Bringing a Stanley #4 Back To Service

A few weeks ago I answered a Craigslist ad for a long wooden jointer plane.  That plane turned out not to be worthy of purchasing, but the seller had several other planes to sell.  Including a nice little Stanley #4 smoother - for $13, so I couldn't resist.  This post is about cleaning up the plane and getting it back in working order.

Stanley #4 circa 1902-1907

Turns out the plane is a type 9, which is from the 1902-1907 time frame.  I was able to figure this out thanks to the Hyperkitten plane dating page and Bob Demers' blogs on plane dating.

On Hyperkitten, just two simple questions nailed down the type: "how may patent dates are on the bed behind the frog" (there are two - MAR-25-02 and AUG-19-02) and "is the frog rib the enlarged and arched type" (No).  Bingo - Type 9.  I wasn't quite sure what was meant by the frog rib, but Bob's blogs made it clear with pictures.  He calls this the center rib in the frog receiver, which is a better description.  Tremendously helpful, Bob.

The tote had been broken and repaired, though not perfectly.  It is very solid, but there is a little offset where the broken surfaces were glued together.  I decided to leave this as is.  If it ever fails, I'll repair it more properly.

A repair with a 1 mm offset

It's interesting to compare this with my type 19 #4.  The sides of the type 9 are noticeably thinner than those of the type 19.  And the type 9 is shorter, too - it's 9 3/8" long versus the 9 11/16" type 19.

Very obvious difference in side wall thickness

Here are the two with lever cap and irons removed.  Big difference in the frogs.

The innards are quite different

Here are all the pieces before cleaning.

Disassembled

This is not really a refurbishment.  Just a clean up.  So I'll show some before and after pictures.  After some cleaning with simple green to get rid of obvious dirt, dust, grease and other assorted junk, the metal parts were cleaned with light sanding, then a citric acid bath.  Flatt-ish parts got more sanding.  Screws and washers got a wire wheel in the drill.

Preferred method of cleaning up screws

The plane body had some surface rust, and that cleaned up easily.

Before

After

Before

After

I did an initial flattening without the iron in place to see what I was up against.

Lines drawn to judge progress

Telltale signs of wear down center of sole

A little while later all marks were gone.  I redid this later with the plane fully assembled to be sure there was no flex in the body that would pull it out of flat.  While I got the sole flat, it doesn't seem very smooth.  I may have to go over this again with some finer and finer sandpaper.

Sole flat, but not so smooth

The top of the plane body was grungy and needed a good cleaning.

Before

After

The frog was interesting.  The machined surfaces where it mates with the plane body had very obvious machine marks.  I was a little worried about this, but when the frog was installed, it didn't rock at all.  So I'm confident the fit is adequate and won't cause any chatter.

Machine marks on underside of frog ...

... and where it mates with the body, rear ...

... and forward near mouth

The bed of the frog was pretty gnarly, so I cleaned it up by rubbing it on sandpaper taped to plate glass.

Before

Top view - cleaning and flattening frog bed on sandpaper

This always makes me nervous.  I'm not comfortable taking out the pin that holds the lateral lever to the frog casting, so I have to rub one side at a time on the paper.  It's important to try to remove material equally on both sides of the frog's bed.

After

Speaking of the lateral lever, it was loose so I peened the pin a little and this tightened it up some.  First I just used a hammer, then went to a nail punch for more precision and better results.

Peening the pin that holds the lateral lever to the frog casting

The hardware was in decent condition and cleaned up nicely.

Tote and knob hardware before cleaning.  No after pic, but all came out fine.

No "before" pic.  These cleaned up nicely.

There were a few oddities with the hardware.  The lever cap screw had something on it covering half of the threads.  It wasn't tape.  Not sure what it is, but it seemed metalic.  Perhaps it is something put there so the screw and lever cap slot wouldn't wear each other down over time.  Fortunately I don't need the threads that are covered.

Lever cap screw

One of the washers used in bolting the frog to the plane body had interesting evenly spaced marks on it.

That's odd

It turns out these marks match the millimeter marks on a metric ruler exactly.

An exact match

At first I thought maybe someone needed a washer and cut one out of an old ruler.  But I'm not convinced.  Who knows?!

The last oddity concerned the attachment of iron and cap iron.  The fit of the bolt wasn't right so that they would not tighten to each other very well.  I had to find a washer (spacer) that would allow the bolt threads to engage better with the female threads of the cap iron to pull them together tighter.

Washer helping out

I was worried that this washer might not fit into the recess in the frog, so I measured the depth of the recess.

Almost exactly 1/4" deep

Bolt and washer stick up just under 1/4", so they fit in the recess

The iron and cap iron were fairly dirty, but not nearly as bad as I would have thought for being over 100 years old.  The iron is a bit short, though, after having been used so many years.

Iron and cap iron

Other side

The lever cap was in good condition, only needing a little clean up.

Lever cap with straight slot, not the kidney shaped slot.  I like these old ones better.

After some cleaning

The cap iron needed a little work on the front edge to mate better with the iron.  But I can still see a tiny gap on one side when they are put together.  This cap iron seems very worn - like there should be a couple more millimeters of metal at the curved edge.  I'm not certain if it can be fixed.

Straightening the leading edge of cap iron

There were problems when flattening the back of the iron.  The sides and front edge were very low.  I guess the back had a "belly".

After several minutes on a diamond plate (outlined area has been flattened)

Almost done, but sides still low

After a long time I realized that the sides were too low to get this truly flat along the whole edge.  So I decided to go for a back bevel.  To do this, I made a little jig to hold the back of the iron 9/16" off the sharpening bench.  The diamond plate is 1/2" high, so this gives a very low angle (about 1°) bevel.

Setup for putting back bevel on the iron

Eventually I got this

I sharpened the bevel in the usual manner and couldn't wait to give it a whirl.

First shavings

This is a piece of fairly hard maple and that shaving is 0.001" thick.  I think I'm going to love this little smoother.  I'm going to try my hand at putting a very slight curvature on the edge by sharpening a little more at the sides than in the middle of the blade.  Maybe that'll be the subject of a future post.