Smoothing Plane Restoration

Published on by Mike  (Leave a comment)

Awhile back my Dad gave me two smoothing planes (Stanley #4 equivalents).  Today I finished restoring the first, which is a Miller Falls 9.  The main body and sole I used sandpaper on a granite block, from a really low grit to get the rust and tarnish of all the way up to 2000grit to get a mirror like finish on it again.  The plane was well used by its original owner, so it will never be perfect again, but I think I got it looking pretty good.  For the parts that the sandpaper method would work, I used evaporust.  That stuff is great, as it works well, and is non-toxic!  The knob and tote were in bad shape.  The wood was very dry with a crack in the base of the knob.  I was concerned that they would break.  So I bought a 6″x6″x2″ turning blank.  Used the band saw to get a 2″x2″x6″ turning blank that I cut down and used to turn the knob on the lathe.  I resawed the remaining piece on the band saw, cut a blank to size for the tote.  The tote was a real challenge to make, and took a lot of hand work to get it to the right shape.  However, I believe the effort has paid off!  I have included pictures of both smoothing planes, as they were both in pretty much the same bad shape when I got them, including the paint on the bottom!