Salt and vinegar with your plane sir? (#4 1/2 restoration)

[Benchwayze]

Spare vinegar? No problem. I use it for poaching eggs. A splash of distilled vinegar in the poaching saucepan keeps the white intact around the yolk.
Nice restoration job. I have one you could come and work on for me! :lol:
Cheers J

 

[ED65]

Spare vinegar? No problem. I use it for poaching eggs. A splash of distilled vinegar in the poaching saucepan keeps the white intact around the yolk.

Yeah but as one English chef rightly points out, but then your eggs taste of vinegar! The key thing for very neat poached eggs is to use the freshest eggs possible, which have the most gelatinous white. That and whisking the water into a whirlpool make for a perfect poached egg every time.

 

[Benchwayze]

Yes ED.. I know that one too. But poaching three or four at a time I find the vinegar ideal. Only the malt vinegar seems to 'flavour' the eggs. Never taste the distilled stuff!

Cheers
J

 

[dunbarhamlin]

IIRC from school back in the dim and distant, salt plus a weak acid (vinegar, citric or similar) gives you a buffered low strength hydrochloric acid - a taste well remembered from mis-pipetting HCl - this will be stronger than the vinegar alone, and maintain its potency longer.

 

[sploo]

IIRC from school back in the dim and distant, salt plus a weak acid (vinegar, citric or similar) gives you a buffered low strength hydrochloric acid - a taste well remembered from mis-pipetting HCl - this will be stronger than the vinegar alone, and maintain its potency longer.

Interesting & thanks.

It certainly works well for me. I've subsequently finished a WWII #4, and found the vinegar+salt to work wonders again. I also noticed that putting the brass depth adjustment nut in the solution for a just a few minutes made it trivial to remove the old dirt. I have some more photos from that restoration but haven't had time to edit and upload them yet.

With the #4, just a single overnight soaking following by a rub with wire wool was fine. I suspect it would have been fine with the #4 1/2 too.

 

[Emanuel]

Coca cola is good apparently

It wouldn't work with this, but I've seen a couple of videos with people cleaning their toilets with it. (hammer)

 

[sploo]

Coca cola is good apparently

It wouldn't work with this, but I've seen a couple of videos with people cleaning their toilets with it. (hammer)

Best place for Coke IMHO. Cuts out the middle man anyway...

 

[sploo]

Finally sorted out the #4 restoration images...

Just like last time, the blade, cap iron and screws had a bath:

Less than 24 hours later there was lots of bubbling:

A quick wipe with steel wool, bicarb bath, oven drying and oiling later they looked good. I cleaned then flattened the sole and de-rusted the frog as I did with the #4 1/2. I don't think this one was used much either, as the japaning is in good order (the items on the left of the shot are a Record #3):

I usually put the screws in the jaws of a drill driver to spin them for easy cleaning with wire wool, but the brass depth adjustment nut is too large. Then it occurred to me - use an M6 bolt. Really easy to get it shiny:

Finally, here are a set of before/after shots:

The marks on the frog face appear to be pitting from casting, as I'm pretty certain the dark marks are actually japaning rather than rust.

I have a separate new handles + restoration project on-going, so the handles will be replaced some time soon.

 

[Racers]

One extra step you can do with good results is to lap the frog to the base with grinding paste, put some on all the mating faces and rub the frog around until you get a matt finish across all the mating faces. You can file but its difficult to do the ones near the mouth a engineers scraper works for those.
And flatten the face of the frog especially near the bottom.
Pete

 

[sploo]

One extra step you can do with good results is to lap the frog to the base with grinding paste, put some on all the mating faces and rub the frog around until you get a matt finish across all the mating faces. You can file but its difficult to do the ones near the mouth a engineers scraper works for those.
And flatten the face of the frog especially near the bottom.
Pete

Good idea to lap the frog on the base. I do them separately, but it is a faff. I do flatten the face of the frog on abrasive paper though.