I have been trying to arrange my small basement workshop. In the organization part of this, I was placing all of my hand planes into a single large drawer in a new cabinet that I built and I realized that I had two hand planes that I acquired and they were in bad shape. One is a number 5 and one is a number 6.
- Step 1: Remove the rust. Done!
- Step 2: Polish the back of the blades...
OK, so I started with the back of the number 5 iron, and it has a pretty large hollow on the back of the blade. After wearing out my arms trying to polish up the back of the blade I remembered that I have a spare Hock blade, so, I polished the back of that one. I will come back to the other blade later I think.
Then, I took the original chip breaker / cap iron and.... the bottom part was not square, so, if I put it on the blade, I could have the left side at the very end of the blade and the right side was 1/8" back. I pulled out a grinder and squared that up. Then, I put the chip breaker onto the blade, it touched the blade on the left and the right, but, I could see light through the middle section. I was in the process of flattening this part out when I received a phone call, so I have not finished with this yet, but, I am surprised how many things were so out of sorts with this plane.
Is this normal? I do not ever remember noticing a chip breaker this far out of square, or, for that matter, one that mated so poorly with the blade. I figure that I will rehab the existing chip breaker, and, if that works poorly, I might procure a hock chip breaker to go with the hock blade.