Categories
Planes Restoration

Calling from the graveyard…

Stanley No.9 Cabinet Maker Plane – Hot Dog
…yes, a Stanley No.9 Cabinet Makers plane, sans ‘hot dog’ handle for now. I’ve not yet had the chance to empty all these more boxes to confirm it’s gone awol for sure. The pics I have so far don’t fill me with promise, but I’ve worked miracles on planes not far off this condition. If it’s rusted through on the bottom though, I’ll be gutted.

Update: Bad News. Halfway through cleaning the plane up, I noticed the back corner was coming loose as there seemed to be a fracture. Sure enough, the rear corner of the plane came away. No idea what I should do with this now. I think it would be possible to weld/braze, but beyond my skills. If anyone out there wants to make an offer on a fixer-upper, let me know, otherwise it might go on eBay.

Stanley No9 Cabinet Maker Plane_2
Stanley No9 Cabinet Maker Plane_3

PS, check out Colin Sullivan’s post about making his own.

Categories
John Moseley & Sons Moulding planes

John Moseley ‘bead cluster’ plane

Moseley Cluster Bead _4
Moseley Cluster Bead _1
Moseley Cluster Bead _2
Moseley Cluster Bead _3
Very pleased to have sourced this rare plane. Now I finally have it in my hand, it’s very interesting indeed. It’s a ‘bead cluster’, or ‘cluster bead’, depending on who you’re talking to. The iron cuts a series of stepped rounds, piled on top of one another, probably best shown by this picture I found on the web.
I’m already a fan of John Moseley, largely due to the London connection, but also because his planes are so precise and well-made. I would like to know more about how and where the moulding this plane produces is used. I figure in fine casework certainly. Perhaps over a shutting joint, where one might have used a rebated astragal or similar, this would give an elegant alternative?
Any info gratefully received. At the price I paid for this, I won’t be posting any pictures of the plane in use, which goes totally against my philosophy of tools having to be used. Ho-hum, you make rules, you break them.

I buy old, good quality woodworking tools. If you have any tools you would like to sell, please get in touch using the contact form on the home page.

Categories
Planes Stanley

Meet the Baileys (Part 2)

Revel in the beauty that is the Stanley No.7 Jointer plane.

Stanley Bailey No.7
Stanley Bailey No.7

Stanley Bailey No.7
The blade that’s in this plane isn’t the original, although it’s a Stanley blade. I’ll switch it out when I get round to finding an original.

 

Stanley Bailey No.7
Coquettish ‘look at my bottom’ shot, shows small adjustment nut, and that steel lower bolt, that allows the whole frog to move forward and backward.

 

Stanley Bailey No.7
3rd-gen Bailey frog receiver, as seen on my other No.4 smoother. You can’t moan about these, they’re solid.

[notice]Tool Nerd Alert! The following information is reserved for people who, like me, probably should get out and socialise a bit more.[/notice]
I believe this plane is a Type 11. It has rosewood handle, and the front knob is a ‘low’ version. Manufacture date is therefore 1910-1918, and the blade should carry a pretty wacky ‘V’ ‘Stanley, New Britain, Conn, USA’ logo. It has a small brass depth adjuster nut and it has the ‘APR-19-10’ patent date added behind the other dates on the plane casting, behind the frog. Please let me know if I’ve got this wrong. You learn by your mistakes!

Stanley Bailey No.7
I could, and at some point will, write a long post about repairs. One of the things that attracted me to this plane, was the beautifully repaired handle. To me, a nicely done repair is as interesting as a makers mark. As with a lot of these finds, you can’t help but wonder who did this and exactly how he went about it. What a lovely job.

 

Stanley Bailey No.7
Someone wanted to make sure this didn’t get nicked!

 

Stanley Bailey No.7
As previously mentioned, this isn’t he original blade, and a close up shows it’s a bit crappy. However, this shot is just to show how a chipbreaker exaggerates the angle of the cut shaving, once the blade is slicing the wood. The chip breaker lifts the shaving a little more, making it break out.

Jointer planes like this one, are used to true an edge, so that successive pieces butt up against one another very closely, or they’re used to get the face of a piece of wood very flat. At 22″ long, it’s one of Stanley’s biggest planes, being only secondary to the No.8, which is 24″. Jointers are long planes because the ‘sole’ of the plane is less likely to follow the ups and downs of the wood, but will instead remove the high and lows, ready for planing with a smaller-sized plane.

I think these planes are just beautiful, and for not much money, you can snag one on an online auction site, and have a killer tool working in no time. If the one you find is rough, rusty and looks like crap, this is the sort of thing you need to do.

So there it is. The second of my Bailey family.

I buy old, good quality woodworking tools. If you have any tools you would like to sell, please get in touch using the contact form on the home page.

Categories
Planes Restoration

Stanley #48 restoration

This Stanley #48 is a tonguing and grooving plane. Designed to work on stock from 3/4″ to 1 1/4″, (the groove centers on stock 7/8″). It holds two cutters, and originally the one to the right was a wider one, meaning if you’re working with stock that isn’t 7/8″, the wider cutter will still trim it. To use the plane, you disengage the little sprung pin at the front, which releases the guide rail, and switches to either use one cutter, or two. You’re then set up to make the tongue, or the groove.
This plane has some rust, but should be serviceable once I can get the front pin and guide rail moving. Both are currently seized!

I’m hoping most of this is just surface rust. 🙁

I’ve found the best way to get something moving again usually involves a product called ‘WD40’. But even after several quirts of this, and a short wait, things are staying stubbornly solid.

Flipping the plane over, I can see that the front pin has a hole right through to the base, so in goes another big squirt of ‘WD40’, and the same for the central guide bolt, upon which the guide rail swings.

(Drums fingers on countertop).

TAA-DAA! The pin finally releases, with a bit of help from my pliers. (I put a bit of cloth on the jaws to make sure I didn’t mess up the pin’s head). The guide rail creaks into it’s first swing in years, and I add another liberal spray of ‘WD40’, just for luck.

I’m using a rust removal gel from ‘Hammerite’. A liberal coating goes on with my girlfriend’s toothbrush, (not the one she currently uses, I hasten to add). A wait of 20 mins, and let’s see how much rust comes away.

First application did pretty well, but another two coats and some scrubbing with very fine wire-wool, gets just about everything off.

The finished article gets a good wash of clean water and a dry with my girlfriend’s hairdryer. After that, a quick coat of oil to protect the metal from flash rust, and we’re good to go. The blades have been cleaned, honed and replaced. Just need to put the front rosewood knob back on and I’ll post some pics of this in use soon.

Swing out sister! 🙂