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#1 ·
A Twisted Sole and a Crooked Frog

We're well into 2021 and I haven't done any blog entries for the year so here we go :) I try to force myself to do a series each year as a way of giving back to the community a little. I have been working on refreshing my recently obtained Millers Falls #24 jointer plane and it's proving a bit of a challenge so I thought it might make a good subject. Luckily I had this thought early enough to take some pictures rather than after I was finished which is typical of me…

This series will be sort of an addendum/amendment to the series I did 5 years ago on rehabbing a plane. So I'll skip a lot of stuff by comparison if I don't really have anything to add. I'll reference entries from that series to fill in gaps where appropriate.

So here we go!

I bought a Millers Falls 24C jointer plane off Ebay a few months ago to fill out a missing slot in my till. The 24 is the size of a Stanley #8 and is relatively hard to come across. So when I stumbled on one shortly after it was listed that was a price I was willing to pay, I was tickled and bought it immediately. The only downside to it was that the iron was a Stanley iron instead of an OEM. That was remedied when I found a NOS Millers Falls iron on Ebay for a decent price and passed the Stanley along to a fellow LJ to offset the cost a bit :)

I am tackling this rehab in a slightly different order than I normally do. Typically, flattening the sole of a plane is the last thing I do to it. But in this case, I happened to be flattening the sole on my Millers Falls #22 plane at the same time the #24 was delivered. So I figured while I had my large granite plate, spray adhesive and sandpaper out, I might as well go ahead and do the big brother as well.
Wood Bottle Water bottle Automotive design Saw


The 22 cleaned up quick. The 24 however is a different matter… After many sheets of 80 grit paper and several hundred strokes, a pronounced twist is still evident in the sole.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Automotive exterior


My marker lines were cleaned up from the entire sole other than the left side of the heel and the right side near the toe.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Plank Rectangle


I proceeded to lap the sole on the granite plate with sandpaper for a while until I thought maybe there was an underlying problem causing such a severe twist? It's very unusual to have to go to this much effort to flatten a sole but I've also never had a plane this large so maybe it's not that unique of a situation? I know that fellow LJ DevinT had to go to extreme lapping measures to flatten her Stanley #8 so maybe it's just the nature of the beast?

I wasn't sure so I decided to jump ship for the time being and investigate to see if I could find any underlying issues. So I tore the plane down to its component parts.
Wood Rectangle Tableware Office ruler Gas


I gave the main body a good looksee to see if there were any small cracks or casting defects that I had missed initially. Didn't find anything. So I decided to go ahead and jump to checking the fit of the frog with the body.

I won't go into too much detail on printing and scraping the frog here. You can read more about it at the linked post above if you wish. But, I did find some issues that needed resolving.

First thing I did was clean the machined pads on the frog and body with a Scotchbrite pad and some WD40. I just wanted to be sure there was no debris or grease on them.
Table Tableware Wood Rectangle Flooring


Then I made sure there were no burrs or obvious raised/dinged areas on the machined faces. There were a couple of things with the machining that I don't love to see. First, on the frog, the rear pad was raised on one side and pretty much flush with the rest of the casting on the other.
Wood Red Rectangle Gas Auto part


This in and of itself isn't an issue as long as everything else seems to be machined with reference to that (which it does). There could be some concern of that causing an improper fit on the mating surface of the body. But, we'll see in a bit, that's not the case here. So, while it's not ideal I also don't think it's a detriment and I don't think it'll cause me any issues.

The pads in the body where the front "feet" of the frog mate are also not machined the way I'd like them to be. They're roughly flush with the cast surface behind them and recessed slightly in some sections. They're fully recessed when the enamel is added.
Wood Bumper Composite material Automotive exterior Metal


This can be a real issue in practice because it can limit the adjustability of the frog position. Particularly if one were to use an aftermarket iron that was significantly thicker than the OEM blade. The frog would need to be moved rearward which could result in the milled feet on the frog ending up on the cast/enameled surface rather than the machined pads. Just something to keep in mind when reassembling and fettling the plane.

I'll toss this in here too. I don't know if all manufacturers did it the same way but I'm not disheartened by the pads in the body being milled below the cast surface sometimes because I know it was within the design tolerances. How do I know? I'm glad you asked ;-p See how when the pad isn't raised on this frog there's a little section between the pads where it doesn't clean up due to the radius of the milling cutter?
Automotive lighting Hood Automotive tire Motor vehicle Trunk


Well, if the frog's front feet were full width they would hit that and wouldn't be able to sit flat on the milled sections. So Millers Falls accounted for that in the frog casting by casting a couple of cutouts on the inside of the feet to give clearance for that raised center section.
Bumper Automotive exterior Gas Auto part Tints and shades


Anywho… While the machining isn't exactly what I want to see, it's not bad and I don't foresee it causing me any issues with the assembly or fettling of this plane. So I'm comfortable with my visual inspection of the frog and base. Now time for a little more technical inspection.

I painted a thin coat of dye on the machined faces in the base.
Musical instrument accessory Tool Automotive lighting Bumper Trunk


Then I printed the mating pads of the frog. You can read more about the methodology in the blog post linked earlier. Here is the result of the initial printing:
Wood Rectangle Red Gas Font


Good solid contact on the rear pad and the left foot but very little on the right foot. It's unusual for me to see a fit this poor. Just to be sure, I scraped the thick enamel away around the machined pads in the base to be sure the foot wasn't being prevented from sitting all the way down.
Hood Automotive tire Bumper Motor vehicle Fender


I repeated the print and got the same result. So I pulled out a small carbide inserted scraper and started scraping away the dyed sections on the left foot. I left the rear pad alone.
Wood Engineering Gas Machine Nail


Second print got me a little more contact on the right foot.
Rectangle Motor vehicle Bumper Red Gas


I scraped the high spots down on both feet. You can tell which spots have been scraped and what's just the machined surface. The scraping is very minimal and localized.
Wood Gas Tints and shades Carmine Metal


Third print is better and I know I'm getting close.
Motor vehicle Gas Wood Engineering Machine


I scraped the high spots one final time and the fourth print satisfied me.
Wheel Motor vehicle Vehicle Automotive design Wood


I know it looks kinda spotty but that's okay. There are large sections of both feet and the full width of the rear pad making solid contact which is all I need. Also bare in mind that the printing is done with no pressure applied to the frog, its own weight is all that's pushing it into contact with the base.

So now I can be confident that when the screws are used to fix the frog to the base, it will make solid contact without having to deform or induce any stresses in the base. Was the poor fit between the frog and the base what caused the twist in the sole? I don't know yet, I haven't reassembled it and went back to lapping. But, I think it's highly unlikely. I didn't have to scrape much material at all off the feet of the frog. The fit wasn't terrible and I don't think it was sufficient to pull the base into a significant deformation. We'll see when I get back around to lapping though!

Since I'm already on the frog, I may as well wrap that part of the rehab up. Next thing I did was to make sure the bed was relatively flat to ensure that my blade doesn't get deformed when the lever cap pulls it down to the frog face.

The lateral lever prevents me from being able to just print the frog directly on my granite surface plate. And I don't want to remove the lever unless absolutely necessary. So I use two precision ground parallels that I know are the same thickness and paint dye on them to print the bed face.
Wood Bumper Automotive exterior Motor vehicle Font


I lay the frog down gently.
Automotive design Wood Automotive exterior Tableware Bumper


And pick it straight back up.
Wood Tool Red Bumper Gas


There appears to be a slight recess on the top right and center left areas. I don't scrape this face because it's just not that critical. I address it with a flat file concentrated on the high areas.
Bottle Motor vehicle Automotive exterior Engineering Tool


A little quick filing and another print and it's good enough for government work.
Red Wood Material property Aluminum can Rectangle


Again, it looks uneven and spotty. But as long as there is die transfer over enough of the surface that I can be confident that it won't deform my iron significantly, I'm happy with it.

That'll do it for this installment. Now that I have the plane tore down I'm going to proceed with painting and cleaning up all the hardware. I won't be documenting that in this series since I covered it all in detail in my previous series and my methods haven't really changed much in regards to those tasks. This plane is my desired type (Type 2) in that it has the brass hardware and Cocobolo tote and knob. The horn is missing from the tote so I may do the next entry on repairing that. We'll see! I have no idea when the next entry will be coming since I don't know when I'll be working on the plane. But you'll know when I know ;-)

Thanks for reading!
 

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#27 ·
A Twisted Sole and a Crooked Frog

We're well into 2021 and I haven't done any blog entries for the year so here we go :) I try to force myself to do a series each year as a way of giving back to the community a little. I have been working on refreshing my recently obtained Millers Falls #24 jointer plane and it's proving a bit of a challenge so I thought it might make a good subject. Luckily I had this thought early enough to take some pictures rather than after I was finished which is typical of me…

This series will be sort of an addendum/amendment to the series I did 5 years ago on rehabbing a plane. So I'll skip a lot of stuff by comparison if I don't really have anything to add. I'll reference entries from that series to fill in gaps where appropriate.

So here we go!

I bought a Millers Falls 24C jointer plane off Ebay a few months ago to fill out a missing slot in my till. The 24 is the size of a Stanley #8 and is relatively hard to come across. So when I stumbled on one shortly after it was listed that was a price I was willing to pay, I was tickled and bought it immediately. The only downside to it was that the iron was a Stanley iron instead of an OEM. That was remedied when I found a NOS Millers Falls iron on Ebay for a decent price and passed the Stanley along to a fellow LJ to offset the cost a bit :)

I am tackling this rehab in a slightly different order than I normally do. Typically, flattening the sole of a plane is the last thing I do to it. But in this case, I happened to be flattening the sole on my Millers Falls #22 plane at the same time the #24 was delivered. So I figured while I had my large granite plate, spray adhesive and sandpaper out, I might as well go ahead and do the big brother as well.
Wood Bottle Water bottle Automotive design Saw


The 22 cleaned up quick. The 24 however is a different matter… After many sheets of 80 grit paper and several hundred strokes, a pronounced twist is still evident in the sole.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Automotive exterior


My marker lines were cleaned up from the entire sole other than the left side of the heel and the right side near the toe.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Plank Rectangle


I proceeded to lap the sole on the granite plate with sandpaper for a while until I thought maybe there was an underlying problem causing such a severe twist? It's very unusual to have to go to this much effort to flatten a sole but I've also never had a plane this large so maybe it's not that unique of a situation? I know that fellow LJ DevinT had to go to extreme lapping measures to flatten her Stanley #8 so maybe it's just the nature of the beast?

I wasn't sure so I decided to jump ship for the time being and investigate to see if I could find any underlying issues. So I tore the plane down to its component parts.
Wood Rectangle Tableware Office ruler Gas


I gave the main body a good looksee to see if there were any small cracks or casting defects that I had missed initially. Didn't find anything. So I decided to go ahead and jump to checking the fit of the frog with the body.

I won't go into too much detail on printing and scraping the frog here. You can read more about it at the linked post above if you wish. But, I did find some issues that needed resolving.

First thing I did was clean the machined pads on the frog and body with a Scotchbrite pad and some WD40. I just wanted to be sure there was no debris or grease on them.
Table Tableware Wood Rectangle Flooring


Then I made sure there were no burrs or obvious raised/dinged areas on the machined faces. There were a couple of things with the machining that I don't love to see. First, on the frog, the rear pad was raised on one side and pretty much flush with the rest of the casting on the other.
Wood Red Rectangle Gas Auto part


This in and of itself isn't an issue as long as everything else seems to be machined with reference to that (which it does). There could be some concern of that causing an improper fit on the mating surface of the body. But, we'll see in a bit, that's not the case here. So, while it's not ideal I also don't think it's a detriment and I don't think it'll cause me any issues.

The pads in the body where the front "feet" of the frog mate are also not machined the way I'd like them to be. They're roughly flush with the cast surface behind them and recessed slightly in some sections. They're fully recessed when the enamel is added.
Wood Bumper Composite material Automotive exterior Metal


This can be a real issue in practice because it can limit the adjustability of the frog position. Particularly if one were to use an aftermarket iron that was significantly thicker than the OEM blade. The frog would need to be moved rearward which could result in the milled feet on the frog ending up on the cast/enameled surface rather than the machined pads. Just something to keep in mind when reassembling and fettling the plane.

I'll toss this in here too. I don't know if all manufacturers did it the same way but I'm not disheartened by the pads in the body being milled below the cast surface sometimes because I know it was within the design tolerances. How do I know? I'm glad you asked ;-p See how when the pad isn't raised on this frog there's a little section between the pads where it doesn't clean up due to the radius of the milling cutter?
Automotive lighting Hood Automotive tire Motor vehicle Trunk


Well, if the frog's front feet were full width they would hit that and wouldn't be able to sit flat on the milled sections. So Millers Falls accounted for that in the frog casting by casting a couple of cutouts on the inside of the feet to give clearance for that raised center section.
Bumper Automotive exterior Gas Auto part Tints and shades


Anywho… While the machining isn't exactly what I want to see, it's not bad and I don't foresee it causing me any issues with the assembly or fettling of this plane. So I'm comfortable with my visual inspection of the frog and base. Now time for a little more technical inspection.

I painted a thin coat of dye on the machined faces in the base.
Musical instrument accessory Tool Automotive lighting Bumper Trunk


Then I printed the mating pads of the frog. You can read more about the methodology in the blog post linked earlier. Here is the result of the initial printing:
Wood Rectangle Red Gas Font


Good solid contact on the rear pad and the left foot but very little on the right foot. It's unusual for me to see a fit this poor. Just to be sure, I scraped the thick enamel away around the machined pads in the base to be sure the foot wasn't being prevented from sitting all the way down.
Hood Automotive tire Bumper Motor vehicle Fender


I repeated the print and got the same result. So I pulled out a small carbide inserted scraper and started scraping away the dyed sections on the left foot. I left the rear pad alone.
Wood Engineering Gas Machine Nail


Second print got me a little more contact on the right foot.
Rectangle Motor vehicle Bumper Red Gas


I scraped the high spots down on both feet. You can tell which spots have been scraped and what's just the machined surface. The scraping is very minimal and localized.
Wood Gas Tints and shades Carmine Metal


Third print is better and I know I'm getting close.
Motor vehicle Gas Wood Engineering Machine


I scraped the high spots one final time and the fourth print satisfied me.
Wheel Motor vehicle Vehicle Automotive design Wood


I know it looks kinda spotty but that's okay. There are large sections of both feet and the full width of the rear pad making solid contact which is all I need. Also bare in mind that the printing is done with no pressure applied to the frog, its own weight is all that's pushing it into contact with the base.

So now I can be confident that when the screws are used to fix the frog to the base, it will make solid contact without having to deform or induce any stresses in the base. Was the poor fit between the frog and the base what caused the twist in the sole? I don't know yet, I haven't reassembled it and went back to lapping. But, I think it's highly unlikely. I didn't have to scrape much material at all off the feet of the frog. The fit wasn't terrible and I don't think it was sufficient to pull the base into a significant deformation. We'll see when I get back around to lapping though!

Since I'm already on the frog, I may as well wrap that part of the rehab up. Next thing I did was to make sure the bed was relatively flat to ensure that my blade doesn't get deformed when the lever cap pulls it down to the frog face.

The lateral lever prevents me from being able to just print the frog directly on my granite surface plate. And I don't want to remove the lever unless absolutely necessary. So I use two precision ground parallels that I know are the same thickness and paint dye on them to print the bed face.
Wood Bumper Automotive exterior Motor vehicle Font


I lay the frog down gently.
Automotive design Wood Automotive exterior Tableware Bumper


And pick it straight back up.
Wood Tool Red Bumper Gas


There appears to be a slight recess on the top right and center left areas. I don't scrape this face because it's just not that critical. I address it with a flat file concentrated on the high areas.
Bottle Motor vehicle Automotive exterior Engineering Tool


A little quick filing and another print and it's good enough for government work.
Red Wood Material property Aluminum can Rectangle


Again, it looks uneven and spotty. But as long as there is die transfer over enough of the surface that I can be confident that it won't deform my iron significantly, I'm happy with it.

That'll do it for this installment. Now that I have the plane tore down I'm going to proceed with painting and cleaning up all the hardware. I won't be documenting that in this series since I covered it all in detail in my previous series and my methods haven't really changed much in regards to those tasks. This plane is my desired type (Type 2) in that it has the brass hardware and Cocobolo tote and knob. The horn is missing from the tote so I may do the next entry on repairing that. We'll see! I have no idea when the next entry will be coming since I don't know when I'll be working on the plane. But you'll know when I know ;-)

Thanks for reading!
You are probably right, Sansoo.

I just noticed that I deleted one too many pictures in my effort to declutter my ealier post.

Here s the front of the type 11 frog where it mates with the rib of the reciever.



- Ocelot
-Paul
 

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#28 ·
A Twisted Sole and a Crooked Frog

We're well into 2021 and I haven't done any blog entries for the year so here we go :) I try to force myself to do a series each year as a way of giving back to the community a little. I have been working on refreshing my recently obtained Millers Falls #24 jointer plane and it's proving a bit of a challenge so I thought it might make a good subject. Luckily I had this thought early enough to take some pictures rather than after I was finished which is typical of me…

This series will be sort of an addendum/amendment to the series I did 5 years ago on rehabbing a plane. So I'll skip a lot of stuff by comparison if I don't really have anything to add. I'll reference entries from that series to fill in gaps where appropriate.

So here we go!

I bought a Millers Falls 24C jointer plane off Ebay a few months ago to fill out a missing slot in my till. The 24 is the size of a Stanley #8 and is relatively hard to come across. So when I stumbled on one shortly after it was listed that was a price I was willing to pay, I was tickled and bought it immediately. The only downside to it was that the iron was a Stanley iron instead of an OEM. That was remedied when I found a NOS Millers Falls iron on Ebay for a decent price and passed the Stanley along to a fellow LJ to offset the cost a bit :)

I am tackling this rehab in a slightly different order than I normally do. Typically, flattening the sole of a plane is the last thing I do to it. But in this case, I happened to be flattening the sole on my Millers Falls #22 plane at the same time the #24 was delivered. So I figured while I had my large granite plate, spray adhesive and sandpaper out, I might as well go ahead and do the big brother as well.
Wood Bottle Water bottle Automotive design Saw


The 22 cleaned up quick. The 24 however is a different matter… After many sheets of 80 grit paper and several hundred strokes, a pronounced twist is still evident in the sole.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Automotive exterior


My marker lines were cleaned up from the entire sole other than the left side of the heel and the right side near the toe.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Plank Rectangle


I proceeded to lap the sole on the granite plate with sandpaper for a while until I thought maybe there was an underlying problem causing such a severe twist? It's very unusual to have to go to this much effort to flatten a sole but I've also never had a plane this large so maybe it's not that unique of a situation? I know that fellow LJ DevinT had to go to extreme lapping measures to flatten her Stanley #8 so maybe it's just the nature of the beast?

I wasn't sure so I decided to jump ship for the time being and investigate to see if I could find any underlying issues. So I tore the plane down to its component parts.
Wood Rectangle Tableware Office ruler Gas


I gave the main body a good looksee to see if there were any small cracks or casting defects that I had missed initially. Didn't find anything. So I decided to go ahead and jump to checking the fit of the frog with the body.

I won't go into too much detail on printing and scraping the frog here. You can read more about it at the linked post above if you wish. But, I did find some issues that needed resolving.

First thing I did was clean the machined pads on the frog and body with a Scotchbrite pad and some WD40. I just wanted to be sure there was no debris or grease on them.
Table Tableware Wood Rectangle Flooring


Then I made sure there were no burrs or obvious raised/dinged areas on the machined faces. There were a couple of things with the machining that I don't love to see. First, on the frog, the rear pad was raised on one side and pretty much flush with the rest of the casting on the other.
Wood Red Rectangle Gas Auto part


This in and of itself isn't an issue as long as everything else seems to be machined with reference to that (which it does). There could be some concern of that causing an improper fit on the mating surface of the body. But, we'll see in a bit, that's not the case here. So, while it's not ideal I also don't think it's a detriment and I don't think it'll cause me any issues.

The pads in the body where the front "feet" of the frog mate are also not machined the way I'd like them to be. They're roughly flush with the cast surface behind them and recessed slightly in some sections. They're fully recessed when the enamel is added.
Wood Bumper Composite material Automotive exterior Metal


This can be a real issue in practice because it can limit the adjustability of the frog position. Particularly if one were to use an aftermarket iron that was significantly thicker than the OEM blade. The frog would need to be moved rearward which could result in the milled feet on the frog ending up on the cast/enameled surface rather than the machined pads. Just something to keep in mind when reassembling and fettling the plane.

I'll toss this in here too. I don't know if all manufacturers did it the same way but I'm not disheartened by the pads in the body being milled below the cast surface sometimes because I know it was within the design tolerances. How do I know? I'm glad you asked ;-p See how when the pad isn't raised on this frog there's a little section between the pads where it doesn't clean up due to the radius of the milling cutter?
Automotive lighting Hood Automotive tire Motor vehicle Trunk


Well, if the frog's front feet were full width they would hit that and wouldn't be able to sit flat on the milled sections. So Millers Falls accounted for that in the frog casting by casting a couple of cutouts on the inside of the feet to give clearance for that raised center section.
Bumper Automotive exterior Gas Auto part Tints and shades


Anywho… While the machining isn't exactly what I want to see, it's not bad and I don't foresee it causing me any issues with the assembly or fettling of this plane. So I'm comfortable with my visual inspection of the frog and base. Now time for a little more technical inspection.

I painted a thin coat of dye on the machined faces in the base.
Musical instrument accessory Tool Automotive lighting Bumper Trunk


Then I printed the mating pads of the frog. You can read more about the methodology in the blog post linked earlier. Here is the result of the initial printing:
Wood Rectangle Red Gas Font


Good solid contact on the rear pad and the left foot but very little on the right foot. It's unusual for me to see a fit this poor. Just to be sure, I scraped the thick enamel away around the machined pads in the base to be sure the foot wasn't being prevented from sitting all the way down.
Hood Automotive tire Bumper Motor vehicle Fender


I repeated the print and got the same result. So I pulled out a small carbide inserted scraper and started scraping away the dyed sections on the left foot. I left the rear pad alone.
Wood Engineering Gas Machine Nail


Second print got me a little more contact on the right foot.
Rectangle Motor vehicle Bumper Red Gas


I scraped the high spots down on both feet. You can tell which spots have been scraped and what's just the machined surface. The scraping is very minimal and localized.
Wood Gas Tints and shades Carmine Metal


Third print is better and I know I'm getting close.
Motor vehicle Gas Wood Engineering Machine


I scraped the high spots one final time and the fourth print satisfied me.
Wheel Motor vehicle Vehicle Automotive design Wood


I know it looks kinda spotty but that's okay. There are large sections of both feet and the full width of the rear pad making solid contact which is all I need. Also bare in mind that the printing is done with no pressure applied to the frog, its own weight is all that's pushing it into contact with the base.

So now I can be confident that when the screws are used to fix the frog to the base, it will make solid contact without having to deform or induce any stresses in the base. Was the poor fit between the frog and the base what caused the twist in the sole? I don't know yet, I haven't reassembled it and went back to lapping. But, I think it's highly unlikely. I didn't have to scrape much material at all off the feet of the frog. The fit wasn't terrible and I don't think it was sufficient to pull the base into a significant deformation. We'll see when I get back around to lapping though!

Since I'm already on the frog, I may as well wrap that part of the rehab up. Next thing I did was to make sure the bed was relatively flat to ensure that my blade doesn't get deformed when the lever cap pulls it down to the frog face.

The lateral lever prevents me from being able to just print the frog directly on my granite surface plate. And I don't want to remove the lever unless absolutely necessary. So I use two precision ground parallels that I know are the same thickness and paint dye on them to print the bed face.
Wood Bumper Automotive exterior Motor vehicle Font


I lay the frog down gently.
Automotive design Wood Automotive exterior Tableware Bumper


And pick it straight back up.
Wood Tool Red Bumper Gas


There appears to be a slight recess on the top right and center left areas. I don't scrape this face because it's just not that critical. I address it with a flat file concentrated on the high areas.
Bottle Motor vehicle Automotive exterior Engineering Tool


A little quick filing and another print and it's good enough for government work.
Red Wood Material property Aluminum can Rectangle


Again, it looks uneven and spotty. But as long as there is die transfer over enough of the surface that I can be confident that it won't deform my iron significantly, I'm happy with it.

That'll do it for this installment. Now that I have the plane tore down I'm going to proceed with painting and cleaning up all the hardware. I won't be documenting that in this series since I covered it all in detail in my previous series and my methods haven't really changed much in regards to those tasks. This plane is my desired type (Type 2) in that it has the brass hardware and Cocobolo tote and knob. The horn is missing from the tote so I may do the next entry on repairing that. We'll see! I have no idea when the next entry will be coming since I don't know when I'll be working on the plane. But you'll know when I know ;-)

Thanks for reading!
The Millers Falls frog has those little protrusions cast in the slot same as the Bailey frog Paul. But they aren't machined and are significantly wider than the rib. That's what makes me wonder if original design intent was to copy that Bailey pattern. Could be that Stanley held a patent preventing anyone else from using that for alignment. Wonder if Sargent or anyone else ever used that method?
 

Attachments

#29 ·
A Twisted Sole and a Crooked Frog

We're well into 2021 and I haven't done any blog entries for the year so here we go :) I try to force myself to do a series each year as a way of giving back to the community a little. I have been working on refreshing my recently obtained Millers Falls #24 jointer plane and it's proving a bit of a challenge so I thought it might make a good subject. Luckily I had this thought early enough to take some pictures rather than after I was finished which is typical of me…

This series will be sort of an addendum/amendment to the series I did 5 years ago on rehabbing a plane. So I'll skip a lot of stuff by comparison if I don't really have anything to add. I'll reference entries from that series to fill in gaps where appropriate.

So here we go!

I bought a Millers Falls 24C jointer plane off Ebay a few months ago to fill out a missing slot in my till. The 24 is the size of a Stanley #8 and is relatively hard to come across. So when I stumbled on one shortly after it was listed that was a price I was willing to pay, I was tickled and bought it immediately. The only downside to it was that the iron was a Stanley iron instead of an OEM. That was remedied when I found a NOS Millers Falls iron on Ebay for a decent price and passed the Stanley along to a fellow LJ to offset the cost a bit :)

I am tackling this rehab in a slightly different order than I normally do. Typically, flattening the sole of a plane is the last thing I do to it. But in this case, I happened to be flattening the sole on my Millers Falls #22 plane at the same time the #24 was delivered. So I figured while I had my large granite plate, spray adhesive and sandpaper out, I might as well go ahead and do the big brother as well.
Wood Bottle Water bottle Automotive design Saw


The 22 cleaned up quick. The 24 however is a different matter… After many sheets of 80 grit paper and several hundred strokes, a pronounced twist is still evident in the sole.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Automotive exterior


My marker lines were cleaned up from the entire sole other than the left side of the heel and the right side near the toe.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Plank Rectangle


I proceeded to lap the sole on the granite plate with sandpaper for a while until I thought maybe there was an underlying problem causing such a severe twist? It's very unusual to have to go to this much effort to flatten a sole but I've also never had a plane this large so maybe it's not that unique of a situation? I know that fellow LJ DevinT had to go to extreme lapping measures to flatten her Stanley #8 so maybe it's just the nature of the beast?

I wasn't sure so I decided to jump ship for the time being and investigate to see if I could find any underlying issues. So I tore the plane down to its component parts.
Wood Rectangle Tableware Office ruler Gas


I gave the main body a good looksee to see if there were any small cracks or casting defects that I had missed initially. Didn't find anything. So I decided to go ahead and jump to checking the fit of the frog with the body.

I won't go into too much detail on printing and scraping the frog here. You can read more about it at the linked post above if you wish. But, I did find some issues that needed resolving.

First thing I did was clean the machined pads on the frog and body with a Scotchbrite pad and some WD40. I just wanted to be sure there was no debris or grease on them.
Table Tableware Wood Rectangle Flooring


Then I made sure there were no burrs or obvious raised/dinged areas on the machined faces. There were a couple of things with the machining that I don't love to see. First, on the frog, the rear pad was raised on one side and pretty much flush with the rest of the casting on the other.
Wood Red Rectangle Gas Auto part


This in and of itself isn't an issue as long as everything else seems to be machined with reference to that (which it does). There could be some concern of that causing an improper fit on the mating surface of the body. But, we'll see in a bit, that's not the case here. So, while it's not ideal I also don't think it's a detriment and I don't think it'll cause me any issues.

The pads in the body where the front "feet" of the frog mate are also not machined the way I'd like them to be. They're roughly flush with the cast surface behind them and recessed slightly in some sections. They're fully recessed when the enamel is added.
Wood Bumper Composite material Automotive exterior Metal


This can be a real issue in practice because it can limit the adjustability of the frog position. Particularly if one were to use an aftermarket iron that was significantly thicker than the OEM blade. The frog would need to be moved rearward which could result in the milled feet on the frog ending up on the cast/enameled surface rather than the machined pads. Just something to keep in mind when reassembling and fettling the plane.

I'll toss this in here too. I don't know if all manufacturers did it the same way but I'm not disheartened by the pads in the body being milled below the cast surface sometimes because I know it was within the design tolerances. How do I know? I'm glad you asked ;-p See how when the pad isn't raised on this frog there's a little section between the pads where it doesn't clean up due to the radius of the milling cutter?
Automotive lighting Hood Automotive tire Motor vehicle Trunk


Well, if the frog's front feet were full width they would hit that and wouldn't be able to sit flat on the milled sections. So Millers Falls accounted for that in the frog casting by casting a couple of cutouts on the inside of the feet to give clearance for that raised center section.
Bumper Automotive exterior Gas Auto part Tints and shades


Anywho… While the machining isn't exactly what I want to see, it's not bad and I don't foresee it causing me any issues with the assembly or fettling of this plane. So I'm comfortable with my visual inspection of the frog and base. Now time for a little more technical inspection.

I painted a thin coat of dye on the machined faces in the base.
Musical instrument accessory Tool Automotive lighting Bumper Trunk


Then I printed the mating pads of the frog. You can read more about the methodology in the blog post linked earlier. Here is the result of the initial printing:
Wood Rectangle Red Gas Font


Good solid contact on the rear pad and the left foot but very little on the right foot. It's unusual for me to see a fit this poor. Just to be sure, I scraped the thick enamel away around the machined pads in the base to be sure the foot wasn't being prevented from sitting all the way down.
Hood Automotive tire Bumper Motor vehicle Fender


I repeated the print and got the same result. So I pulled out a small carbide inserted scraper and started scraping away the dyed sections on the left foot. I left the rear pad alone.
Wood Engineering Gas Machine Nail


Second print got me a little more contact on the right foot.
Rectangle Motor vehicle Bumper Red Gas


I scraped the high spots down on both feet. You can tell which spots have been scraped and what's just the machined surface. The scraping is very minimal and localized.
Wood Gas Tints and shades Carmine Metal


Third print is better and I know I'm getting close.
Motor vehicle Gas Wood Engineering Machine


I scraped the high spots one final time and the fourth print satisfied me.
Wheel Motor vehicle Vehicle Automotive design Wood


I know it looks kinda spotty but that's okay. There are large sections of both feet and the full width of the rear pad making solid contact which is all I need. Also bare in mind that the printing is done with no pressure applied to the frog, its own weight is all that's pushing it into contact with the base.

So now I can be confident that when the screws are used to fix the frog to the base, it will make solid contact without having to deform or induce any stresses in the base. Was the poor fit between the frog and the base what caused the twist in the sole? I don't know yet, I haven't reassembled it and went back to lapping. But, I think it's highly unlikely. I didn't have to scrape much material at all off the feet of the frog. The fit wasn't terrible and I don't think it was sufficient to pull the base into a significant deformation. We'll see when I get back around to lapping though!

Since I'm already on the frog, I may as well wrap that part of the rehab up. Next thing I did was to make sure the bed was relatively flat to ensure that my blade doesn't get deformed when the lever cap pulls it down to the frog face.

The lateral lever prevents me from being able to just print the frog directly on my granite surface plate. And I don't want to remove the lever unless absolutely necessary. So I use two precision ground parallels that I know are the same thickness and paint dye on them to print the bed face.
Wood Bumper Automotive exterior Motor vehicle Font


I lay the frog down gently.
Automotive design Wood Automotive exterior Tableware Bumper


And pick it straight back up.
Wood Tool Red Bumper Gas


There appears to be a slight recess on the top right and center left areas. I don't scrape this face because it's just not that critical. I address it with a flat file concentrated on the high areas.
Bottle Motor vehicle Automotive exterior Engineering Tool


A little quick filing and another print and it's good enough for government work.
Red Wood Material property Aluminum can Rectangle


Again, it looks uneven and spotty. But as long as there is die transfer over enough of the surface that I can be confident that it won't deform my iron significantly, I'm happy with it.

That'll do it for this installment. Now that I have the plane tore down I'm going to proceed with painting and cleaning up all the hardware. I won't be documenting that in this series since I covered it all in detail in my previous series and my methods haven't really changed much in regards to those tasks. This plane is my desired type (Type 2) in that it has the brass hardware and Cocobolo tote and knob. The horn is missing from the tote so I may do the next entry on repairing that. We'll see! I have no idea when the next entry will be coming since I don't know when I'll be working on the plane. But you'll know when I know ;-)

Thanks for reading!
You're right Sansoo, that feature ensures alignment but that also means everything has to be machined in alignment with that rib. Otherwise you get a bad fit that you can't adjust. Probably did simply boil down to a cost vs value issue.
 

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#30 ·
A Twisted Sole and a Crooked Frog

We're well into 2021 and I haven't done any blog entries for the year so here we go :) I try to force myself to do a series each year as a way of giving back to the community a little. I have been working on refreshing my recently obtained Millers Falls #24 jointer plane and it's proving a bit of a challenge so I thought it might make a good subject. Luckily I had this thought early enough to take some pictures rather than after I was finished which is typical of me…

This series will be sort of an addendum/amendment to the series I did 5 years ago on rehabbing a plane. So I'll skip a lot of stuff by comparison if I don't really have anything to add. I'll reference entries from that series to fill in gaps where appropriate.

So here we go!

I bought a Millers Falls 24C jointer plane off Ebay a few months ago to fill out a missing slot in my till. The 24 is the size of a Stanley #8 and is relatively hard to come across. So when I stumbled on one shortly after it was listed that was a price I was willing to pay, I was tickled and bought it immediately. The only downside to it was that the iron was a Stanley iron instead of an OEM. That was remedied when I found a NOS Millers Falls iron on Ebay for a decent price and passed the Stanley along to a fellow LJ to offset the cost a bit :)

I am tackling this rehab in a slightly different order than I normally do. Typically, flattening the sole of a plane is the last thing I do to it. But in this case, I happened to be flattening the sole on my Millers Falls #22 plane at the same time the #24 was delivered. So I figured while I had my large granite plate, spray adhesive and sandpaper out, I might as well go ahead and do the big brother as well.


The 22 cleaned up quick. The 24 however is a different matter… After many sheets of 80 grit paper and several hundred strokes, a pronounced twist is still evident in the sole.


My marker lines were cleaned up from the entire sole other than the left side of the heel and the right side near the toe.


I proceeded to lap the sole on the granite plate with sandpaper for a while until I thought maybe there was an underlying problem causing such a severe twist? It's very unusual to have to go to this much effort to flatten a sole but I've also never had a plane this large so maybe it's not that unique of a situation? I know that fellow LJ DevinT had to go to extreme lapping measures to flatten her Stanley #8 so maybe it's just the nature of the beast?

I wasn't sure so I decided to jump ship for the time being and investigate to see if I could find any underlying issues. So I tore the plane down to its component parts.


I gave the main body a good looksee to see if there were any small cracks or casting defects that I had missed initially. Didn't find anything. So I decided to go ahead and jump to checking the fit of the frog with the body.

I won't go into too much detail on printing and scraping the frog here. You can read more about it at the linked post above if you wish. But, I did find some issues that needed resolving.

First thing I did was clean the machined pads on the frog and body with a Scotchbrite pad and some WD40. I just wanted to be sure there was no debris or grease on them.


Then I made sure there were no burrs or obvious raised/dinged areas on the machined faces. There were a couple of things with the machining that I don't love to see. First, on the frog, the rear pad was raised on one side and pretty much flush with the rest of the casting on the other.


This in and of itself isn't an issue as long as everything else seems to be machined with reference to that (which it does). There could be some concern of that causing an improper fit on the mating surface of the body. But, we'll see in a bit, that's not the case here. So, while it's not ideal I also don't think it's a detriment and I don't think it'll cause me any issues.

The pads in the body where the front "feet" of the frog mate are also not machined the way I'd like them to be. They're roughly flush with the cast surface behind them and recessed slightly in some sections. They're fully recessed when the enamel is added.


This can be a real issue in practice because it can limit the adjustability of the frog position. Particularly if one were to use an aftermarket iron that was significantly thicker than the OEM blade. The frog would need to be moved rearward which could result in the milled feet on the frog ending up on the cast/enameled surface rather than the machined pads. Just something to keep in mind when reassembling and fettling the plane.

I'll toss this in here too. I don't know if all manufacturers did it the same way but I'm not disheartened by the pads in the body being milled below the cast surface sometimes because I know it was within the design tolerances. How do I know? I'm glad you asked ;-p See how when the pad isn't raised on this frog there's a little section between the pads where it doesn't clean up due to the radius of the milling cutter?


Well, if the frog's front feet were full width they would hit that and wouldn't be able to sit flat on the milled sections. So Millers Falls accounted for that in the frog casting by casting a couple of cutouts on the inside of the feet to give clearance for that raised center section.


Anywho… While the machining isn't exactly what I want to see, it's not bad and I don't foresee it causing me any issues with the assembly or fettling of this plane. So I'm comfortable with my visual inspection of the frog and base. Now time for a little more technical inspection.

I painted a thin coat of dye on the machined faces in the base.


Then I printed the mating pads of the frog. You can read more about the methodology in the blog post linked earlier. Here is the result of the initial printing:


Good solid contact on the rear pad and the left foot but very little on the right foot. It's unusual for me to see a fit this poor. Just to be sure, I scraped the thick enamel away around the machined pads in the base to be sure the foot wasn't being prevented from sitting all the way down.


I repeated the print and got the same result. So I pulled out a small carbide inserted scraper and started scraping away the dyed sections on the left foot. I left the rear pad alone.


Second print got me a little more contact on the right foot.


I scraped the high spots down on both feet. You can tell which spots have been scraped and what's just the machined surface. The scraping is very minimal and localized.


Third print is better and I know I'm getting close.


I scraped the high spots one final time and the fourth print satisfied me.


I know it looks kinda spotty but that's okay. There are large sections of both feet and the full width of the rear pad making solid contact which is all I need. Also bare in mind that the printing is done with no pressure applied to the frog, its own weight is all that's pushing it into contact with the base.

So now I can be confident that when the screws are used to fix the frog to the base, it will make solid contact without having to deform or induce any stresses in the base. Was the poor fit between the frog and the base what caused the twist in the sole? I don't know yet, I haven't reassembled it and went back to lapping. But, I think it's highly unlikely. I didn't have to scrape much material at all off the feet of the frog. The fit wasn't terrible and I don't think it was sufficient to pull the base into a significant deformation. We'll see when I get back around to lapping though!

Since I'm already on the frog, I may as well wrap that part of the rehab up. Next thing I did was to make sure the bed was relatively flat to ensure that my blade doesn't get deformed when the lever cap pulls it down to the frog face.

The lateral lever prevents me from being able to just print the frog directly on my granite surface plate. And I don't want to remove the lever unless absolutely necessary. So I use two precision ground parallels that I know are the same thickness and paint dye on them to print the bed face.


I lay the frog down gently.


And pick it straight back up.


There appears to be a slight recess on the top right and center left areas. I don't scrape this face because it's just not that critical. I address it with a flat file concentrated on the high areas.


A little quick filing and another print and it's good enough for government work.


Again, it looks uneven and spotty. But as long as there is die transfer over enough of the surface that I can be confident that it won't deform my iron significantly, I'm happy with it.

That'll do it for this installment. Now that I have the plane tore down I'm going to proceed with painting and cleaning up all the hardware. I won't be documenting that in this series since I covered it all in detail in my previous series and my methods haven't really changed much in regards to those tasks. This plane is my desired type (Type 2) in that it has the brass hardware and Cocobolo tote and knob. The horn is missing from the tote so I may do the next entry on repairing that. We'll see! I have no idea when the next entry will be coming since I don't know when I'll be working on the plane. But you'll know when I know ;-)

Thanks for reading!
Really nice write up, a joy to be able to 'hear' your thoughts as you go.
thanks.
Best thoughts,
Mads
 

Attachments

#31 ·
A Twisted Sole and a Crooked Frog

We're well into 2021 and I haven't done any blog entries for the year so here we go :) I try to force myself to do a series each year as a way of giving back to the community a little. I have been working on refreshing my recently obtained Millers Falls #24 jointer plane and it's proving a bit of a challenge so I thought it might make a good subject. Luckily I had this thought early enough to take some pictures rather than after I was finished which is typical of me…

This series will be sort of an addendum/amendment to the series I did 5 years ago on rehabbing a plane. So I'll skip a lot of stuff by comparison if I don't really have anything to add. I'll reference entries from that series to fill in gaps where appropriate.

So here we go!

I bought a Millers Falls 24C jointer plane off Ebay a few months ago to fill out a missing slot in my till. The 24 is the size of a Stanley #8 and is relatively hard to come across. So when I stumbled on one shortly after it was listed that was a price I was willing to pay, I was tickled and bought it immediately. The only downside to it was that the iron was a Stanley iron instead of an OEM. That was remedied when I found a NOS Millers Falls iron on Ebay for a decent price and passed the Stanley along to a fellow LJ to offset the cost a bit :)

I am tackling this rehab in a slightly different order than I normally do. Typically, flattening the sole of a plane is the last thing I do to it. But in this case, I happened to be flattening the sole on my Millers Falls #22 plane at the same time the #24 was delivered. So I figured while I had my large granite plate, spray adhesive and sandpaper out, I might as well go ahead and do the big brother as well.
Wood Bottle Water bottle Automotive design Saw


The 22 cleaned up quick. The 24 however is a different matter… After many sheets of 80 grit paper and several hundred strokes, a pronounced twist is still evident in the sole.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Automotive exterior


My marker lines were cleaned up from the entire sole other than the left side of the heel and the right side near the toe.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Plank Rectangle


I proceeded to lap the sole on the granite plate with sandpaper for a while until I thought maybe there was an underlying problem causing such a severe twist? It's very unusual to have to go to this much effort to flatten a sole but I've also never had a plane this large so maybe it's not that unique of a situation? I know that fellow LJ DevinT had to go to extreme lapping measures to flatten her Stanley #8 so maybe it's just the nature of the beast?

I wasn't sure so I decided to jump ship for the time being and investigate to see if I could find any underlying issues. So I tore the plane down to its component parts.
Wood Rectangle Tableware Office ruler Gas


I gave the main body a good looksee to see if there were any small cracks or casting defects that I had missed initially. Didn't find anything. So I decided to go ahead and jump to checking the fit of the frog with the body.

I won't go into too much detail on printing and scraping the frog here. You can read more about it at the linked post above if you wish. But, I did find some issues that needed resolving.

First thing I did was clean the machined pads on the frog and body with a Scotchbrite pad and some WD40. I just wanted to be sure there was no debris or grease on them.
Table Tableware Wood Rectangle Flooring


Then I made sure there were no burrs or obvious raised/dinged areas on the machined faces. There were a couple of things with the machining that I don't love to see. First, on the frog, the rear pad was raised on one side and pretty much flush with the rest of the casting on the other.
Wood Red Rectangle Gas Auto part


This in and of itself isn't an issue as long as everything else seems to be machined with reference to that (which it does). There could be some concern of that causing an improper fit on the mating surface of the body. But, we'll see in a bit, that's not the case here. So, while it's not ideal I also don't think it's a detriment and I don't think it'll cause me any issues.

The pads in the body where the front "feet" of the frog mate are also not machined the way I'd like them to be. They're roughly flush with the cast surface behind them and recessed slightly in some sections. They're fully recessed when the enamel is added.
Wood Bumper Composite material Automotive exterior Metal


This can be a real issue in practice because it can limit the adjustability of the frog position. Particularly if one were to use an aftermarket iron that was significantly thicker than the OEM blade. The frog would need to be moved rearward which could result in the milled feet on the frog ending up on the cast/enameled surface rather than the machined pads. Just something to keep in mind when reassembling and fettling the plane.

I'll toss this in here too. I don't know if all manufacturers did it the same way but I'm not disheartened by the pads in the body being milled below the cast surface sometimes because I know it was within the design tolerances. How do I know? I'm glad you asked ;-p See how when the pad isn't raised on this frog there's a little section between the pads where it doesn't clean up due to the radius of the milling cutter?
Automotive lighting Hood Automotive tire Motor vehicle Trunk


Well, if the frog's front feet were full width they would hit that and wouldn't be able to sit flat on the milled sections. So Millers Falls accounted for that in the frog casting by casting a couple of cutouts on the inside of the feet to give clearance for that raised center section.
Bumper Automotive exterior Gas Auto part Tints and shades


Anywho… While the machining isn't exactly what I want to see, it's not bad and I don't foresee it causing me any issues with the assembly or fettling of this plane. So I'm comfortable with my visual inspection of the frog and base. Now time for a little more technical inspection.

I painted a thin coat of dye on the machined faces in the base.
Musical instrument accessory Tool Automotive lighting Bumper Trunk


Then I printed the mating pads of the frog. You can read more about the methodology in the blog post linked earlier. Here is the result of the initial printing:
Wood Rectangle Red Gas Font


Good solid contact on the rear pad and the left foot but very little on the right foot. It's unusual for me to see a fit this poor. Just to be sure, I scraped the thick enamel away around the machined pads in the base to be sure the foot wasn't being prevented from sitting all the way down.
Hood Automotive tire Bumper Motor vehicle Fender


I repeated the print and got the same result. So I pulled out a small carbide inserted scraper and started scraping away the dyed sections on the left foot. I left the rear pad alone.
Wood Engineering Gas Machine Nail


Second print got me a little more contact on the right foot.
Rectangle Motor vehicle Bumper Red Gas


I scraped the high spots down on both feet. You can tell which spots have been scraped and what's just the machined surface. The scraping is very minimal and localized.
Wood Gas Tints and shades Carmine Metal


Third print is better and I know I'm getting close.
Motor vehicle Gas Wood Engineering Machine


I scraped the high spots one final time and the fourth print satisfied me.
Wheel Motor vehicle Vehicle Automotive design Wood


I know it looks kinda spotty but that's okay. There are large sections of both feet and the full width of the rear pad making solid contact which is all I need. Also bare in mind that the printing is done with no pressure applied to the frog, its own weight is all that's pushing it into contact with the base.

So now I can be confident that when the screws are used to fix the frog to the base, it will make solid contact without having to deform or induce any stresses in the base. Was the poor fit between the frog and the base what caused the twist in the sole? I don't know yet, I haven't reassembled it and went back to lapping. But, I think it's highly unlikely. I didn't have to scrape much material at all off the feet of the frog. The fit wasn't terrible and I don't think it was sufficient to pull the base into a significant deformation. We'll see when I get back around to lapping though!

Since I'm already on the frog, I may as well wrap that part of the rehab up. Next thing I did was to make sure the bed was relatively flat to ensure that my blade doesn't get deformed when the lever cap pulls it down to the frog face.

The lateral lever prevents me from being able to just print the frog directly on my granite surface plate. And I don't want to remove the lever unless absolutely necessary. So I use two precision ground parallels that I know are the same thickness and paint dye on them to print the bed face.
Wood Bumper Automotive exterior Motor vehicle Font


I lay the frog down gently.
Automotive design Wood Automotive exterior Tableware Bumper


And pick it straight back up.
Wood Tool Red Bumper Gas


There appears to be a slight recess on the top right and center left areas. I don't scrape this face because it's just not that critical. I address it with a flat file concentrated on the high areas.
Bottle Motor vehicle Automotive exterior Engineering Tool


A little quick filing and another print and it's good enough for government work.
Red Wood Material property Aluminum can Rectangle


Again, it looks uneven and spotty. But as long as there is die transfer over enough of the surface that I can be confident that it won't deform my iron significantly, I'm happy with it.

That'll do it for this installment. Now that I have the plane tore down I'm going to proceed with painting and cleaning up all the hardware. I won't be documenting that in this series since I covered it all in detail in my previous series and my methods haven't really changed much in regards to those tasks. This plane is my desired type (Type 2) in that it has the brass hardware and Cocobolo tote and knob. The horn is missing from the tote so I may do the next entry on repairing that. We'll see! I have no idea when the next entry will be coming since I don't know when I'll be working on the plane. But you'll know when I know ;-)

Thanks for reading!
Good job on the frog!
sadly we still cannot eradicate the Cane Toads the CSIRO introduced .

This guy was twisted too but the snake reportedly died.

Reptile Snake Cuisine Scaled reptile Terrestrial animal
 

Attachments

#32 ·
A Twisted Sole and a Crooked Frog

We're well into 2021 and I haven't done any blog entries for the year so here we go :) I try to force myself to do a series each year as a way of giving back to the community a little. I have been working on refreshing my recently obtained Millers Falls #24 jointer plane and it's proving a bit of a challenge so I thought it might make a good subject. Luckily I had this thought early enough to take some pictures rather than after I was finished which is typical of me…

This series will be sort of an addendum/amendment to the series I did 5 years ago on rehabbing a plane. So I'll skip a lot of stuff by comparison if I don't really have anything to add. I'll reference entries from that series to fill in gaps where appropriate.

So here we go!

I bought a Millers Falls 24C jointer plane off Ebay a few months ago to fill out a missing slot in my till. The 24 is the size of a Stanley #8 and is relatively hard to come across. So when I stumbled on one shortly after it was listed that was a price I was willing to pay, I was tickled and bought it immediately. The only downside to it was that the iron was a Stanley iron instead of an OEM. That was remedied when I found a NOS Millers Falls iron on Ebay for a decent price and passed the Stanley along to a fellow LJ to offset the cost a bit :)

I am tackling this rehab in a slightly different order than I normally do. Typically, flattening the sole of a plane is the last thing I do to it. But in this case, I happened to be flattening the sole on my Millers Falls #22 plane at the same time the #24 was delivered. So I figured while I had my large granite plate, spray adhesive and sandpaper out, I might as well go ahead and do the big brother as well.
Wood Bottle Water bottle Automotive design Saw


The 22 cleaned up quick. The 24 however is a different matter… After many sheets of 80 grit paper and several hundred strokes, a pronounced twist is still evident in the sole.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Flooring Automotive exterior


My marker lines were cleaned up from the entire sole other than the left side of the heel and the right side near the toe.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Plank Rectangle


I proceeded to lap the sole on the granite plate with sandpaper for a while until I thought maybe there was an underlying problem causing such a severe twist? It's very unusual to have to go to this much effort to flatten a sole but I've also never had a plane this large so maybe it's not that unique of a situation? I know that fellow LJ DevinT had to go to extreme lapping measures to flatten her Stanley #8 so maybe it's just the nature of the beast?

I wasn't sure so I decided to jump ship for the time being and investigate to see if I could find any underlying issues. So I tore the plane down to its component parts.
Wood Rectangle Tableware Office ruler Gas


I gave the main body a good looksee to see if there were any small cracks or casting defects that I had missed initially. Didn't find anything. So I decided to go ahead and jump to checking the fit of the frog with the body.

I won't go into too much detail on printing and scraping the frog here. You can read more about it at the linked post above if you wish. But, I did find some issues that needed resolving.

First thing I did was clean the machined pads on the frog and body with a Scotchbrite pad and some WD40. I just wanted to be sure there was no debris or grease on them.
Table Tableware Wood Rectangle Flooring


Then I made sure there were no burrs or obvious raised/dinged areas on the machined faces. There were a couple of things with the machining that I don't love to see. First, on the frog, the rear pad was raised on one side and pretty much flush with the rest of the casting on the other.
Wood Red Rectangle Gas Auto part


This in and of itself isn't an issue as long as everything else seems to be machined with reference to that (which it does). There could be some concern of that causing an improper fit on the mating surface of the body. But, we'll see in a bit, that's not the case here. So, while it's not ideal I also don't think it's a detriment and I don't think it'll cause me any issues.

The pads in the body where the front "feet" of the frog mate are also not machined the way I'd like them to be. They're roughly flush with the cast surface behind them and recessed slightly in some sections. They're fully recessed when the enamel is added.
Wood Bumper Composite material Automotive exterior Metal


This can be a real issue in practice because it can limit the adjustability of the frog position. Particularly if one were to use an aftermarket iron that was significantly thicker than the OEM blade. The frog would need to be moved rearward which could result in the milled feet on the frog ending up on the cast/enameled surface rather than the machined pads. Just something to keep in mind when reassembling and fettling the plane.

I'll toss this in here too. I don't know if all manufacturers did it the same way but I'm not disheartened by the pads in the body being milled below the cast surface sometimes because I know it was within the design tolerances. How do I know? I'm glad you asked ;-p See how when the pad isn't raised on this frog there's a little section between the pads where it doesn't clean up due to the radius of the milling cutter?
Automotive lighting Hood Automotive tire Motor vehicle Trunk


Well, if the frog's front feet were full width they would hit that and wouldn't be able to sit flat on the milled sections. So Millers Falls accounted for that in the frog casting by casting a couple of cutouts on the inside of the feet to give clearance for that raised center section.
Bumper Automotive exterior Gas Auto part Tints and shades


Anywho… While the machining isn't exactly what I want to see, it's not bad and I don't foresee it causing me any issues with the assembly or fettling of this plane. So I'm comfortable with my visual inspection of the frog and base. Now time for a little more technical inspection.

I painted a thin coat of dye on the machined faces in the base.
Musical instrument accessory Tool Automotive lighting Bumper Trunk


Then I printed the mating pads of the frog. You can read more about the methodology in the blog post linked earlier. Here is the result of the initial printing:
Wood Rectangle Red Gas Font


Good solid contact on the rear pad and the left foot but very little on the right foot. It's unusual for me to see a fit this poor. Just to be sure, I scraped the thick enamel away around the machined pads in the base to be sure the foot wasn't being prevented from sitting all the way down.
Hood Automotive tire Bumper Motor vehicle Fender


I repeated the print and got the same result. So I pulled out a small carbide inserted scraper and started scraping away the dyed sections on the left foot. I left the rear pad alone.
Wood Engineering Gas Machine Nail


Second print got me a little more contact on the right foot.
Rectangle Motor vehicle Bumper Red Gas


I scraped the high spots down on both feet. You can tell which spots have been scraped and what's just the machined surface. The scraping is very minimal and localized.
Wood Gas Tints and shades Carmine Metal


Third print is better and I know I'm getting close.
Motor vehicle Gas Wood Engineering Machine


I scraped the high spots one final time and the fourth print satisfied me.
Wheel Motor vehicle Vehicle Automotive design Wood


I know it looks kinda spotty but that's okay. There are large sections of both feet and the full width of the rear pad making solid contact which is all I need. Also bare in mind that the printing is done with no pressure applied to the frog, its own weight is all that's pushing it into contact with the base.

So now I can be confident that when the screws are used to fix the frog to the base, it will make solid contact without having to deform or induce any stresses in the base. Was the poor fit between the frog and the base what caused the twist in the sole? I don't know yet, I haven't reassembled it and went back to lapping. But, I think it's highly unlikely. I didn't have to scrape much material at all off the feet of the frog. The fit wasn't terrible and I don't think it was sufficient to pull the base into a significant deformation. We'll see when I get back around to lapping though!

Since I'm already on the frog, I may as well wrap that part of the rehab up. Next thing I did was to make sure the bed was relatively flat to ensure that my blade doesn't get deformed when the lever cap pulls it down to the frog face.

The lateral lever prevents me from being able to just print the frog directly on my granite surface plate. And I don't want to remove the lever unless absolutely necessary. So I use two precision ground parallels that I know are the same thickness and paint dye on them to print the bed face.
Wood Bumper Automotive exterior Motor vehicle Font


I lay the frog down gently.
Automotive design Wood Automotive exterior Tableware Bumper


And pick it straight back up.
Wood Tool Red Bumper Gas


There appears to be a slight recess on the top right and center left areas. I don't scrape this face because it's just not that critical. I address it with a flat file concentrated on the high areas.
Bottle Motor vehicle Automotive exterior Engineering Tool


A little quick filing and another print and it's good enough for government work.
Red Wood Material property Aluminum can Rectangle


Again, it looks uneven and spotty. But as long as there is die transfer over enough of the surface that I can be confident that it won't deform my iron significantly, I'm happy with it.

That'll do it for this installment. Now that I have the plane tore down I'm going to proceed with painting and cleaning up all the hardware. I won't be documenting that in this series since I covered it all in detail in my previous series and my methods haven't really changed much in regards to those tasks. This plane is my desired type (Type 2) in that it has the brass hardware and Cocobolo tote and knob. The horn is missing from the tote so I may do the next entry on repairing that. We'll see! I have no idea when the next entry will be coming since I don't know when I'll be working on the plane. But you'll know when I know ;-)

Thanks for reading!
Thanks for the encouragement Mads!

That snake looks like a *********************************** at an all-you-can-eat frog leg dinner here in the States Rob!
 

Attachments

#33 ·
Sandpaper is Good for the Sole

Last time I had straightened my frog fit out and had a fit with the body that I was happy with. Normally my process is to paint the main body next but I was already mixing up my method so I figured what the hell, might as well go ahead and finish the flattening first on this one.

I had already sandblasted the plane before I decided to go back to work on it so don't think I switched planes and didn't tell ya ;-)
Hood Grey Plant Knife Grille


I went ahead and cross-hatched the sole again with a Sharpie and put some 80 grit on my granite plate.
Wood Table Rectangle Metal Audio equipment


I made two full strokes with just the body of the plane to see if disassembly made any significant difference. It didn't.
Wood Gas Currency Money Cash


It's still obvious that the right toe and left heel are gonna make me sweat… So to finish flattening, I fully reassembled the plane with the iron fully retracted but tensioned. I gave my reasoning for lapping an assembled plane in part 10 of my old blog series and I haven't changed my mind about it being the best way to do it. I have however come around to the idea of flattening before painting so that I don't risk damage to my new paint.
Hand tool Saw Wood Tool Table


Back to one of my least favorite chores… About 10 strokes on the 80 grit shows I'm pretty much where I was before. So, as suspected, fixing the fit of the frog didn't have any effect on the flatness. The body was just twisted for some reason.
Light Wood Gas Metal Plastic


A few sheets of paper and a couple hundred strokes and FINALLY I see the light at the end of the tunnel. The sharpie is beginning to fade in the offending sections.
Wood Hardwood Engineering Metal Machine


Instead of continuing to remove material, I decide that it'll be flattened more as I work up a few more grits. Just to make myself feel better, I decided to quantify how much lower the lowest points are. Luckily that's simple to do with a depth micrometer.

At the heel, the lowest spot is about .0025" low.
Wood Auto part Tie Metal Musical instrument accessory


And at the toe, the extreme spot is about .004" low.
Wood Tool Tints and shades Musical instrument accessory Metal


In practice, I have no concerns about using this plane exactly like it is. I can't see function being inhibited in the least. For some perspective, I grabbed a couple of things I had handy to show how thick they are. A gum wrapper is about .002".
Revolver Font Tool Dagger Fashion accessory


And a freshly plucked arm hair is about .0017"
Automotive lighting Tints and shades Circle Jewellery Metal


So functionally, I'm happy there. I went ahead and repeated the process on 120, 220 and 320 grit paper. After 320, I decided not to go any further. That's plenty slick enough for the sole. I also sanded the cheeks at the same time and was happy with the look of 320. There were some spots on the cheeks that I would have like to see disappear but they were deeper than I wanted to sand out.
Book Publication Wood Font Material property


Gadget Material property Font Clock Audio equipment


Font Line Publication Material property Office supplies


Since there are scratches and dings on the cheeks that don't look particularly nice, I use a staple of every machinist's aresenal - Scotchbrite ;-P With a little WD 40 for lube, it will take the uniform sanding marks and whirl them around so they look more random and unintentional. And it won't really abrade the surface to any noticable level. It just changes how light is reflected and helps to obscure minor flaws in a flat surface to some degree.
Table Wood Gas Flooring Water bottle


Removing as much metal as I did from the sole left some exposed dings around the mouth too. Nothing that will cause functional issues but there are some sharp spots so I knock them down with a deburring tool.
Hand Wood Finger Nail Engineering


Wood Font Line Flooring Writing instrument accessory


I don't remove any significant amount of metal, just dub the edges that are there.

The final thing I did to the body was to scrape some paint splatter that remained in the corrugations on the sole. I forgot to take pics but I just used a pick to scrape all the paint out then folded up a small piece of 320 sandpaper and ran it up and down the corrugations a couple of times to remove the marks left from scraping with the pick.

After all that was done, I sanded some rough cast spots on top of the body just so it will look a little nicer when painted. Then I cleaned the whole thing with Brake Cleaner.
Table Tableware Wood Drink Flooring


And masked it up for painting.
Font Writing implement Table Publication Electronic device


I don't use brand name blades to cut against the cast iron. They aren't going to last anyway so I use cheapies.

On this go 'round, I picked up a tidbit from Sansoo22 about not masking the top edges of the cheeks and the heel and toe. I've never been completely happy with the crispness of the edges in those spots so I'm going to try his method of scraping the paint off after the fact on this one.
Wood Font Automotive exterior Bumper Bicycle part


Speaking of tidbits… I know some people keep spare screws to mask the threaded holes before painting. I just roll up liitle pieces of masking tape and stick them in there. Super putty is great for masking threaded holes too but I couldn't find it when I was masking this one :-/
Motor vehicle Automotive exterior Bumper Hood Font


Motor vehicle Automotive tire Hood Automotive design Bumper


So that's where I'm at for now. I'm hoping to get this thing painted this week some time. I'll be trying a different brand of paint than I normally use but unless there's some significant difference there, I probably won't blog that process. So we'll see what I come up with to write about next time… I know I have a tote repair to do so I'll definitely do a post on that. Otherwise, I don't foresee much that deviates from the basic process I wrote up in the old series.

Thanks for reading!
 

Attachments

#34 ·
Sandpaper is Good for the Sole

Last time I had straightened my frog fit out and had a fit with the body that I was happy with. Normally my process is to paint the main body next but I was already mixing up my method so I figured what the hell, might as well go ahead and finish the flattening first on this one.

I had already sandblasted the plane before I decided to go back to work on it so don't think I switched planes and didn't tell ya ;-)
Hood Grey Plant Knife Grille


I went ahead and cross-hatched the sole again with a Sharpie and put some 80 grit on my granite plate.
Wood Table Rectangle Metal Audio equipment


I made two full strokes with just the body of the plane to see if disassembly made any significant difference. It didn't.
Wood Gas Currency Money Cash


It's still obvious that the right toe and left heel are gonna make me sweat… So to finish flattening, I fully reassembled the plane with the iron fully retracted but tensioned. I gave my reasoning for lapping an assembled plane in part 10 of my old blog series and I haven't changed my mind about it being the best way to do it. I have however come around to the idea of flattening before painting so that I don't risk damage to my new paint.
Hand tool Saw Wood Tool Table


Back to one of my least favorite chores… About 10 strokes on the 80 grit shows I'm pretty much where I was before. So, as suspected, fixing the fit of the frog didn't have any effect on the flatness. The body was just twisted for some reason.
Light Wood Gas Metal Plastic


A few sheets of paper and a couple hundred strokes and FINALLY I see the light at the end of the tunnel. The sharpie is beginning to fade in the offending sections.
Wood Hardwood Engineering Metal Machine


Instead of continuing to remove material, I decide that it'll be flattened more as I work up a few more grits. Just to make myself feel better, I decided to quantify how much lower the lowest points are. Luckily that's simple to do with a depth micrometer.

At the heel, the lowest spot is about .0025" low.
Wood Auto part Tie Metal Musical instrument accessory


And at the toe, the extreme spot is about .004" low.
Wood Tool Tints and shades Musical instrument accessory Metal


In practice, I have no concerns about using this plane exactly like it is. I can't see function being inhibited in the least. For some perspective, I grabbed a couple of things I had handy to show how thick they are. A gum wrapper is about .002".
Revolver Font Tool Dagger Fashion accessory


And a freshly plucked arm hair is about .0017"
Automotive lighting Tints and shades Circle Jewellery Metal


So functionally, I'm happy there. I went ahead and repeated the process on 120, 220 and 320 grit paper. After 320, I decided not to go any further. That's plenty slick enough for the sole. I also sanded the cheeks at the same time and was happy with the look of 320. There were some spots on the cheeks that I would have like to see disappear but they were deeper than I wanted to sand out.
Book Publication Wood Font Material property


Gadget Material property Font Clock Audio equipment


Font Line Publication Material property Office supplies


Since there are scratches and dings on the cheeks that don't look particularly nice, I use a staple of every machinist's aresenal - Scotchbrite ;-P With a little WD 40 for lube, it will take the uniform sanding marks and whirl them around so they look more random and unintentional. And it won't really abrade the surface to any noticable level. It just changes how light is reflected and helps to obscure minor flaws in a flat surface to some degree.
Table Wood Gas Flooring Water bottle


Removing as much metal as I did from the sole left some exposed dings around the mouth too. Nothing that will cause functional issues but there are some sharp spots so I knock them down with a deburring tool.
Hand Wood Finger Nail Engineering


Wood Font Line Flooring Writing instrument accessory


I don't remove any significant amount of metal, just dub the edges that are there.

The final thing I did to the body was to scrape some paint splatter that remained in the corrugations on the sole. I forgot to take pics but I just used a pick to scrape all the paint out then folded up a small piece of 320 sandpaper and ran it up and down the corrugations a couple of times to remove the marks left from scraping with the pick.

After all that was done, I sanded some rough cast spots on top of the body just so it will look a little nicer when painted. Then I cleaned the whole thing with Brake Cleaner.
Table Tableware Wood Drink Flooring


And masked it up for painting.
Font Writing implement Table Publication Electronic device


I don't use brand name blades to cut against the cast iron. They aren't going to last anyway so I use cheapies.

On this go 'round, I picked up a tidbit from Sansoo22 about not masking the top edges of the cheeks and the heel and toe. I've never been completely happy with the crispness of the edges in those spots so I'm going to try his method of scraping the paint off after the fact on this one.
Wood Font Automotive exterior Bumper Bicycle part


Speaking of tidbits… I know some people keep spare screws to mask the threaded holes before painting. I just roll up liitle pieces of masking tape and stick them in there. Super putty is great for masking threaded holes too but I couldn't find it when I was masking this one :-/
Motor vehicle Automotive exterior Bumper Hood Font


Motor vehicle Automotive tire Hood Automotive design Bumper


So that's where I'm at for now. I'm hoping to get this thing painted this week some time. I'll be trying a different brand of paint than I normally use but unless there's some significant difference there, I probably won't blog that process. So we'll see what I come up with to write about next time… I know I have a tote repair to do so I'll definitely do a post on that. Otherwise, I don't foresee much that deviates from the basic process I wrote up in the old series.

Thanks for reading!
Wow, looks great at this point
 

Attachments

#49 ·
Look - I Used a New Body Paint

Well, I said I probably wouldn't blog about painting this one since I covered my process pretty thoroughly in this old blog entry. However, I did some things differently this time around and thought it warranted a quick entry to document.

I decided to take some cues from Sansoo22's process since he does such a great job on his planes. I had planned to bake my plane the way he does but then decided against that since it's too big for my shop oven and I didn't want my wife to beat me for stinking up the house by using the kitchen oven. I also found I didn't have enough Duplicolor enamel like I typically use but I had some Rustoleum Enamel and Primer that was left over from painting a mailbox. It looked nice on the mailbox and has held up well out in the elements. And since I'm kinda cheap, I decided to use what I had on hand :)

I also decided to follow Sansoo's advice about not masking the top edges and the front and back ends and scraping the paint off afterwards instead. I've never been really happy with the corners at these intersections because I always get uneven edges due to the rounded corners from the casting process and the small cracks that sometimes result when removing the masking.

So I sprayed the primer first. Two coats gave me full coverage with no runs so I stopped there. I let it sit for ~48 hours then wet sanded to get rid of any rough spots. I found it was really thin and I actually sanded through in a couple of spots. So I blasted all the dust off with compressed air and gave it a wipe with acetone and sprayed a third coat. Let it cure a day and it looked fine. (Sorry, no pics. Like I said, I wasn't planning to blog this part…)

Note on the primer: I don't like it as well as something that goes on a little thicker and sands better to a smoother finish. Though this primer does go on easily and evenly and does well at promoting adhesion.

So then it was time to paint. The can basically says get all your coats on in an hour or wait 48 to recoat. So I sprayed three coats about 15 minutes apart and it looked pretty good to me so that was that. In hindsight, it really needed another coat or two. It shrunk a lot more than I'm used too and has less gloss than the Duplicolor semi-gloss. So it's acceptable but I won't use it for planes any more. I'll quit being a cheap-ass and pick up some Duplicolor primer and enamel next time I do a plane. I didn't take any pics comparing the two paints but you can see in some of the following pics that (at least IMHO) this paint is perfectly acceptable.

So now it was on to the main point of evolving (hopefully) my process - scraping the edges instead of masking per Sansoo's advice. He was kind enough to run point for me on scraping a plane that had been primed and painted (see the comments of the last entry in this blog series) to be sure the primer didn't present any new challenges for him. His came out great so after letting the plane cure for about 60 hours I went to work with a utility knife blade. Well actually about a half dozen by the time I was done…
Automotive tire Hood Automotive design Motor vehicle Automotive exterior


Table Wood Wood stain Hardwood Plank


As advertised, the enamel peeled off pretty clean in nice, long strips. But, because these edges aren't really flat and the blade is, a good deal was left behind.
Musical instrument accessory Bicycle part Composite material Rim Electric blue


It's kinda hard to see in that photo but it's the best one I have. There is some obvious black enamel left after scraping. What you can't really see is that there's also a great deal of primer left in low spots of the casting surface and the surface looks really rough from being scraped and gouged by the razor blades. I was however really happy with the intersections of the painted and scraped surfaces :) This method is considerably more work than masking these edges but the improvement in the lines makes it well worth the effort IMO.

I found the best method to get the crisp lines I that have always eluded me with masking was to rest the edge of the blade on the inside corner so it was angled at about 10 degrees to the inside of the body and so the back of the blade was higher than the cutting edge enough so that it would cut the paint cleanly but not dig in if it caught a rough spot or inclusion in the casting. Here is a shot after I finished removing paint with the razor blades and removed all the masking. I think it shows the nice clean lines fairly well.
Hood Wood Motor vehicle Automotive design Bumper


By contrast, a close-up of the frog reciever after removing masking shows how those corners can sometimes look by relying on masking to create the lines:
Sleeve Wood Rectangle Material property Tints and shades


After I finished scraping, I tore some small pieces of 80 grit sandpaper per Sansoo's advice and set to gently abrading the edges. I was very careful to avoid scratching the paint at the lines I had worked so hard to create!
I went over each edge and the front and back probably 6-8 times using a fresh piece of paper until I couldn't see any remaining spots of paint or primer or gouges from the razor blades.
Automotive tire Wood Road surface Font Tints and shades


I'm not sure the photo has enough resolution for you to really be able to see it but this is how the edges looked after the 80 grit paper. Clean but also pretty rough. Especially in comparison to the sides and sole that had been sanded up through 320 grit already. So I repeated the same process again with small pieces of 120, 220 and finally 320 paper. And voila:
Hood Bumper Automotive design Automotive exterior Wood


Font Automotive design Wood Gadget Communication Device


Clean lines and smooth edges. I'm a happy camper :) Well, mostly….

I'm not sure if it even shows up in the photos above after the resolution is reduced for the site. And you probably wouldn't even notice it in full resolution pics if I didn't point it out but, in some spots it looks like there is a border between the black enamel and the polished cast iron.
Hood Automotive exterior Wood Bumper Denim


Yep, didn't think it through with the gray primer. It's definitely not terrible and it's staying like it is because overall I'm happy with how this plane looks now. But it's something to keep in mind for future.

So, in summary, I tried a new enamel and primer. While they worked well, I'll revert to Duplicolor in the future because I'm familiar with it and like the sheen better. How it looks when wet vs. after curing is easier for me to predict as well. I also tried scraping instead of masking for the ends at the heel and toe and for the top edges of the cheeks. While it's a good deal more work, it also yields much better results in my opinion and will be how I do planes going forward. I will either use a black primer or no primer though to avoid the primer coats showing in the final edges. I'll also sand the edges back before painting so there aren't as many nooks and crannies for the paint and primer to get into. That should reduced the amount of time needed to scrape and sand them after painting significantly.

That's where I'm at for now. I still have to sand the wood pieces back to bare and repair the busted horn on the tote. I plan to follow a different finishing schedule so I'll definitely post on the repair and finishing of those pieces when I get around to it. That might wrap up this series though. Polishing up all the hardware and painting the frog and working up the blade and chipbreaker are also outstanding tasks. But, my methods for doing all that will be the same as in my old series other than using a powered sharpener instead of stones on the iron. So I will probably skip over all that unless anyone has special requests to see anything I may not have covered previously. If so shout out in the comments.

Thanks for reading and a HUGE thanks to Sansoo22 for graciously putting up with all my questions about his painting process :)
 

Attachments

#50 ·
Look - I Used a New Body Paint

Well, I said I probably wouldn't blog about painting this one since I covered my process pretty thoroughly in this old blog entry. However, I did some things differently this time around and thought it warranted a quick entry to document.

I decided to take some cues from Sansoo22's process since he does such a great job on his planes. I had planned to bake my plane the way he does but then decided against that since it's too big for my shop oven and I didn't want my wife to beat me for stinking up the house by using the kitchen oven. I also found I didn't have enough Duplicolor enamel like I typically use but I had some Rustoleum Enamel and Primer that was left over from painting a mailbox. It looked nice on the mailbox and has held up well out in the elements. And since I'm kinda cheap, I decided to use what I had on hand :)

I also decided to follow Sansoo's advice about not masking the top edges and the front and back ends and scraping the paint off afterwards instead. I've never been really happy with the corners at these intersections because I always get uneven edges due to the rounded corners from the casting process and the small cracks that sometimes result when removing the masking.

So I sprayed the primer first. Two coats gave me full coverage with no runs so I stopped there. I let it sit for ~48 hours then wet sanded to get rid of any rough spots. I found it was really thin and I actually sanded through in a couple of spots. So I blasted all the dust off with compressed air and gave it a wipe with acetone and sprayed a third coat. Let it cure a day and it looked fine. (Sorry, no pics. Like I said, I wasn't planning to blog this part…)

Note on the primer: I don't like it as well as something that goes on a little thicker and sands better to a smoother finish. Though this primer does go on easily and evenly and does well at promoting adhesion.

So then it was time to paint. The can basically says get all your coats on in an hour or wait 48 to recoat. So I sprayed three coats about 15 minutes apart and it looked pretty good to me so that was that. In hindsight, it really needed another coat or two. It shrunk a lot more than I'm used too and has less gloss than the Duplicolor semi-gloss. So it's acceptable but I won't use it for planes any more. I'll quit being a cheap-ass and pick up some Duplicolor primer and enamel next time I do a plane. I didn't take any pics comparing the two paints but you can see in some of the following pics that (at least IMHO) this paint is perfectly acceptable.

So now it was on to the main point of evolving (hopefully) my process - scraping the edges instead of masking per Sansoo's advice. He was kind enough to run point for me on scraping a plane that had been primed and painted (see the comments of the last entry in this blog series) to be sure the primer didn't present any new challenges for him. His came out great so after letting the plane cure for about 60 hours I went to work with a utility knife blade. Well actually about a half dozen by the time I was done…
Automotive tire Hood Automotive design Motor vehicle Automotive exterior


Table Wood Wood stain Hardwood Plank


As advertised, the enamel peeled off pretty clean in nice, long strips. But, because these edges aren't really flat and the blade is, a good deal was left behind.
Musical instrument accessory Bicycle part Composite material Rim Electric blue


It's kinda hard to see in that photo but it's the best one I have. There is some obvious black enamel left after scraping. What you can't really see is that there's also a great deal of primer left in low spots of the casting surface and the surface looks really rough from being scraped and gouged by the razor blades. I was however really happy with the intersections of the painted and scraped surfaces :) This method is considerably more work than masking these edges but the improvement in the lines makes it well worth the effort IMO.

I found the best method to get the crisp lines I that have always eluded me with masking was to rest the edge of the blade on the inside corner so it was angled at about 10 degrees to the inside of the body and so the back of the blade was higher than the cutting edge enough so that it would cut the paint cleanly but not dig in if it caught a rough spot or inclusion in the casting. Here is a shot after I finished removing paint with the razor blades and removed all the masking. I think it shows the nice clean lines fairly well.
Hood Wood Motor vehicle Automotive design Bumper


By contrast, a close-up of the frog reciever after removing masking shows how those corners can sometimes look by relying on masking to create the lines:
Sleeve Wood Rectangle Material property Tints and shades


After I finished scraping, I tore some small pieces of 80 grit sandpaper per Sansoo's advice and set to gently abrading the edges. I was very careful to avoid scratching the paint at the lines I had worked so hard to create!
I went over each edge and the front and back probably 6-8 times using a fresh piece of paper until I couldn't see any remaining spots of paint or primer or gouges from the razor blades.
Automotive tire Wood Road surface Font Tints and shades


I'm not sure the photo has enough resolution for you to really be able to see it but this is how the edges looked after the 80 grit paper. Clean but also pretty rough. Especially in comparison to the sides and sole that had been sanded up through 320 grit already. So I repeated the same process again with small pieces of 120, 220 and finally 320 paper. And voila:
Hood Bumper Automotive design Automotive exterior Wood


Font Automotive design Wood Gadget Communication Device


Clean lines and smooth edges. I'm a happy camper :) Well, mostly….

I'm not sure if it even shows up in the photos above after the resolution is reduced for the site. And you probably wouldn't even notice it in full resolution pics if I didn't point it out but, in some spots it looks like there is a border between the black enamel and the polished cast iron.
Hood Automotive exterior Wood Bumper Denim


Yep, didn't think it through with the gray primer. It's definitely not terrible and it's staying like it is because overall I'm happy with how this plane looks now. But it's something to keep in mind for future.

So, in summary, I tried a new enamel and primer. While they worked well, I'll revert to Duplicolor in the future because I'm familiar with it and like the sheen better. How it looks when wet vs. after curing is easier for me to predict as well. I also tried scraping instead of masking for the ends at the heel and toe and for the top edges of the cheeks. While it's a good deal more work, it also yields much better results in my opinion and will be how I do planes going forward. I will either use a black primer or no primer though to avoid the primer coats showing in the final edges. I'll also sand the edges back before painting so there aren't as many nooks and crannies for the paint and primer to get into. That should reduced the amount of time needed to scrape and sand them after painting significantly.

That's where I'm at for now. I still have to sand the wood pieces back to bare and repair the busted horn on the tote. I plan to follow a different finishing schedule so I'll definitely post on the repair and finishing of those pieces when I get around to it. That might wrap up this series though. Polishing up all the hardware and painting the frog and working up the blade and chipbreaker are also outstanding tasks. But, my methods for doing all that will be the same as in my old series other than using a powered sharpener instead of stones on the iron. So I will probably skip over all that unless anyone has special requests to see anything I may not have covered previously. If so shout out in the comments.

Thanks for reading and a HUGE thanks to Sansoo22 for graciously putting up with all my questions about his painting process :)
Looks pretty dang good from here, Kenny! Thanks for walking through it all for us.
 

Attachments

#66 ·
Some Hardware Stuff

Man, it's been a while! I've had so little shop time lately and none of it has been unspoken for, so rehabbing this plane hasn't been on the agenda. But, I had a couple of hours yesterday and I started to clean and straighten the shop up. The bench grinder that I use for wire brushing and buffing was sitting out and I was about to put it up. Then the little cup that was holding all the hardware for this plane caught my eye… So I figured it made sense to do a little cleanup and polishing before I put the grinder away :)

For the most part, nothing I did with this stuff is any different from the way I did back when I wrote this blog post. So I'm not going to rehash the basics. But a few things came up that I felt warranted an addendum in this blog :)

First I'll touch on the brass bits since in my original blog series there weren't any. I leave the cylindrical nuts from the knob and tote on the threaded rods and chuck them up in my drill press and use some fine scotchbrite to remove tarnish. Then I polish them on a cotton buffing wheel on my grinder. Sorry, didn't think to take pics… But there are pics in the blog post I linked of steel parts done in the same fashion.

I normally use a wire brush in the drill press to clean up the depth adjuster. But I saw how Sansoo22 does it a while back and thought I'd give that a go. So I chucked a brush up in the drill press and put a little Brasso inside the recess.
Bottle Fluid Wood Liquid Alcoholic beverage


I gently cleaned up the inside this way and repeated as Sansoo suggested with a different brush on the outside. Then I polished up the outside on my buffing wheel. I wasn't happy with the swirl marks left in the recess (I probably need a finer brush with smaller wires) so I put the brush back on and put a blue paper towel over the end and repeated with a little more Brasso.
Finger Wood Milling Drilling Machine


Wood Gas Metal Engineering Water


It didn't polish out as nicely as the outside but it is plenty good enough. If I want it shinier, I'll get out my dremel tool with a small cotton buffing bit and some compound. It's not highly visible when the plane's assembled though so I'm not worrying with it.

So then the brass bits were done.
Wood Audio equipment Gas Button Door


I just realized those cylindrical nuts look horrible in that ^ picture :-( They're actually slicker than eel snot and super shiny. Which is why they're reflecting stuff in my shop and making ugly dark spots. We'll try to remember another picture of those when the plane is done and assembled ;-)

All of the little steel bits were pretty straightforward with a couple of little quirks. Apparently a previous owner of this plane only had one screwdriver and tried to use it on all of the screws. The slots were in horrible shape on most of them. I rectified that on the non-visible screws with a needle file not being overly concerned with appearance. But, on the little round head screw that secures the toe of the tote, I went a little further. It looked pretty bad from an improper screw camming out of the slot:
Door Fixture Wood Automotive exterior Gas


So, I used a really fine belt on my belt grinder to try to smooth the shape of the screw head back as much as possible without removing too much material.
Finger Nail Gas Thumb Engineering


I was still left with a remnant of the injury but didn't want to take any more material off.
Wood Door Gas Circle Metal


The screw that holds the chipbreaker and iron together was inexplicably mangled.

Automotive tire Wood Road surface Asphalt Automotive exterior


Apparently a too-small screwdriver cammed out several times on this one. And pliers were maybe used to remove it a time or two? I hated to grind down far enough to remove all of that but this one's not visible and it made me feel better to have it smooth so I did it anyway ;-p
Automotive tire Wood Road surface Asphalt Floor


The slot ended up pretty shallow but I don't think it'll be any issue at all using a properly sized screwdriver. If it is though, I'll cut the slot a little deeper or make a replacement screw.

After all the steel bits are done, I put them back in a cup and soak them really good in some CRC-336 until it's time to reassemble the plane.
Dishware Kitchen utensil Scale Circle Font


I figured I might as well go ahead and put the completed components back together though so there are less bits and pieces floating about :)

Wheel Tire Tread Automotive tire Automotive parking light


Tire Wheel Automotive tire Motor vehicle Hood


I didn't take pictures but I also polished up the lever cap yesterday. It's not as pretty as I'd like but the paint in the recess behind the name is complete and the nickel plating is well-preserved and nearly complete even if a little splotchy and dull. I've yet to find a good way to even out the appearance of the plating so I'm going to leave it as-is.

All that's left to do now is check and tune the fit between the chipbreaker and the iron and refinish the wood. The horn is broken off the tote so that's the biggest chore left to finish up this guy. Hopefully I'll get to that before 2022…

Thanks for reading!
 

Attachments

#67 ·
Some Hardware Stuff

Man, it's been a while! I've had so little shop time lately and none of it has been unspoken for, so rehabbing this plane hasn't been on the agenda. But, I had a couple of hours yesterday and I started to clean and straighten the shop up. The bench grinder that I use for wire brushing and buffing was sitting out and I was about to put it up. Then the little cup that was holding all the hardware for this plane caught my eye… So I figured it made sense to do a little cleanup and polishing before I put the grinder away :)

For the most part, nothing I did with this stuff is any different from the way I did back when I wrote this blog post. So I'm not going to rehash the basics. But a few things came up that I felt warranted an addendum in this blog :)

First I'll touch on the brass bits since in my original blog series there weren't any. I leave the cylindrical nuts from the knob and tote on the threaded rods and chuck them up in my drill press and use some fine scotchbrite to remove tarnish. Then I polish them on a cotton buffing wheel on my grinder. Sorry, didn't think to take pics… But there are pics in the blog post I linked of steel parts done in the same fashion.

I normally use a wire brush in the drill press to clean up the depth adjuster. But I saw how Sansoo22 does it a while back and thought I'd give that a go. So I chucked a brush up in the drill press and put a little Brasso inside the recess.
Bottle Fluid Wood Liquid Alcoholic beverage


I gently cleaned up the inside this way and repeated as Sansoo suggested with a different brush on the outside. Then I polished up the outside on my buffing wheel. I wasn't happy with the swirl marks left in the recess (I probably need a finer brush with smaller wires) so I put the brush back on and put a blue paper towel over the end and repeated with a little more Brasso.
Finger Wood Milling Drilling Machine


Wood Gas Metal Engineering Water


It didn't polish out as nicely as the outside but it is plenty good enough. If I want it shinier, I'll get out my dremel tool with a small cotton buffing bit and some compound. It's not highly visible when the plane's assembled though so I'm not worrying with it.

So then the brass bits were done.
Wood Audio equipment Gas Button Door


I just realized those cylindrical nuts look horrible in that ^ picture :-( They're actually slicker than eel snot and super shiny. Which is why they're reflecting stuff in my shop and making ugly dark spots. We'll try to remember another picture of those when the plane is done and assembled ;-)

All of the little steel bits were pretty straightforward with a couple of little quirks. Apparently a previous owner of this plane only had one screwdriver and tried to use it on all of the screws. The slots were in horrible shape on most of them. I rectified that on the non-visible screws with a needle file not being overly concerned with appearance. But, on the little round head screw that secures the toe of the tote, I went a little further. It looked pretty bad from an improper screw camming out of the slot:
Door Fixture Wood Automotive exterior Gas


So, I used a really fine belt on my belt grinder to try to smooth the shape of the screw head back as much as possible without removing too much material.
Finger Nail Gas Thumb Engineering


I was still left with a remnant of the injury but didn't want to take any more material off.
Wood Door Gas Circle Metal


The screw that holds the chipbreaker and iron together was inexplicably mangled.

Automotive tire Wood Road surface Asphalt Automotive exterior


Apparently a too-small screwdriver cammed out several times on this one. And pliers were maybe used to remove it a time or two? I hated to grind down far enough to remove all of that but this one's not visible and it made me feel better to have it smooth so I did it anyway ;-p
Automotive tire Wood Road surface Asphalt Floor


The slot ended up pretty shallow but I don't think it'll be any issue at all using a properly sized screwdriver. If it is though, I'll cut the slot a little deeper or make a replacement screw.

After all the steel bits are done, I put them back in a cup and soak them really good in some CRC-336 until it's time to reassemble the plane.
Dishware Kitchen utensil Scale Circle Font


I figured I might as well go ahead and put the completed components back together though so there are less bits and pieces floating about :)

Wheel Tire Tread Automotive tire Automotive parking light


Tire Wheel Automotive tire Motor vehicle Hood


I didn't take pictures but I also polished up the lever cap yesterday. It's not as pretty as I'd like but the paint in the recess behind the name is complete and the nickel plating is well-preserved and nearly complete even if a little splotchy and dull. I've yet to find a good way to even out the appearance of the plating so I'm going to leave it as-is.

All that's left to do now is check and tune the fit between the chipbreaker and the iron and refinish the wood. The horn is broken off the tote so that's the biggest chore left to finish up this guy. Hopefully I'll get to that before 2022…

Thanks for reading!
I like to put the screws in a drill (drill press would also work) and then i can run through several grits pretty quick to get them cleaned and somewhat polished.
 

Attachments

#87 ·
Tote Repair

I fully intended to do the tote repair and the refinishing of the tote and knob in one post but shop time has been scarce so I'm going to just go ahead and cover the repair of the broken horn on the tote and circle back with another entry when I get the finishing done.

Looking at the before picture of this plane, we can see that the tote has suffered a grievous injury.
Plane Scrub plane Jack plane Rebate plane Smoothing plane


So let's do a little surgery :)

First thing I did was to use a fine belt on my belt grinder and remove the bulk of the film finish.
Window Gas Knee Human leg Wrist


Once most of the finish is gone, there are some minor facets created and there is still some finish left in the hard-to-reach spots. So I switch to hand sanding with these handy rubber thingamabobbers I have for sanding inside and outside curves.
Musical instrument Wood Flooring Gas Hardwood


I sand with 100 grit just enough to remove the rest of the finish, smooth out the facets created on the belt grinder and bring the entire piece to a uniform scratch pattern. Throughout the sanding process, I am careful to sand with the grain which can be difficult at times…
Wood Gas Engineering Metalworking Machine


Eventually we end up with a sanded piece with no finish left. For the time being, I stop at the 100 grit. I'll sand up to higher grits before finishing but I'll wait until after the horn repair is complete to sand any further.
Wood Tints and shades Font Hardwood Metal


Brown Wood Trunk Tints and shades Hardwood


I took the tote off one of my other planes and used it as a template for the new horn. Here we have the busted tote sitting on top of the good one.
Stonemason's hammer Hand tool Wood Wind instrument Metalworking hand tool


I select a piece of Cocobolo that I think will match pretty well in color and grain and cut a small piece.
Wood Outdoor furniture Sculpture Brick Art


Then I cut the tote just below the break so I have a clean, flat surface to work off of.
Wood Gas Auto part Tool Machine


I cut the repair piece at an angle so that when glued together, the grain will run in the same direction.
Brown Wood Hardwood Font Wood stain


Now I mix up some 2 part epoxy and dye it a very dark red. I could use yellow glue, I have often with Cocobolo, but I want to use epoxy in this case so I can dye it to help hide the repair line.
Automotive lighting Wood Liquid Gas Tints and shades


And we marry the pieces together. I now pronounce you tote and horn.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Plank Natural material


Wood Saw Gas Workbench Hardwood


I've seen several clever ways to hold odd-shaped pieces like these together when gluing. My leg vise and a holdfast get the job done more often than not though.

After letting the epoxy cure overnight, I go back to the belt grinder and carefully sand the repair piece so it's flush with the sides of the tote. This makes it easier to do the next step which is bandsawing. I laid the template on top and marked the outline and then went to the bandsaw and removed the excess material being careful to leave my layout line.
Wood Bicycle part Hardwood Automotive tire Table


Wood Font Art Metal Hardwood


Next is the long part. It's always tempting to me to use my belt sander and OSS or rotary tool to shape this but it never, ever comes out like I hoped. I'm sure some people use power tools and get great results. But for me, I take my time and pull out some rasps and sandpaper.

I start by using a sculptor's rasp to put the radii in. I use the radii on the existing part as a guide and just try to make the transition smooth, consistent and symmetric.
Wood Flooring Hardwood Automotive tire Art


Wood Sculpture Artifact Art Rectangle


Table Wood Metalworking hand tool Wood stain Hardwood


After I'm pretty happy with that general shape, I lay my template on top and mark the radius at the end.
Wood Tool Elbow Wrist Hardwood


Wood Wood stain Hardwood Plank Lumber


Then it's more rasping to bring the shape down to that line.
Wood Table Natural material Wood stain Hardwood


Finally we're pretty close to our final shape.
Wood Composite material Tire Wood stain Gas


Wood Sculpture Hardwood Terrestrial animal Wood stain


But it still looks kind of "blocky" and there are some pretty rough spots left from the rasps. So, we go back to 100 grit sandpaper and the rubber shapes to do the final shaping.
Hand Hand tool Bicycle tire Wood Tool


Eventually I get where I'm happy with it.
Liquid Drinkware Beer Tableware Fluid


Hand tool Wood Tool Metalworking hand tool Engineering


One last problem to tackle. We've partially covered up the counterbore for the cylindrical nut that fixes the tote to the base. The thru hole is 5/16" on this tote so I take a 5/16" drill bit in a cordless drill and let it follow the existing hole and drill through the patched piece.
Saw Pneumatic tool Handheld power drill Drill Wood


Tire Automotive tire Tread Wood Camera lens


Now I have a hole to use for alignment to drill out the 7/16" counterbore. I chucked the 5/16 drill up in my mill (drill press will work too, you'll just want to use a twist drill to pilot for a flat-bottom drill) and push the tote up on it.
Automotive tire Bumper Automotive exterior Gas Composite material


Then I bring the vise so it aligns with the tote and clamp it down. There are more precise ways to get the tote positioned and angled properly. But this way is super fast and easy and has never failed me.

Now it's just a matter of removing the 5/16" drill and putting a 7/16" end mill in the spindle and boring down a little at a time until we remove all of the repair material.
Automotive tire Stonemason's hammer Tool Wood Motor vehicle


Wood Gas Metalworking Artisan Machine


And we're done. I took it off and checked the fit with the threaded rod and cylindrical nut and we're good to go :)
Wood Everyday carry Ruler Wood stain Hardwood


Guitar accessory Wood Musical instrument accessory Ruler Office ruler


Now we can see the color ain't so good…
Ruler Office ruler Wood Tape measure Tableware


I'm gonna give it a few days out in the sunlight and see how close it gets. Cocobolo turns pretty dark pretty quick with oxidation and UV exposure.
Human body Wood Human leg Metal Foot


Human body Wood Plant Asphalt Tree


So I'll just wait and see if I'm happy with the color match after letting it darken naturally. If not, we may see an entry on torching Cocobolo or dying it. Or both :) Otherwise, the next entry will be on the finishing schedule for this tote and the knob. I'm not going to cover prepping of the knob in this blog. My method is the same as it was in my old blog. The only difference is that with this Cocobolo, I'll sand to a finer grit than I did in that blog.

So thanks for reading and I'll be back when I get some more progress under my belt…

Edit to add: I know most people don't have a milling machine and a lot of people may not even have a drill press. So I wanted to give an alternative to opening the hole back up on top in the absence of either of those machines. This video was shared with me by LJ Kent in a forum thread the other day. At about the 35 minute mark, he shows how he uses a Dremel tool to carefully size the hole in the repair piece to match the existing bore in the original wood. The whole video is worth a watch. He's pretty much doing an identical repair to the one I did in this blog post but he has some very different ways to skin the cat from how I did it. You may find his more accessible than my own :)
 

Attachments

#88 ·
Tote Repair

I fully intended to do the tote repair and the refinishing of the tote and knob in one post but shop time has been scarce so I'm going to just go ahead and cover the repair of the broken horn on the tote and circle back with another entry when I get the finishing done.

Looking at the before picture of this plane, we can see that the tote has suffered a grievous injury.
Plane Scrub plane Jack plane Rebate plane Smoothing plane


So let's do a little surgery :)

First thing I did was to use a fine belt on my belt grinder and remove the bulk of the film finish.
Window Gas Knee Human leg Wrist


Once most of the finish is gone, there are some minor facets created and there is still some finish left in the hard-to-reach spots. So I switch to hand sanding with these handy rubber thingamabobbers I have for sanding inside and outside curves.
Musical instrument Wood Flooring Gas Hardwood


I sand with 100 grit just enough to remove the rest of the finish, smooth out the facets created on the belt grinder and bring the entire piece to a uniform scratch pattern. Throughout the sanding process, I am careful to sand with the grain which can be difficult at times…
Wood Gas Engineering Metalworking Machine


Eventually we end up with a sanded piece with no finish left. For the time being, I stop at the 100 grit. I'll sand up to higher grits before finishing but I'll wait until after the horn repair is complete to sand any further.
Wood Tints and shades Font Hardwood Metal


Brown Wood Trunk Tints and shades Hardwood


I took the tote off one of my other planes and used it as a template for the new horn. Here we have the busted tote sitting on top of the good one.
Stonemason's hammer Hand tool Wood Wind instrument Metalworking hand tool


I select a piece of Cocobolo that I think will match pretty well in color and grain and cut a small piece.
Wood Outdoor furniture Sculpture Brick Art


Then I cut the tote just below the break so I have a clean, flat surface to work off of.
Wood Gas Auto part Tool Machine


I cut the repair piece at an angle so that when glued together, the grain will run in the same direction.
Brown Wood Hardwood Font Wood stain


Now I mix up some 2 part epoxy and dye it a very dark red. I could use yellow glue, I have often with Cocobolo, but I want to use epoxy in this case so I can dye it to help hide the repair line.
Automotive lighting Wood Liquid Gas Tints and shades


And we marry the pieces together. I now pronounce you tote and horn.
Wood Wood stain Hardwood Plank Natural material


Wood Saw Gas Workbench Hardwood


I've seen several clever ways to hold odd-shaped pieces like these together when gluing. My leg vise and a holdfast get the job done more often than not though.

After letting the epoxy cure overnight, I go back to the belt grinder and carefully sand the repair piece so it's flush with the sides of the tote. This makes it easier to do the next step which is bandsawing. I laid the template on top and marked the outline and then went to the bandsaw and removed the excess material being careful to leave my layout line.
Wood Bicycle part Hardwood Automotive tire Table


Wood Font Art Metal Hardwood


Next is the long part. It's always tempting to me to use my belt sander and OSS or rotary tool to shape this but it never, ever comes out like I hoped. I'm sure some people use power tools and get great results. But for me, I take my time and pull out some rasps and sandpaper.

I start by using a sculptor's rasp to put the radii in. I use the radii on the existing part as a guide and just try to make the transition smooth, consistent and symmetric.
Wood Flooring Hardwood Automotive tire Art


Wood Sculpture Artifact Art Rectangle


Table Wood Metalworking hand tool Wood stain Hardwood


After I'm pretty happy with that general shape, I lay my template on top and mark the radius at the end.
Wood Tool Elbow Wrist Hardwood


Wood Wood stain Hardwood Plank Lumber


Then it's more rasping to bring the shape down to that line.
Wood Table Natural material Wood stain Hardwood


Finally we're pretty close to our final shape.
Wood Composite material Tire Wood stain Gas


Wood Sculpture Hardwood Terrestrial animal Wood stain


But it still looks kind of "blocky" and there are some pretty rough spots left from the rasps. So, we go back to 100 grit sandpaper and the rubber shapes to do the final shaping.
Hand Hand tool Bicycle tire Wood Tool


Eventually I get where I'm happy with it.
Liquid Drinkware Beer Tableware Fluid


Hand tool Wood Tool Metalworking hand tool Engineering


One last problem to tackle. We've partially covered up the counterbore for the cylindrical nut that fixes the tote to the base. The thru hole is 5/16" on this tote so I take a 5/16" drill bit in a cordless drill and let it follow the existing hole and drill through the patched piece.
Saw Pneumatic tool Handheld power drill Drill Wood


Tire Automotive tire Tread Wood Camera lens


Now I have a hole to use for alignment to drill out the 7/16" counterbore. I chucked the 5/16 drill up in my mill (drill press will work too, you'll just want to use a twist drill to pilot for a flat-bottom drill) and push the tote up on it.
Automotive tire Bumper Automotive exterior Gas Composite material


Then I bring the vise so it aligns with the tote and clamp it down. There are more precise ways to get the tote positioned and angled properly. But this way is super fast and easy and has never failed me.

Now it's just a matter of removing the 5/16" drill and putting a 7/16" end mill in the spindle and boring down a little at a time until we remove all of the repair material.
Automotive tire Stonemason's hammer Tool Wood Motor vehicle


Wood Gas Metalworking Artisan Machine


And we're done. I took it off and checked the fit with the threaded rod and cylindrical nut and we're good to go :)
Wood Everyday carry Ruler Wood stain Hardwood


Guitar accessory Wood Musical instrument accessory Ruler Office ruler


Now we can see the color ain't so good…
Ruler Office ruler Wood Tape measure Tableware


I'm gonna give it a few days out in the sunlight and see how close it gets. Cocobolo turns pretty dark pretty quick with oxidation and UV exposure.
Human body Wood Human leg Metal Foot


Human body Wood Plant Asphalt Tree


So I'll just wait and see if I'm happy with the color match after letting it darken naturally. If not, we may see an entry on torching Cocobolo or dying it. Or both :) Otherwise, the next entry will be on the finishing schedule for this tote and the knob. I'm not going to cover prepping of the knob in this blog. My method is the same as it was in my old blog. The only difference is that with this Cocobolo, I'll sand to a finer grit than I did in that blog.

So thanks for reading and I'll be back when I get some more progress under my belt…

Edit to add: I know most people don't have a milling machine and a lot of people may not even have a drill press. So I wanted to give an alternative to opening the hole back up on top in the absence of either of those machines. This video was shared with me by LJ Kent in a forum thread the other day. At about the 35 minute mark, he shows how he uses a Dremel tool to carefully size the hole in the repair piece to match the existing bore in the original wood. The whole video is worth a watch. He's pretty much doing an identical repair to the one I did in this blog post but he has some very different ways to skin the cat from how I did it. You may find his more accessible than my own :)
nice job on the restoration kenny,great job showing the process.
 

Attachments

#105 ·
Put a Fork In It

Well, a mere 6 months after starting this series, I'm finally ready to wrap it up…

So let's dive right in! When last I left off, I had finished repairing the tote. So now it was time to finish the tote and knob. The tote had been sanded back so the original film finish was removed before I did the horn repair. I just sanded it up through some higher grits stopping at 400. The knob still had the film finish so I sanded it back. I still do knobs the same basic way I detailed in this old blog post except I have found that I prefer to work on it on my lathe rather than on the drill press. Better speed control and it's just more comfortable.
Bicycle handlebar Bicycle part Gas Plumbing Plumbing fitting


I have also found that using a flanged tee-nut instead of hex nuts lets me chuck up right against the flat and have the knob closer to the chuck and therefore less runout making it easier to sand.
Tool Gas Wood Engineering Drill


So I sanded it up through the same grits to 400 like the tote. In contrast to how I've always finished the knobs and totes on my planes, I was seduced by the shiny side via Sansoo22's finished pieces ;-) Until now, all of my planes have just had the wood oiled and waxed as shown in the blog post I linked earlier. However I decided to go a different route on these. Sansoo uses a poly and finish wax schedule. But I wanted something with a little less gloss but also something that enhanced the wood on this plane.

So after a little research, I decided to give it a go with a modified French Polishing schedule. I am very happy with how the finish ended up on these so I'm going to give the details below. Note that the below details how it was applied to the tote specifically. The schedule was the same for the knob but I applied the shellac on the lathe running at slow speed rather than rubbing it on.

  • Three coats of shellac at a 3# cut. Let cure overnight.
  • After third coat, wet sand with mineral spirits at 600 grit until finish feels smooth. It may look duller in some areas but that's okay at this point. The goal here is fill the grain.
  • Apply 2 coats of 2# cut shellac and let cure overnight.
  • Wet sand with mineral spirits at 800 or 1000 grit. Sand lightly. Just enough to denib and level out the surface. Finish should feel smooth and appear even. If not, repeat 2# coats and wet sand until it is.
  • After sanding, blow clean with compressed air (or use tack cloth if you prefer) and wipe lightly with denatured alcohol.
  • Make a French Polishing pad with a wadding of wool the size of a large marble for the center and a clean, lint-free cotton cloth wrapped around it. Pad should be small enough to get into tight corners on the tote but as large as possible while doing so. When tightly wound, pad should make a ball of 1/2 to 3/4 inch diameter. Apply 2# shellac to the wool center so it's wet but not saturated. When banging pad on back of hand, only a trace amount of shellac should come through cotton outer layer onto hand. Put two drops of mineral or olive oil on pad, applied directly to outer layer, to reduce friction.
  • Rub shellac onto wood in tight circular motion moving quickly and never pausing. If you see application being less obvious, stop and add some shellac to the center wadding. If it starts to get harder to move the pad, add another drop of oil to the surface. Continue to apply to full surface until it looks even and has a deliberate "wet" look. This probably takes 5-10 passes over the whole part to complete.
  • Add 3 or 4 drops of DNA to the surface of the pad and wipe with the grain in fast, light passes. NEVER let the pad sit in a spot on the wood. It must be in continuous motion. This step is to remove any residual oil from the surface of the shellac and to even out any swirl marks from application. Repeat until finish looks smooth and streak free. Usually 1 or 2 passes over the part are sufficient. Let cure overnight.
  • Repeat previous step until finish builds and is streak free and even. Focus each coat on areas that appear duller. I ended up doing 5 coats as detailed using the 2# cut. Some instructions recommend upwards of 20 coats. Do what looks and feels right!
  • After final coat of 2# shellac applied as above let finish cure for 3 days then wet sand lightly with 1200 grit using mineral spirits. This is just to denib and lower any high areas of the finish. Don't sand any more than necessary. Blow clean after sanding and wipe lightly with DNA with the grain.
  • Mix a 1# cut of shellac and put a new cotton cloth on your center wadding. Apply 1# cut same as before using the pad and oil to reduce friction. Do not wipe with DNA after this coat. Let cure overnight.
  • Before starting each subsequent coat of 1# shellac, rub down with a second pad containing only a few drops of DNA. This is after the previous coat has cured overnight and any entrained oil should have risen to the surface. The purpose is to remove residual oil. Wipe pad with the grain and in constant motion. NEVER let it sit in one spot.
  • Do 3 coats of 1# shellac and let the final coat cure for 3 days.
  • If it looks and feels good, you're done! If not, wet sand lightly to even out any high spots and repeat 1# coats as many times as necessary.
  • To knock the sheen down slightly after shellac is fully cured, apply a coat of paste wax with 0000 steel wool.

At least that's how I think I remember doing it… I kinda winged it. Here's a good write up on the French Polishing method in much better detail. Derive your own recipe from there :) I will say that this finishing schedule wasn't labor intensive but it was time intensive. It took me about 3 weeks with all of the coats and curing time. Is it worth it? I dunno. I'll probably do it again but I'm still tempted to try Sansoo's method with poly and see how it compares in looks and feel. I love the look and feel of the shellac but I also question how well it will stand the test of time.

Here are some in-process shots during the finishing stage.
Tire Bicycle tire Wheel Bicycle handlebar Bicycle frame


Bicycle tire Bottle Automotive design Bicycle part Bicycle saddle


Automotive lighting Automotive design Gas Audio equipment Bumper


Enough about the wood! Moving on to the lever cap… After making the wood glossy and the brass and steel all shiny, the lever cap just wasn't going to do in its current condition:
Table Wood Saw Tool Gas


So, I wire brushed it and polished it up:
Wood Gas Audio equipment Font Metal


But in the process, I lost the paint in the recess. So, I masked it up and shot some of the red paint I used for the frog on it covering the recess and the raised letters:
Wood Rectangle Brick Gas Tints and shades


Then I masked it back up to prevent marring the polished surface and used some micro-mesh sanding sticks to remove the paint from the raised letters.
Wood Tool Table Hunting knife Wood stain


Font Gas Electric blue Publication Automotive tire


And done:
Wood Gas Font Hardwood Adhesive


And that pretty much sums it up :) I did work up the iron and chipbreaker but my method is unchanged from how I did it in this blog post so I won't rehash it here.

So we went from the before:
Plane Scrub plane Jack plane Rebate plane Smoothing plane


To the after:
Plant Automotive tire Hood Vehicle Automotive design


Hood Automotive lighting Automotive mirror Motor vehicle Bumper


Hood Car Vehicle Asphalt Automotive mirror


Hood Motor vehicle Bumper Automotive design Vehicle door


So she's pretty but is she useful?

Well, not at first :-( I was getting this:
Automotive tire Hood Automotive lighting Skyscraper Material property


I initially thought my chipbreaker wasn't doing its job properly and I needed to go back to work on it. But then when I removed the blade/chipbreaker the clog fell out. It wasn't stuck on the chipbreaker but instead the mouth was too tight. Then I remembered that I put the frog on way back after painting so I wouldn't misplace it but hadn't actually set the position. It was set a bit too far forward. So, I moved it back so the blade bed was flush with the ramp at the back of the mouth and put the cutter assembly back in. After a few swipes and a couple of taps on the lateral lever, voila :)
Scrub plane Plane Block plane Jack plane Rebate plane


Wood Hand tool Tool Kitchen utensil Hardwood


Wood Hardwood Flooring Lumber Plywood


Full width shavings in short order. No, those aren't the gossamer thin shavings you usually see when somebody is showing off their plane. But this big boy is no smoother and he don't eat salad! I set it for about a .008" cut which is about how I like my jointers set. They aren't scrubbing anything so they don't need a real big bite. But I don't want to take 100 passes before I get a face fully flattened either so it needs to take a big enough bite to do that efficiently. And it'll get followed up with a smoother to do the final surfacing so a little tearout or edge tracks can be dealt with.

So there we are. This series ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated but at least I got my annual series done before Thanksgiving! My intention was to supplement my original series on rehabbing planes so hopefully these entries are helpful with some things that weren't covered previously. Thanks for reading and comments and questions are always welcome. And I constantly learn new and better ways to do parts of of plane rehabs so by all means, if you have suggestions on how I can do something better or easier, let me know!
 

Attachments

#106 ·
Put a Fork In It

Well, a mere 6 months after starting this series, I'm finally ready to wrap it up…

So let's dive right in! When last I left off, I had finished repairing the tote. So now it was time to finish the tote and knob. The tote had been sanded back so the original film finish was removed before I did the horn repair. I just sanded it up through some higher grits stopping at 400. The knob still had the film finish so I sanded it back. I still do knobs the same basic way I detailed in this old blog post except I have found that I prefer to work on it on my lathe rather than on the drill press. Better speed control and it's just more comfortable.
Bicycle handlebar Bicycle part Gas Plumbing Plumbing fitting


I have also found that using a flanged tee-nut instead of hex nuts lets me chuck up right against the flat and have the knob closer to the chuck and therefore less runout making it easier to sand.
Tool Gas Wood Engineering Drill


So I sanded it up through the same grits to 400 like the tote. In contrast to how I've always finished the knobs and totes on my planes, I was seduced by the shiny side via Sansoo22's finished pieces ;-) Until now, all of my planes have just had the wood oiled and waxed as shown in the blog post I linked earlier. However I decided to go a different route on these. Sansoo uses a poly and finish wax schedule. But I wanted something with a little less gloss but also something that enhanced the wood on this plane.

So after a little research, I decided to give it a go with a modified French Polishing schedule. I am very happy with how the finish ended up on these so I'm going to give the details below. Note that the below details how it was applied to the tote specifically. The schedule was the same for the knob but I applied the shellac on the lathe running at slow speed rather than rubbing it on.

  • Three coats of shellac at a 3# cut. Let cure overnight.
  • After third coat, wet sand with mineral spirits at 600 grit until finish feels smooth. It may look duller in some areas but that's okay at this point. The goal here is fill the grain.
  • Apply 2 coats of 2# cut shellac and let cure overnight.
  • Wet sand with mineral spirits at 800 or 1000 grit. Sand lightly. Just enough to denib and level out the surface. Finish should feel smooth and appear even. If not, repeat 2# coats and wet sand until it is.
  • After sanding, blow clean with compressed air (or use tack cloth if you prefer) and wipe lightly with denatured alcohol.
  • Make a French Polishing pad with a wadding of wool the size of a large marble for the center and a clean, lint-free cotton cloth wrapped around it. Pad should be small enough to get into tight corners on the tote but as large as possible while doing so. When tightly wound, pad should make a ball of 1/2 to 3/4 inch diameter. Apply 2# shellac to the wool center so it's wet but not saturated. When banging pad on back of hand, only a trace amount of shellac should come through cotton outer layer onto hand. Put two drops of mineral or olive oil on pad, applied directly to outer layer, to reduce friction.
  • Rub shellac onto wood in tight circular motion moving quickly and never pausing. If you see application being less obvious, stop and add some shellac to the center wadding. If it starts to get harder to move the pad, add another drop of oil to the surface. Continue to apply to full surface until it looks even and has a deliberate "wet" look. This probably takes 5-10 passes over the whole part to complete.
  • Add 3 or 4 drops of DNA to the surface of the pad and wipe with the grain in fast, light passes. NEVER let the pad sit in a spot on the wood. It must be in continuous motion. This step is to remove any residual oil from the surface of the shellac and to even out any swirl marks from application. Repeat until finish looks smooth and streak free. Usually 1 or 2 passes over the part are sufficient. Let cure overnight.
  • Repeat previous step until finish builds and is streak free and even. Focus each coat on areas that appear duller. I ended up doing 5 coats as detailed using the 2# cut. Some instructions recommend upwards of 20 coats. Do what looks and feels right!
  • After final coat of 2# shellac applied as above let finish cure for 3 days then wet sand lightly with 1200 grit using mineral spirits. This is just to denib and lower any high areas of the finish. Don't sand any more than necessary. Blow clean after sanding and wipe lightly with DNA with the grain.
  • Mix a 1# cut of shellac and put a new cotton cloth on your center wadding. Apply 1# cut same as before using the pad and oil to reduce friction. Do not wipe with DNA after this coat. Let cure overnight.
  • Before starting each subsequent coat of 1# shellac, rub down with a second pad containing only a few drops of DNA. This is after the previous coat has cured overnight and any entrained oil should have risen to the surface. The purpose is to remove residual oil. Wipe pad with the grain and in constant motion. NEVER let it sit in one spot.
  • Do 3 coats of 1# shellac and let the final coat cure for 3 days.
  • If it looks and feels good, you're done! If not, wet sand lightly to even out any high spots and repeat 1# coats as many times as necessary.
  • To knock the sheen down slightly after shellac is fully cured, apply a coat of paste wax with 0000 steel wool.

At least that's how I think I remember doing it… I kinda winged it. Here's a good write up on the French Polishing method in much better detail. Derive your own recipe from there :) I will say that this finishing schedule wasn't labor intensive but it was time intensive. It took me about 3 weeks with all of the coats and curing time. Is it worth it? I dunno. I'll probably do it again but I'm still tempted to try Sansoo's method with poly and see how it compares in looks and feel. I love the look and feel of the shellac but I also question how well it will stand the test of time.

Here are some in-process shots during the finishing stage.
Tire Bicycle tire Wheel Bicycle handlebar Bicycle frame


Bicycle tire Bottle Automotive design Bicycle part Bicycle saddle


Automotive lighting Automotive design Gas Audio equipment Bumper


Enough about the wood! Moving on to the lever cap… After making the wood glossy and the brass and steel all shiny, the lever cap just wasn't going to do in its current condition:
Table Wood Saw Tool Gas


So, I wire brushed it and polished it up:
Wood Gas Audio equipment Font Metal


But in the process, I lost the paint in the recess. So, I masked it up and shot some of the red paint I used for the frog on it covering the recess and the raised letters:
Wood Rectangle Brick Gas Tints and shades


Then I masked it back up to prevent marring the polished surface and used some micro-mesh sanding sticks to remove the paint from the raised letters.
Wood Tool Table Hunting knife Wood stain


Font Gas Electric blue Publication Automotive tire


And done:
Wood Gas Font Hardwood Adhesive


And that pretty much sums it up :) I did work up the iron and chipbreaker but my method is unchanged from how I did it in this blog post so I won't rehash it here.

So we went from the before:
Plane Scrub plane Jack plane Rebate plane Smoothing plane


To the after:
Plant Automotive tire Hood Vehicle Automotive design


Hood Automotive lighting Automotive mirror Motor vehicle Bumper


Hood Car Vehicle Asphalt Automotive mirror


Hood Motor vehicle Bumper Automotive design Vehicle door


So she's pretty but is she useful?

Well, not at first :-( I was getting this:
Automotive tire Hood Automotive lighting Skyscraper Material property


I initially thought my chipbreaker wasn't doing its job properly and I needed to go back to work on it. But then when I removed the blade/chipbreaker the clog fell out. It wasn't stuck on the chipbreaker but instead the mouth was too tight. Then I remembered that I put the frog on way back after painting so I wouldn't misplace it but hadn't actually set the position. It was set a bit too far forward. So, I moved it back so the blade bed was flush with the ramp at the back of the mouth and put the cutter assembly back in. After a few swipes and a couple of taps on the lateral lever, voila :)
Scrub plane Plane Block plane Jack plane Rebate plane


Wood Hand tool Tool Kitchen utensil Hardwood


Wood Hardwood Flooring Lumber Plywood


Full width shavings in short order. No, those aren't the gossamer thin shavings you usually see when somebody is showing off their plane. But this big boy is no smoother and he don't eat salad! I set it for about a .008" cut which is about how I like my jointers set. They aren't scrubbing anything so they don't need a real big bite. But I don't want to take 100 passes before I get a face fully flattened either so it needs to take a big enough bite to do that efficiently. And it'll get followed up with a smoother to do the final surfacing so a little tearout or edge tracks can be dealt with.

So there we are. This series ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated but at least I got my annual series done before Thanksgiving! My intention was to supplement my original series on rehabbing planes so hopefully these entries are helpful with some things that weren't covered previously. Thanks for reading and comments and questions are always welcome. And I constantly learn new and better ways to do parts of of plane rehabs so by all means, if you have suggestions on how I can do something better or easier, let me know!
Awesome job Ken that came out beautiful
 

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