Make yer own depthstop
Jim Reed @ Tallahassee
>I like to find sad planes and make them happy. This little guy came to me from overseas. It is a Record 044 marked Marples. Somehow in his long journey from factory to me, he lost his depthstop and cutters. I scrounged some cutters from the big cutter box but put off the depthstop until this morning. Heat in the shop limits my sessions. This seemed like a pretty neat project which would not take much time. I measured and cut a piece of drill rod for the post. I went to the scrap pile and found a likely candidate for the shoe. Stanley shoes (1/16")are too flimsy for me so I made this one out of some 5/32" flat stock. It is sturdy. I then clamped it in the drill press vise and drilled three successively larger holes to *sneak up* on the correct hole size. Then I chamfered the hole with a tapered reamer. Filed the end of the drill rod, hammered it in, and then peened it in the chamfered hole. All it needed then was some finish grinding and polishing. Here is the finished product. Plane is happy again.