It has been a while since I have posted here (and by a while, I mean a few years). I have not been away from woodworking, just away from forums of any kind.
Anyway the most recent thing I have built was a new front knob for an old Stanley No.4. This was an old plane I picked up from an auction, or a car boot sale some years ago and put on the shelf to forget about. After watching Richard Maguire's latest video on cap irons and smoothing planes I figured I would break this old plane out and have a got at restoring it. The plane is a standard No4, but it had wooden tote and knob so it must be fairly old.
The tote was fine, but the varnish was flaking of; the blade had a little pitting, but was flat; the sole of the plane was dead flat. The only thing that needed replacing was the front knob as it had cracked and split up one side. I did a first attempt in beech to match the tote, but it did not go so well, so this second attempt was in Yew.
Yes I know that the hole in the top is too large. Unfortunately it needed an 11mm hole and my metric drill bits only go up to 10mm. So I picked the next size up imperial bit, which was half inch.
At some point I will need to make a new tote in yew to match as the current one wobbles from side to side a bit (the hole for the pin at the front of the tote is far too large). For the moment the rear tote just got the varnish sanded off and polished on with a variety of polishing compounds. Unfortunately whatever they used to stain the wood went quite deep so it looks too dark.
