Q: how ould you clean up the knobs on a #80

[Brad Ridgway]

I just got an old and rather beat up scraper plane... The nickel coating on the three thumb screws is mostly gone and just in real bad shape. What would you recommend in terms of getting then to a decent opinion? thinking of removing all the plating and then trying to polish as much as possible but i'm not so sure what's under there will look good...

FYI: if this were to impact the recommendation on the knobs, i bought this to use, not to collect and I'm debating re-japaning these when i do the bench planes vs just spraying with maybe a gloss rustolium (the latter seems a lot easier for a user).

thx in advance
-brad

[Jim Koepke]

I just got an old and rather beat up scraper plane... The nickel coating on the three thumb screws is mostly gone and just in real bad shape. What would you recommend in terms of getting then to a decent opinion? thinking of removing all the plating and then trying to polish as much as possible but i'm not so sure what's under there will look good...

FYI: if this were to impact the recommendation on the knobs, i bought this to use, not to collect and I'm debating re-japaning these when i do the bench planes vs just spraying with maybe a gloss rustolium (the latter seems a lot easier for a user).

thx in advance
-brad

This would depend on how involved you want to get. Having some experience with plating, if a fine display piece was wanted, then my choice would be to redo the plating on the screws.

It is not all that hard to do. It could likely be done with a battery, some nickel sulfate solution.

There are also electroless solutions available. Do a web search on nickel plating.

The tricky part is the metal prep and what to do with the chemicals when you are done.

jim

[Bill Houghton]

...i bought this to use, not to collect...

An opinion from someone who thinks that a shiny pickup truck is probably embarrassed when it's parked next to one that shows signs that it's been used to work...though I respect those for whom the shiny matters.

I use SOS pads in warm water for most of my plane cleanup. The steel wool/soap combination will loosen up everything loose and clean up the steel parts. It won't be shiny pretty, but I haven't found that the wood can tell.

You don't need to replate/rejapan a tool unless you plan to enter it in the concours or unless having a shiny tool is emotionally important to you.

Sharp and tuned is a different matter, but a No. 80 doesn't need much tuneup.