Plane fun! — Boatworks

I got few old wooden planes which were used by my grandfather and my father, occasionally. I’m especially excited about rabbet plane as I didn’t have one yet. The other plane is a mid-size bench plane, close to Stanley 4 size so I have it covered already with metal plane - but, in preparation for major rebuild work next season, I will modify this wooden plane to be convex-sole plane, for hollowing planks. The third plane I took from my father with aim of renovating it and giving back to him.

All these planes are in rough shape. They were nothing special in the days they were new - but they can work nicely and I like the idea of adjusting the plane iron with hammer taps. It is not difficult but not as straightforward as in metal planes where one has knobs for every adjustment. Here, in wooden planes, you need to get a feeling on where and how strong to tap for having iron adjusted as you need. Art in itself.

I started with rabbet plane.

First I wanted to clean and true the back side of the iron: it was rusty and seemed to be out of flat. Half an hour on 400-grit stone made the back of iron clean and flat enough to my taste. Polished a bit on 800 and 5000 stones and then moved to the beveled face.

Here it was a mess. First of all, the plane had only primary bevel, no micro-bevel for sharp edge. Measured angle was around 30 degrees so I’ve decided to grind down the primary bevel to the usual 25 degrees and then establish secondary micro-bevel 5 degrees higher, to 30 degrees.

Here I started to shape the primary bevel at 25 degrees

It took almost 2 hours to finally grind all the way to the tip of this thick iron. At that point I could also clearly see that the iron is a lamination of two steel types: hardened top part which serves as a cutting edge and mild steel as backing - for strength and elasticity of the blade.

After grinding primary bevel the blade shows its structure of 2-part laminate

Once I got there I polished a bit the primary bevel on higher grade stones and then moved to producing micro-bevel for cutting edge.

While doing it I sharpened also my tiny and cheap hand plane. It’s really cheapo from Biltema by there is no reason to not have it sharp and ready for some small job.

The resulting edge is good enough for me: I could shave my hand with both irons. On rabbet plane iron I got some less-than-perfect face of secondary bevel, probably due to stone wear out or my fault during sharpening. I will correct it during next sharpening so no worries.

Still, compared to the other irons which wait in the queue these look pretty good.

Would I own Tormek T4 (or T8!) this job would take no more than 20 minutes. Maybe some day - but I find it difficult to justify so big expense while some spare time and elbow grease do the job just as well.
https://www.tormek.com/sweden/sv/maskinmodeller/tormek-t-4/

Next step for this plane is sole renovation - the wood is probably beechwood so nothing fancy like lignum vitae but hard enough to last.
I need to flatten the sole and true the sides against it. In this process the old finish will wear out - which is good because I will probably stain and then oil the wood, to have it satin and more pleasant for hands.

Dents from nails or misuse will need to be repaired with Dutchman-pieces. I have some nice beechwood in the workshop so it will have some good use here!