Bought an old Stanley 4 1/2 - What level of refurbing?

[patrickjchase]

The large machined frog support is a huge advance compared to the small badly machined support in later Bailey planes.

Yes, but that's just a reason to avoid late Bailey-pattern types, not a reason to seek out (or clone) the Bedrock pattern.

 

[Jacob]

Assuming an adjustable mouth is desirable then the only real improvement on the basic Stanley was the modern Stanley SW with one piece body/frog and adjustable mouth. Unfortunately the rest of the plane wasn't up to much - heavy, thick blade, very crude Norton type adjuster. What a missed opportunity!

 

[patrickjchase]

Assuming an adjustable mouth is desirable then the only real improvement on the basic Stanley was the modern Stanley SW with one piece body/frog and adjustable mouth. Unfortunately the rest of the plane wasn't up to much - heavy, thick blade, very crude Norton type adjuster. What a missed opportunity!

The challenge with adjustable toes in general is that they add an additional machined interface in the tolerance stack from the rest of the sole to the bit directly in front of the mouth, which is arguably the part where flatness matters most. LV does a good job of controlling those tolerances and getting the toe insert flat to the sole, but that probably wouldn't have been feasible when Bailey and BedRock were designed (no CNC, precision metrology was much more expensive, etc).

The "classic" LV/Veritas BD plane design has a mouth adjustment that's an advancement over Bailey in some respects IMO. Most notably the thumbscrew-based adjustment (made possible by using a Norris adjuster to open up the space behind the frog) and the fact that the frog extends all the way through the sole.

The newer LV "custom" BD plane design has a fixed (though modular) frog and an adjustable mouth like the Stanley SW, but is far better executed IMO. It also has a Norris adjuster, though, which is likely to be off-putting to some.

The LVs definitely aren't for everybody, but I given them credit for resisting the pressure from reviewers etc to slavishly clone BedRock. I chuckle every time I see a reviewer obsess over the purported "ease of frog adjustment" advantages of BR.

 

[Sam_Jack]

Jacob - "You just need to learn to use your tool to achieve that. I fully anticipate that I shall now be flamed from both sides" .

Agreed; there was none of this 'razamataz' with the old wooden planes. They came 'made' and either cut as well as you'd like; or, where possible, you tuned them to suit the work at hand.

Sharp steel cuts; a well set blade cuts as required, timber responds to correct handling. You, your work, your plane, set and tuned as required. Nothing, straight out of a box, can do this. I'm with you Jacob; learn to 'use' the plane - warts, limits and all - to do the job you want done. Learning to 'set' a plane, from frog to chip breaker is every bit as essential as learning to 'sharpen' to 'task'. That's the trick; to getting the job done without 'fussing' over what grade of 'steel' is employed. Just like the 'wine buffs' endless waffle - plonk is plonk; but a shaving, is not the focus - merely the beginning of a symphony. The four square sonata - played by whatever you have - in your hand.

 

[Jacob]

That quote was from Patrick not me. But yes.
Wine buffs make me laugh too. It's a cover for alcoholism. I annoy my wine buff friends by saying I'll drink anything (within reason) I'm just an alcoholic. But they drink a lot more than me!
Clue to incipient alcoholism - you check the alcohol content of the bottles before you buy them.

 

[Bodgers]

Ok so, the relatives came through, and as well as dropping in a very nice Vertias Shooting plane, they also brought a Veritas PMV11 blade for the 4 1/2 and a matching chip breaker.

So the question is, does it fit without filing the mouth?

Answer: Yes

So I'm not sure what those other posters were doing where it wouldn't fit. Maybe they ordered standard blades or something?

Pictures below.

No honing or anything - just straight out of the box...

Comparison to old cap/blade:

I brought the frog back a little, but it may benefit from a touch of filing if I want more adjustment for a wider throat. But as I'll be using this as a smoother it isn't required that much.

 

[AndyT]

What nice relatives!
And thank you for improving the evidence to waffle ratio in this thread.

 

[Bm101]

Glad it fitted straight in Bodgers and you're happy. Wasn't being negative about the iron or the possible need to open the mouth. Still not sure why mine doesn't and yours does. Just the vagaries of however many years of plane production I suppose. All's well that ends well and all that. ccasion5:
Cheers
Chris

 

[topchippyles]

Give the blade a grinding and sharpening,Clean up with some wire wool and a slight rub over with an oiled rag to prevent any future rusting.Should be fine if other functions are working ok.

 

[Bodgers]

Give the blade a grinding and sharpening,Clean up with some wire wool and a slight rub over with an oiled rag to prevent any future rusting.Should be fine if other functions are working ok.

The instructions state that grinding isn't necessary. The back is also impressively flat. It actually came setup with a micro bevel as well. Very sharp from the box.

I think these Veritas blades are intended to be ready for use from the start. Which I suppose is one of the reasons why they are so expensive.





Sent from my MI 3W using Tapatalk

 

[ED65]

Bodgers, have you decided how far you'll take the facelift? I'd have had no hesitation in stripping and repainting myself if that's what it needed to look the way I wanted. I might try touchups first to see if I could get them to blend in, although doing that well tends to be more work in the end.

The handles are probably fine as they stand, i.e. comfortable, but even for a daily user if the original finish were partly gone I'd always scrape back to bare wood and refinish according to taste. Which in my case is either a French polish or a few wiped-on coats of varnish.

 

[ED65]

I have seen several threads rubbishing camelia oil. But I have been away for a total of 5 weeks since the start of december and the cast iron I wiped over before I went away with camelia oil is no worse (or better unfortunately) than when I left.

The bottom line for me Bob is that just about any oil may give that same level of protection, and the majority cost a heck of lot less than woodworking supply houses charge for camelia.

FWIW I bet you'd get the same level of protection from a typical sunflower oil if it came down to it, and that's about a quid a litre these days. How much is camelia oil for a 250ml bottle again? It's more than a tenner isn't it?!

 

[Bodgers]

Bodgers, have you decided how far you'll take the facelift? I'd have had no hesitation in stripping and repainting myself if that's what it needed to look the way I wanted. I might try touchups first to see if I could get them to blend in, although doing that well tends to be more work in the end.

The handles are probably fine as they stand, i.e. comfortable, but even for a daily user if the original finish were partly gone I'd always scrape back to bare wood and refinish according to taste. Which in my case is either a French polish or a few wiped-on coats of varnish.

I haven't yet. I am leaning on the side of a total strip down and refinishing though...
Handles I am thinking of complete new ones in Cherry actually...

 

[ED65]

Handles I am thinking of complete new ones in Cherry actually...

But but, the existing wood is way nicer than cherry!

On a more practical note, cherry is a little soft for tool handles so they will be more prone to dings than the existing ones.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Still not sure why mine doesn't and yours does.
Chris

It might just be that the machining has differed over a time - I measured the mouth of my rosewood handled, corrugated Stanley No.6 (not sure of the age, hence the details) against a nearly new Stanley No.4 - the mouth on the No.4 was 50% wider.

 

[Bodgers]

Handles I am thinking of complete new ones in Cherry actually...

But but, the existing wood is way nicer than cherry!

On a more practical note, cherry is a little soft for tool handles so they will be more prone to dings than the existing ones.

True, but the handles are beaten up. Stanley seem to be using Cherry on their new stuff. I was thinking playing around with a resin infusion.

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[D_W]

Give the blade a grinding and sharpening,Clean up with some wire wool and a slight rub over with an oiled rag to prevent any future rusting.Should be fine if other functions are working ok.

The instructions state that grinding isn't necessary. The back is also impressively flat. It actually came setup with a micro bevel as well. Very sharp from the box.

I think these Veritas blades are intended to be ready for use from the start. Which I suppose is one of the reasons why they are so expensive.

Sent from my MI 3W using Tapatalk

Price is in the finish (I didn't read back to see if it's V11), of course. It's what the market demands now. if it's V11 in the iron, add a few bucks because unlike the easy salt-bath quench and tempering stuff that it's ubiquitous, it's pricey stock.

From their perspective as a retailer, if you don't finish tools perfectly these days, the inexperienced market will inundate you with returns.

There was an article from Leonard Lee years ago where he talked about people calling and telling LV that this or that was out a thou, and they needed this spec or that spec. He said something along the lines of "they have no idea what they're talking about and couldn't measure what they're claiming in the first place, but sooner or later you just stop arguing and give them what they're asking for, anyway".

The benefit, of course, is even if you don't need that level of finish, it's there and it won't hurt.

 

[D_W]

Yes.
Not that improvements aren't possible but they seem always to be so tiny, marginal, unconvincing and not worth the price, usually high.

Have you actually used PM-V11 irons for any length of time, or is this just your religious fervor talking?

He's right. It really will never make any difference in the quality of work or the volume of work anyone will do. While I have gone all the way down the rabbit hole and back on abrasives, carbides, hardness, etc, it's all a complete waste of time and not a fraction of a percent or even a fraction of a fraction for someone who has an idea of what they want to make, a standard they want to adhere to and a rate at which they want to adhere to it.

It may be detrimental, as I learned a whole lot more from planing using subpar irons than I ever did trying to use irons that I thought were technical perfection.

It's fun to play with those things, just like it's fun to play with different abrasives, but none of it makes any difference at all unless a woodworker is incompetent, and there are plenty of incompetents. A decent woodworker will understand that searching for some kind of pot of gold in terms of edge holding is just a cover for not being able to use their tools in context. You use whatever you have the way it wants to be used - it'll never make any difference in work.

However, most of the newer steels are far easier for makers to make tools from with much less worker skill, and that allows makers like LN and LV to cater to a mostly incapable market (no shame in that, it's just what the market is) who doesn't wake up thinking about what they want to make, they wake up thinking about what they want to buy hoping that it will blossom into helping them make something satisfying to make (but not if it's too hard to do or requires too much thought or risk).

 

[D_W]

I agree with Derek, but here are a couple of extra points.

The large machined frog support is a huge advance compared to the small badly machined support in later Bailey planes.

For a beginner, fixing the frog of a bailey can be a task requiring many repeats.

The relative lack of available frog twist in the bedrock is a great advantage.

best wishes,
David

This is often brought up (the fact that later frogs have small bearing surface that isn't precision machined). I have had to fix (and wouldn't have had to, but thought I did) one frog that was out of square in about 50 or 75 stanley planes (it was a newer plane with plastic handles). I also had one plane somewhere around type 18 or so that had a speck of slag on the frog that caused the iron to be suspended above the frog (and whoever had used it a significant amount, apparently was never bothered by it. I filed it off).

While the later stanley frog types may be unsightly, I've never seen any performance difference between them and the older frogs (and usually, they are in better order due to being newer and with less use). The iron with the cap set only touches two or three tiny contact areas on a frog - the machined nature of the frogs was a waste of money.

The only thing that really become unserviceable on stanley planes of later types (up to type 20 at least) is the round top irons - soft and junky and short lived when smoothing. But even for jack and jointer work, they're fine. If someone thinks they're not, they're fiddling with tiny shavings which is a waste of time and a display of relative incompetence in terms of work rate (even on fine work).

The large wheel adjuster on the later planes is an actual bonafide improvement over the early adjusters, though, as long as the threaded area is clean.

Somewhere along the line, we got sucked into this idea that stanley's later planes came up short as planes because people forgot how to set up the cap iron and use them the way they were designed to be used. Thick irons and lapping frogs, etc, is OK if you want to turn the planes into some sort of infill repro, but the plane can't be used in context as well and a productively as the original setup would've been capable of just by cleaning up the cap iron mating surface, lapping the sole briefly and checking to see that the screws are all tight (and, of course, setting the cap).

If I'd had fewer stanley planes in the past, I'd have less confidence saying that, but the two sweetest planes I've had (of stanley's manufacture) were a later jointer with the belt sanded frog and a blue stanley 4 type 20 (though I did replace the iron on that one, but with one of my own make and not with a rubbery or overly thick iron - I do have those on hand, but they're not an improvement once a plane is set properly).

 

[D_W]

Get a can of the cheapest furniture paste wax that you can find and wipe it on the tools from time to time. It's far more effective than any of the overpriced oils or long-term firearms storage treatments, and you can apply it in seconds.

If you have something where oil is suitable, odor free baby oil (should be a pound or two) from the chemist is at least as good as camelia oil, but it poses a problem for woodworking retailers (it's not profitable for them to sell and handle because whatever they're selling has to be valuable enough to be worth shipping).

Honing oil for oilstones is fine, too, but it's overpriced and it's just light mineral oil (baby oil).

If you have a tool that is so disused that even wax won't do (which is very uncommon), a very very light coat of shellac on non-wear surfaces does well. Use super blonde if you don't want to see it. You can remove it with alcohol at any future point.

A third (fourth, eighth?) option is to make a 50/50 mix of mineral oil and beeswax. It won't dry, but it's easy to apply to everything and you'll find a million other uses for it. Beekeepers here in the states sell pesticide free beeswax for about $6 a pound, meaning a quart of mineral oil and wax mix is about 12 bucks. You will have trouble ever using it all (and you'll never need to purchase things like expensive hand creams or lip balms again).