Can Pitted Stanley #4 Plane be Saved?

[Steve H Graham]

I came across a Stanley #4 plane. Probably came from Home Depot in the 1980s. I thought I might fix it up. I put sandpaper on a flat cast iron table and started sanding, and the photo shows what came out. There are pits that are probably 0.020" deep in one side of the sole.

I have a mill, and I can fly-cut this thing, but I am wondering if it's worth it. The sole isn't that thick to begin with, and I will have to take off 10% of it.

If it's a waste of time, I can pitch it and get one off Ebay.

05 29 15 Stanley 4 plane with sole pitting.jpg

[Jim Koepke]

Steve,

Sharpen the blade and see how it does as is. This will tell you if it is worth anything.

The sole doesn't need to be perfect to be a good user. If it won't cut true the way it is, it likely won't be a good user even if the sole is perfect.

jtk

[Terry Beadle]

I agree with Jim but.... That #4 can be sharpened and the sole left alone. Put a more pronounced crown on the blade when you sharpen it and use that #4 like a scrub plane only it won't be as roudy or leave as many ridges. It's just about the perfect weight for a scrub. Usually scrubs cost around a $100 so this #4 will be a bargain I'm guessing.

A sharp blade is more important to the success of a plane than the flatness of the sole IMO.

Enjoy the shavings !

[ken hatch]

Another agreeing with Jim with just a thought or two to add. If the toe of the sole and the area just in front of the iron are co-planar the plane should work well and from the photo the pits are not in that area. One more vote for sharpen that sucker and see what happens but I would not spend a lot of effort on a 1980's Stanley, type 9 through type 13 Stanley's are too cheap and plentiful to spend a lot of time re-furbishing other types.

[Ralph Boumenot]

convert it to a scrub plane, they don't care if they are pitted. Paul Sellers posted a youtube on how to do that.

[Doug McKay]

Try DevCon or JB Weld., it's already broke, can't hurt!

[Jim Koepke]

Good advice on making it into a scrub plane if it doesn't pass muster as a smoother.

There is almost always a way to turn lemons to lemonade.

jtk

[Steve H Graham]

Thanks. I know virtually nothing about planes, so it will take me a fair amount of Googling just to comprehend your answers. The planer and jointer are more my style. I found this thing lying around and felt like trying to fix it was better than putting it in the trash.

I took Jim's advice and sharpened it. Most of my tool activities are in machining, so I used what I use for metal lathe tools: an 8" grinder at 3450 RPM with a white aluminum oxide wheel. Apparently this is not the best choice. The steel turns blue almost instantly when it gets close to sharp, even if you're very careful and dunk it in water a lot. I managed to get a good edge and quit immediately.

I just restored a Rockwell 1 x 42 belt grinder and put a reversing DC motor on it. I am wondering if it would be a better tool for sharpening plane blades. I know a belt grinder can put a convex edge on a blade, which is bad, but I am thinking I could overcome that by backing the belt with the flat platen.

The edge was horrendous before I started. I don't know if someone bumped it into nails or tried to remove gum with it or what, but there were some dents in the steel that made it necessary to grind quite a bit off before there was even a possibility of getting a straight edge.

It makes shavings. That's all I can say at the moment.

How important is it to get a surgical edge with water stones and black magic and whatever? I used a jig and an 80-grit stone on the bench grinder and then used some worn-out 320 sandpaper to get the burrs off. I was going to see if I could improve it with a super-fine diamond stone (best stone I have), but then I noticed it shaved hairs off my arm pretty effortlessly, and I figured it was good enough for a test run. It's kind of hard for me to believe that the hair-splitting edges guys in DVDs get stay that sharp for than a few passes, but that's just me guessing.

[Richard Verwoest]

How would the pitting on the sole effect how it cuts? In theory, are these "pits" not the same as a grooved sole plane? And, if you wax the sole with paraffin wax, these pits would be filled and act as wax reservoirs.

[Bill Houghton]

How would the pitting on the sole effect how it cuts? In theory, are these "pits" not the same as a grooved sole plane? And, if you wax the sole with paraffin wax, these pits would be filled and act as wax reservoirs.

I prefer to think of pits in a plane sole, unless they're right at the mouth, as field-applied random corrugations. Use the plane.

[Allen Jordan]

Usually you don't bench grind right to the thin cutting edge, as it will burn easily. It's better to bench grind (using a slow grinder, ideally) a hollow on the bevel, but don't touch the last 1/32" or 1/16" or so, then hand hone on oil/water/diamond stones to get the edge (using the hollow as a flat reference on the stones). And yes, finer sharpening will make a significant difference when using the plane... you want to get to a few thousand grit at least. I use a 1k waterstone for raising the initial burr, then 15k waterstone for polishing. You could get away with less in a scrub-only usage.

[Ray Selinger]

I consider pits as random corrugations, so long as none are around the mouth. Sole flatness and finish can play an important roles. I was asking about a English Footprint chisel so I tried a UK forum and there an engineer discussed sole finish, it seems the math says the thinnest shaving that can be taken is measured in grit size of the finish. P360 was the magic number. That would also mean flatness. This pure heresy , but it's how good is the machining is, not the type. Is it flat, are the sides square, does the frog bear equally on it's bed, is frog top flat and at the same angle both sides ? If it is, it's golden. Nice to have is a frog adjuster screw. The brass and rosewood are pretty, though.

[Steve H Graham]

I dug out a 6000-grit diamond stone, lapped the back of the blade, and did my best to hone the beveled side without a jig. The plane seems to work okay, but I'm not qualified to judge. I have never actually planed the side of a board flat. Anyway, I think the tool is saved. Maybe I can improve the sole with a little more sanding.

It would be nice to be a little less dependent on machines that make noise and dust.

[Steve H Graham]

Here it is, working. I had no reference, so I dug out the #6 I got from a forum member a few years back and tried it for comparison. The difference was pretty obvious. Now that I've improved the blade a little, the 4 seems to work about as well as the 6, so I am surprised. I guess I won't have to Ebay another one right away.

Unless a knowledgeable woodworker drops by the house unexpectedly, I guess this is going to be the best test I can do today.


05 29 15 Stanley 4 plane sharpened and cleaned making shavings.jpg

Pardon the expensive high-tech woodworking clamp. I used what I had handy.

Thanks for the help. Maybe some of you don't know what it's like to be hopelessly ignorant and depend on books, DVDs, and the web. That is my life. From the material I had seen, I had started to believe a plane had to be a spectacular and pristine piece of precision machining. I didn't realize a junker like this could come back to life.

I still want an old Millers Falls though. They're just cool.

[Steve Voigt]

Thanks for the help. Maybe some of you don't know what it's like to be hopelessly ignorant and depend on books, DVDs, and the web. That is my life.

I think that description has fit, at least at some point most of the participants here. You have to start somewhere. I was a machinist once too. I went from programming a Fadal 6030 to using mostly tools designed in the 18th century. Go figure.

About your plane: The pitting on the sole will have absolutely zero effect on the plane's performance. If the sole is reasonably flat and everything else is in working order, there's no reason that it can't be as good a smoothing plane as any. I would give the rest of the plane some TLC; clean up the adjusters so they work smoothly, clean up the sides and handles a little.

I took Jim's advice and sharpened it. Most of my tool activities are in machining, so I used what I use for metal lathe tools: an 8" grinder at 3450 RPM with a white aluminum oxide wheel. Apparently this is not the best choice. The steel turns blue almost instantly when it gets close to sharp, even if you're very careful and dunk it in water a lot. I managed to get a good edge and quit immediately.

Sharpening woodworking tools is very different than machine shop sharpening. Fortunately there are plenty of sources of info out there. All the methods work, so choose the one that fits your budget and your skills. As others said, you can definitely use your dry grinder; you just need to lighten your touch. And you definitely want to hone afterwards. Maybe adding in your diamond stone, since you already have it, would be a good first step that wouldn't cost you anything.

How important is it to get a surgical edge with water stones and black magic and whatever? I used a jig and an 80-grit stone on the bench grinder and then used some worn-out 320 sandpaper to get the burrs off. I was going to see if I could improve it with a super-fine diamond stone (best stone I have), but then I noticed it shaved hairs off my arm pretty effortlessly, and I figured it was good enough for a test run. It's kind of hard for me to believe that the hair-splitting edges guys in DVDs get stay that sharp for than a few passes, but that's just me guessing.

It depends on the wood and your expectations. Planing a straight-grained, friendly piece of wood can be done with a pretty rough edge, but if you want to plane a piece of curly maple and finish it without sanding, you'll have to work a little harder. So start with the easy stuff and work your way up.
It's true that a "hair-splitting" edge will not stay that way for many passes, but that sort of misses the point. A roughly honed edge has micro-serrations that are where damage (tearing, chipping) starts, whereas a a finely honed edge is much harder to damage. So the rough edge will become unusable after relatively few passes. The finer edge will lose its ultimate sharpness fairly quickly, but overall the edge will remain usable for much longer.
Anyway, good luck and welcome to the dark side.