Rehabbed smoother
Skip in Falls Church
>I got this smoother from someone I know at work. He said that it had been in the family for generations - but he had no use for it and wanted to see it go to a good home. It was in pretty rough shape when I got it, it was dirty, neglected, had (has) a crack down one side and had a wide open mouth. On the good side it has a Marples Hibernia laminated blade with a Mathieson & Sons cap iron that had been well maintained although the iron had been as well worn as the plane.
When I disassembled the plane I found it had a cardboard shim in the throat apparently in an attempt to close the throat up a bit. When I removed the shim I found that the iron was only supported on the sides. I could actually see daylight between the iron and most of the throat with the iron wedged in. The crack, however, did not go all the way through the side of the plane.
To rehab the plane I flattened the throat, cut out a patch to close up the mouth - started laying in the patch - then realized the plane had been worn out of square. So I leveled the bottom of the plane and had to recut a patch as the original patch would have left the mouth open too wide. But I finally got the patch in then leveled the patch to the sole and then sanded the entire sole flat on my granite reference plate. I also flattened the back of the wedge the same way. I lightly scraped the plane and wedge to remove the years of build up and put a couple of coats of BLO/turp on the them. I also put a several coats of wax on the sole.
Whoever maintained the iron had done a fairly good job on it. It had a 22.5 degree primary bevel with a 25 degree secondary bevel. I was actually able to sharpen the blade in a few minutes. Well, except that the blade had been sharpened to match the sole - so it wasn't square. After I squared it up I redid the secondary bevel down to 220 grit (SS) then put about a 27.5 degree tertiary bevel on with 1500 and 2500 grit. When I was done I tried it out on a piece of black walnut and it cut quite acceptably. :)
Skip
