Restored vintage Rockwell 653 Versa Plane

I picked up a Rockwell 653 Versa Plane 10A 3" hand planer with a carbide spiral cutter head a few months and finally got all of the parts in for me to restore it yesterday.

I replaced all of the bearings, belt, cord, brush caps, replaced all of the screws with stainless, cleaned the housing and then buffed the entire planer to a quick somewhat mirror finish and took 250 grit sandpaper to the cutterhead to remove a little bit of rust.

I stripped the handle and dust chute, put on 2 coats of primer, 3 coats of flat black, 3 coats of high gloss black and 2 coats of clear coat.

Before








Disassembly/Reassembly



new bearings & retention ring




new cord installed and cleaned field installed. The field and armature looked basically brand new when I removed them and still had all of the painted factory markings on them like they were brand new.



Finished

I polished the entire house with a buffing wheel on my grinder, drill and dremel and a little bit of white rouge compound. I have never really buffed anything on a buffing wheel prior to now, so I was pretty happy with the results.






Sharpening jig for the cutterhead


Sharpening bar and grinding wheel. The planer came with the sharpening jig, instructions for the sharpening jig and the planer.


Edge guide. I still need to polish the aluminum and strip the bluing on the still and redo the bluing on the guide plate.