Milled a Bedrock flat (PICS)
WoodburnBob
>This will interest a few of you. But I'd didn't think of shooting the pics and writing it up until I was nearly done. Thus, the absence of a true "before" picture of the sole.
So, here's the body from an Ebay #604 I picked up a year or two ago. It turned out to have a beater tote and knob, a transitional lever cap and hideous pitting. This was why it was cheap. I looked it over, stripped it down and set it on the shelf.
Pitting, you ask? How bad was the pitting?
Why mess around with such rotted relics? To justify having machines, of course. So in the next image you see I'm done milling the sole down 0.030 to remove all the pitting and flatten the warp and twist in the sole. Had I fiddled with a more precise set-up that figure might have been 0.015. But cast iron is cheap...which this plane, from Texas I believe, ably proves.
A couple of things are relevant to those of you who think about doing such things. 1) Simply clapping one side in a cheapo drill-press vise held the plane rigid. It didn't shift, tilt or bend. The cutter is sharp and run slow. Same for the table feed. I didn't exceed 0.005 depth of cut with any pass. Certainly I could have beefed it through and ruined everything, but I restrained myself this time. 2) Importantly, it didn't seem to me that the plane side was in danger of snapping off at any point: probably meaning I got away with it this time.
In the past, I've spent many a night thinking about how best to perfectly clap and set-up a plane for milling. Real Rube Goldberg stuff. I always fail before I begin and put it off to another time. So this morning I decide to let impulse rule.
Yes, it's very flat. I have to shake my head and laugh at all the planes I'd tried to flatten with sweat and sandpaper and finger nails and lapping compound and tears and scrapers and files and curses.
Anyway, good luck fellas (and gals). Keep pumping up them arm muscles.
