Rosewood, so there's no need for a tougher finish.
I worked on the blade while I was waiting on the tank to do its job, and the blade was the hardest part of this whole project. The back of the blade was nowhere near flat and needed to be honed flat. The primary bevel of the blade had been sharpened at a very askew angle for a long time and needed to be reset to 25°, which I did on some diamond plates.
Once all the iron and steel parts came out of the tank after about 24 hrs, they got a quick cleaning with a scrub brush and some Dawn soap. The main plane body and the frog both got degreased, taped off in the important areas, and painted semi-gloss black. Once the paint was dry I put everything back together and started to lap the bottom and sides of the plane body flat and made sure the sides were 90° perpendicular to the base. I did all the lapping on a glass table top with sanding belts glued down to it.
It took some time and some tedious work but it's completely flat and square, makes nice clean shavings, and looks pretty good doing it. I decided to really test it out last night and planed the top of one of my workbenches flat, and it worked great. That's about 5 gallons of shavings. This is a "Jack Plane" made for rough work, now I just need a No 4 smoothing plane to compliment it =).
