A friend ended up with a Stanley 220 handplane his father-in-law had. He had no use for it nor his children. He knew I was an avid woodworker and gave it to me. The sole was pitted but looked like it might be brought back to a good surface with some sanding. I was in the middle of making a Mission Style Mantel Clock from Klockit, but thought I'd see if the hand plane's pitted surface wasn't too far gone. So I brought out my three pieces of 30" x 7" float glass with graduated adhesive sandpaper on them. Set them up on the other side of the outfeed table I was working on and started to see how much work it would take to eliminate the pits. Amazingly the metal seemed to be soft and the pits started to disappear rather easily. I was so encouraged I continued to work on the hand plane until I had the sole and both sides down to no pits on my 320 grit paper. At that point I quit and wandered over to the other side of the outfeed table where the Mission Mantel clock door had been just glued together. Ohhh my God, the dark metal particles from the hand plane I swept away from the sandpaper made their way 5' over to the clock area, and the African Mahogany looked like it had been in a dark dust storm. I used my compressor to blow off the loose stuff, but the particles were so small they made it into the grain and I ended up big time sanding, even using the planer in desperation (just lightly, which worked reasonably well). Needles to say, yes, I knew better, but was just too curious and in a small basement shop, I don't have a lot of separate areas to work. But for what it's worth, maybe this lesson will save someone else the grief. Metal particles can travel!
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Originally Posted by Myk Rian
