Wednesday, August 24, 2011

The Gang's All Here!

I have been trolling Ebay for the last month or so looking for hand tools, especially planes. I'm sorry if I'm the one who stole something away from you, but I lost many more auctions than I won, as I'm sure everybody knows!

Today, I arrived home to two boxes on  the porch, containing the last two Stanley planes I needed to have what I feel is a pretty good start of a collection. (I had to rush them to the shop before YKW got home and found me getting "MORE PLANES!?!")

They are all Baileys, including #3, #4, #4 1/2, #5, #6, and #7. I also grabbed a #220 block plane and #190 in my hunts. I'm keeping my eyes open for others, but in what I've been reading, this is more than enough to set up as "users."

Honestly, I've done nothing with any of the planes, except admire them as they struck sexy poses on the table in the corner. I have had a couple of hand planes for several year (bottom of mystery buckets from estate auctions), including a not very old Craftsman something or other. Last week, I stripped it apart and soaked it in Evapo-Rust and used a toothbrush to get the gunk out of it. It looks much nicer, but is no where near usable yet. I have a lot to learn, but wanted to practice on something that I didn't feel was too valuable. I still need to clean on it some more, but I also need to figure out how to tune and sharpen it. Once I get comfortable with that, I'll try it out on my other no-name. Then it will be time to start in on the REAL planes.

Check out the pictures below and let me know if you know anything about any of these or have any advise. I've bookmarked Patrick's Blood and Gore but other than a quick check to make sure what I was buying had some worth, I haven't had much time to study up on my specific planes yet. And I keep finding more LJs that are simply artists when it comes to restoring planes, so I've been hanging on their every post as I run across them.

Thanks for checking this out!

Here's the whole Stanley gang together for the first time!


These are the "Before" pictures of the Craftsman plane. I still have work to do before showing its completion. Anyone have any ideas what it is?