Stanley No. 78 - After

There were much less work to do in this project that I anticipated. This is mostly due to the awesome efficiency of a product called Evaporust. I don't want to turn this post into an infomercial, but it worked perfectly, didn't need to be handled with gloves and can be reused apparently a few more time. If you are a chemist geek, the secret is a chelator targeting only iron in the salt form and not the metallic form.

So let's have a before and after moment:

Before

After.

I'm still too impatient to truly polish this to a mirror surface.

I soaked all the parts in evaporust overnight, and rinsed them off  with minimal scrubbing using a toothbrush. I then lapped the sole using a dead flat piece of MDF and two successice grit of sand paper (100, 220). I was expecting that a plane that has been welded back together like this would be out of alignment. To my amazement: no. I don't know how my wife's grand-father managed to do this, but this plane was welded back with more precision than the flatness of my last blockplane right out of the box! The 100-grit sand paper proved to be unnecessary. A little sanding on all three sides and this bad boy was back into business.

This is it, the blade was very sharp, despite some 30 years or more of inactivity. I worked on it until the bevel was very flat and honed to a razor's edge. I can't wait to have to plane a rabbet by hand. 

I think that this plane date from anywhere between 1903 and 1913. This is a perfectly functional, 100 years old hand tool.