Ulmia Reform refurb.....

woodbloke · 7 Jul 2007

At our excellent MiniBash earlier last month, we all descended on PFT like a herd of locusts and this was my take from the day, a decent but just starting-to-get tatty Ulmia Reform smoother, basically in fair condition but with signs of abuse (cutter and cap iron with some ingrained rusticles etc):

I knocked everything apart (even the horn tote was loose) and ended up with a load of bits thus:

The biggest part of the refurb was removing all the old icky varnish which Ulmia seemed to have coated everything with...even the cap iron and blade had been sprayed with the stuff. After a bit of TLC yesterday the pile of bits looked a little more presentable:

The cap iron has been cleaned up, not painted tho' and it now sports a rather natty Derek of Oz style bolt. Blade and CB have had a bit of work (back flattened and reground on the blade and the CB polished and ground at the mating edge). All other metal work cleaned up and polished nice and shiny. I spent quite a lot of time on the plane body, finished down to 320g paper with 3 coats of oil and some Alna teak wax over the top, so that when everything was put back together again it looked like this:

The plane is quite interesting 'cos it has an adjustable mouth and a lignum sole, cutter set at 50deg and is 38mm wide (so difficult to replace with a Clifton iron) and is about 2.6mm thick which is acceptable.
Need to look at the new Phillyvision clip again now...... :wink:

Paul Chapman · 7 Jul 2007

Excellent, Rob. That plane turned out to be a bit of a bargain.....

Cheers :wink:

Paul

dunbarhamlin · 7 Jul 2007

Nice! Better than straight off of the line.
Is the horn dovetailed in? Would think a tapered dovetail would be ideal for this design - could reseat a loosened horn by just shaving the base so it settled deeper in the well.
(But I do wish folks would stop showing me wooden planes - I can find my way down the slope quite easily enough without any helping hands)
Cheers
Steve

mr · 7 Jul 2007

Very nice, is it the transitional bits that make it "reform"?

Cheers Mike

woodbloke · 7 Jul 2007

The horn is dovetailed in and I just re-glued it this morning with a dab of PVA.

Mike - when we were at PFT Alf told me that it was a 'Reform' plane...I didn't have a Scooby, so I learned something else new that day. It's quite interesting to have a look at their web site to see what other stuff they do...quite extensive. Should have mentioned that the body on this one is in pear wood, lovely stuff

- Rob

Scrit · 7 Jul 2007

Sadly the Ulmia range isn't all it used to be with some of the more unusual stuff (like the gunstock maker's auxilliary vices) having been deleted from the range when the firm went under a few years back. Fortunately someone rescued the name and much of the range.

Scrit