Bent/Loose Lateral Adjustment Lever

[Brett Woodall]

Hello all!

New to the forum here, and working on getting my first Stanley No. 5 Type 13 back in fighting shape. I've done the Evapo-Rust bath, 3M scrubbed the heck out of it, Johnson waxed 'er up, reassembled, and getting ready for the final tuning/sharpening with my new Work Sharp WS3000 (woot woot!). The only bump in the road thus far is that the lateral adjustment lever has become extremely loose after removing all the crust. It has a pretty noticeable downward bend in it towards the tote, and I'm wondering if I could tighten things up by straightening it out to cause more friction between it and the iron. I've searched the interwebs and SMC pretty thoroughly and think this is the issue, but I'm not familiar enough with these things to know if the bend is supposed to be there or not and want to make 100% sure before I go torquing away on my 90 year old tool. Apologies for the lack of images, but my feeble attempts at inserting an image or adding as an attachment have been unsuccessful to this point and it's too late to troubleshoot further. Any help is much appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Brett

[Moses Yoder]

The top of the lateral adjust lever should be in the same plane as the top of the frog. It absolutely does not matter that it is loose. Experienced hand tools users will use a small brass hammer for the lateral adjust of the iron, the lever is too hard to make fine adjustments. I would put the frog in a vise carefully (don't break it) take a straight edge for checking and bend the lever until it is even with the top of the frog. There is a chance it will pop out of the rivet but that is a different problem fairly easy to repair if it happens.

[Jim Koepke]

Bret,

Welcome to the Creek. Your profile doesn't list your location. You may live near another member who would be happy to help you with your lateral lever.

Did your searching turn up this post?

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthre...ker-to-Jointer

Not much on the lateral lever other than how to remove and replace it.

As Moses said, the lever started out straight. I would be careful and probably remove it before trying to straighten it. The cast iron on the frog is easy to break.

jtk