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#1 ·
Vintage Stanley/Bailey No 3 SW--first plane ever restored

Ok so the title says it all.

This is my first plane ever restored so I will appreciated any kind of criticism that can help me improve on this endeavor

Disclaimer

This blog contains 32 images, I do this to provide as much as detail as possible.

I got a very old ( at least that's what I can tell from the condition I bought it, can anyone help me to find out how old this plane is by looking at the pictures?) Stanley No 3 on ebay for the incredible price of $7.04 !!! last week.

At first when I got it I thought that I had waste my money on a complete piece of junk!!





The japanning was almost none due to the heavy corrosion I think?









Can you see the gouge on the iron blade!!! it measured almost 1/8" !!!!!!



After evaluating what I had on my hands I decided to take all the parts away and see if anything was on a working condition.





Yes the tote was broken into not 2 but 3 pieces!!!



To my surprise everything seem to be okay but the tote and the gouge on the iron blade, also I had it to figure out how to fix the japanning issue.

I talked to my dad, who is the manager of a company where they process all kind of military and commercial aircraft parts (also call as a "finish house") They basically do all the finish processes of the aircraft parts such as anodize, cad plating, primer and painting etc.
He told me that he could take the "junk" with him and dedicate someone to strip all the rust and will also give it to one of the painters so he can apply some special paint to work as the japanning.

This is what I got after the "special treatment"









As you can tell from the pictures, all the bolts, washers, chip breaker, iron blade and brass hardware was treat it with a special mix of of nitric/hydrofluoric acid follow with a bath of cad plating to restore some of the "metal look" the main body (the inside area) and the back of the frog were sandblasted, then a flash dip on the alkaline clean bath follow with 1 coat of primer and 2 military grade glossy coats of black paint with baking at 400f for 1/2 hour between coats. To be honest I actually laugh every time I think of having "military grade paint" on such an old woodworking tool but what the heck!! as long as it serve its purpose of protecting the plane from rust its all that matters. Sorry no pictures of all this processes, they are totally prohibited within company premises. :)

All that "special process" took place on Christmas eve

And today after playing for a while with my kids with their new presents I decided to get back on track and do some work on the plane

This is how it look before I lapped the sole, sides and the frog





After a few minutes of lapping the sides I was able to get this result



but that wasn't enough

Time went by and with the help of my dad who took care of the tote and ball this is the final result and I will say that I'm very pleased with this restoration, now this plane is priceless to me and now I'm ready to start on the No 6 which I will blog it too, on that one I will use evapo-rust, we'll see how it works. I want to thanks my dad for the great job he did fixing the tote and restoring the beautiful natural color of the wood which was taken care with 4 coats of poly with 320 sanding in between coats.







The gouge on the blade is not longer present and now the blade is scary sharp!!





















Just a quick comparison

BEFORE



AFTER



Thanks for reading and for your criticism too.

Alonso
 
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#3 ·
This is a nice post, Alonso. I enjoy seeing abused planes like you bought getting a new lease on life. The restoration job that you did on it makes it look better than it did when it was new, I am sure.
 
#5 ·
It looks much improved. What a great project to work on with your dad.

Since you didn't mention it, did you work on the chip breaker? If not, make sure the chip breaker is polished and that it meets the iron evenly.

My other thought: I notice a lot of pitting from the rust on the iron. If that extends to the cutting edges of the iron, it will reflect in the cut as an almost serrated surface that will leave tiny scratches on your wood. If you can lap or grind past the pitting to a fresher surface you will solve this. Otherwise you can order a new iron for it.
 
#8 ·
It's interesting that you've posted about your plane. I got stopped yesterday with my table project because I needed a dowel from the hardware store and too lazy to improvise, so I decided to resuscitate an old Stanley jack plane I inherited from my father several years back. I had left it out in my garage, as he had done, so it was in sad shape with rust and caked on dirt. I don't think the blade could have cut warm butter. Now it's looking and working, pretty spiffy. I never thought to take before/after photos. There are still a couple of boxes of his old tools in the garage. I should dig through them again and see what's there.
 
#9 ·
A No. 3 was my first restored plane also. It is still my favorite for putting on a fine finish. After evertything is flat with my #7 the 3 makes a piece of wood look just perfect. You sure did a fine job and I hope you enjoy yours as much as I do mine.
 
#10 ·
Great job. My first restoration was on a #3 too, but mine wasn't nearly that old. I believe yours is from the 1920s. The reason I say that is you have what is called the high knob on the front which they started around 1920, not the earlier low one, and you don't have the raised ring that the knob seats on, which they started around 1930. Here is a link to one of the sites that I used when dating my plane.
http://www.supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan1.htm
 
#11 ·
Thanks everyone for your comments

woodworm

Making a new tote will be a nice project, I already have the sketches from Lee Veritas thanks to Sharon (aka PurpLev) who was very kind to share them with me. But I will try to keep every single plane that I restore as original as possible, I will make another tote or knob just on extreme situations where one of them if either missing or severely abused, I'm really happy with the final result of this one, and also it has that special felling that was my dad who gave it a second lease on life.

gizmodyne

Thanks for asking about the chip breaker, no is not polish but that will change today after I stop at my local HF and get my buffer/grinder and I'll make sure about meeting the iron evenly.
About the iron pitting, there's no visible marks on the edge of the blade even though there's a lot of pitting on it, once I try this plane for the first time guess I will know for sure if it needs a new blade or not.
 
#18 ·
Great job but please!!!!! stop utting these resto job here.
Everybody bypasses these as junk--I likepaying $5 for these at junk sales you keep this up the prices will go up!!!!

Jus kidding great job on the restoration !!!!!

Does anybody know about polishing? How would one polish the steel parts after the derusting here. Lots of my tools look like this. Mine are all users not collectibles but I would like to learn how to make them look a little nicer.
 
#19 ·
I dont get it … the before and after look exactly the same… ;) lol

pretty remarkable restoration - I don't think it can be made any better, and I have never seen a resto project that started with a plane in THAT BAD condition. touche!

to protect the plane from future rust - just apply some past wax on it (johnsons paste wax) or Boeshield T9. just like with any iron surfaces in the shop - it does require periodical maintenance and TLC. I keep my planes in a wooden cabinet which seems to be doing a good job controlling moisture.
 
#22 ·
Hey all! Nice work on this one. I'm in the process of cleaning up an old No. 4 and have two screws that are completely frozen. The frog clip screw and frog adjustment screw just won't move and I'm worried about stripping the heads or shearing them. Have the sole and frog bathing in Evaporust for 2 1/2 days.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Steve
 
#24 ·
Nice job! This really inspired me to give this a try. I just bought a No. 3 from ebay, and going to attempt electrolysis to get rid of the rust. Anyone else try this? Does it get it all off? Anyone else try this technique? Is this better than navel jelly, evaporust, pb blaster?

breaknrn.
 
#26 ·
Stanley/Bailey No 6 is done!!!

As I said on the previous blog, I started working on the restoration for the No 6 early today.

I went to HF and I picked up a brand new 6" buffer,a gallon of Evapo-rust, some polishing compound some sanding drums and some other miscellaneous items that all together help me out to accomplished this new task.

On this new blog I didn't took that many pictures as on the past one but surely there are enough for everyone to enjoy.

I will like to start by saying that Evapo-rust works as described period. At first I hesitated because I didn't saw any difference at all, but maybe after an hour or so and with the help of a piece of scotch pad I started to see some improvements, maybe after some 3 or 4 hours 90-95 % of the rust was gone, the rest was to be remove with the buffer.

So this is how it looked today on the morning before doing anything to it.











Another broken tote…... of course that was a task for my dad…







We spent most of the day working on this plane including the trip to HF, but again all the hard work paid off at the end and again I'm very satisfied with the final results, and again my dad did a great job on the tote and knob restoration including the 4 coats of wipe-on-poly with 320 sanding in between coats to protect them.

This is the final result









Tote repaired









The family is growing…..



Stay tune, soon I should received a No 4, 4 1/2, 5, 5 1/4 & 7 that of course I will add to the restoration blog.

Please add any comments I'm sure I can use every single one to improve every time.

Alonso
 
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