Help required Up grading an old Bailey

[tagnut69]

Hi I have an old baily No4, and have just been given a Clifton iron and 2 piece cap iron. I want to fit the new bits but when fitted, the iron wont project out of hte mouth, I have moved the frog back but I thought I would ask on here before attacking it with a file.

Many thanks

Chris

 

[Paul Chapman]

There are two things you will need to do. As you have found, you will need to file the front of the mouth to allow for the thicker blade. This is quite simple to do with a fine file. Second, you might find that the Y lever is not long enough to engage with the slot in the cap iron. There are two ways around this. One is to lengthen the Y lever the other is to fix some metal to the back of the cap iron to, in effect, bring the slot nearer to the Y lever. I'll see if I can find some pictures to demonstrate ways of doing this.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[tnimble]

Indeed you could file the mouth wider, but what is better, make the plane unfit to take original blades (there by decrease its value) and use the thicker clifton blade you have, try to obtain a clifton no 4 (which might prove to be a better tool), or go out and obtain e new A2 steel blade made for a stanley like LN does make them?

 

[Racers]

Hi,

DON'T file the front of the mouth!!!! file the back!!! The thicker blade blade bevel catches the BACK of the mouth so file that, then the orignal blade will still work. I found this out after making some blades from 3mm O1 ground flat stock and having the same problem.


Pete

 

[Paul Chapman]

Hi Chris,

As promised, here are some pictures of lengthening the Y lever. The first one shows Rob (Woodbloke) silver soldering a piece of metal to the end of the Y lever on my Record #05

The second shows the finished result

I use a Clifton blade and cap iron in the plane with the modified Y lever and it works well.

Hope this helps :wink:

Paul

 

[paulm]

Just a word of warning on soldering the y lever, some of these are made of something very akin to cheese and melt well before the solder does DAMHIKT :shock:

Still haven't got round to searching out a replacement one yet......

Cheers, Paul

 

[Paul Chapman]

Just a word of warning on soldering the y lever, some of these are made of something very akin to cheese and melt well before the solder does DAMHIKT :shock:

The old Record one-piece Y levers from the 1960s and earlier seem OK in this respect. Not sure about the Stanley ones :-k

Cheers :wink:

Paul