How to Restore a Wooden Plow Plane - With Just Hand Tools

This Wooden Plow plane belongs to a good friend of mine, and I traded him restoring this and several others for some slabs of lumber.

This Wooden Plow Plane had been sitting on the shelf in a work environment for a long time. The plans had a layer of Grime and dust that was interfering with its use. Basically This woodie needed a complete overall and restoration.

The body of the plane was made from beach and most of the metal parts were Hand forged.

I started by taking it apart piece by piece. Most of the Iron parts came off with out much trouble, but one of the rails connecting the fence had been bent in the past, probably because it was dropped.

Once the plane was completely in pieces I put all of the iron parts in a bath of vinegar and water (50/50) to soak over night.

I used a card scraper to remove most of the grime form the beach wood. it was mostly old talo and saw dust that has hardened on all of the surfaces. I did not want to take off so much of the patina but the parts would have not worked correctly with out it.

The mating surfaces were out of true so I had to use a hand plane to clean up the surfaces that come into contact with the wood.

The next day I removed the iron parts from the vinegar bath and cleaned them with a wire brush. I was able to bend the connection rod back close to shape.

The Beach wood was given 3 coats of Boiled linseed oil and then a good rub down and polish with past wax. All of the Iron parts were oiled with 3n1. The Iron was sharpened and made to shine.

Reassembling the Wooden Plow Plane was fairly strait forward. the only issue was the rear skate had worked a bit lose because of the force of the wedge pushing it down about 1/32" this meant the iron was protruding well below the front skate taking a very deep cut. I was able to push the front skate down to the same point and kept them in line.

Next to test them! and she worked like a charm!

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Thingamajig by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
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