Rehab of a Sandusky #68 Moving Fillister Plane

Any time I rehab an old tool, I think about whether or not to leave as much patina as I can.  In the past I've been more in the camp of trying to make it look like new, shining up the brass and other metal parts and cleaning the wood thoroughly.  Lately though, I've been more apt to just make it useable and keep it looking like it is 100 or more years old.

With this old moving fillister, though, there was enough work required to get it fettled properly that I decided to clean it up all the way.  This is a #68 Sandusky moving fillister plane that initially looked like it was in pretty good shape.  The only thing obviously wrong was that the nicker iron was missing.

Overview

Markings on the front

Close-up of the right side showing depth stop and the dado that should house a nicker

The heel end stamped with former caretaker H. W. Campbell

The 1 5/8" wide iron was in pretty decent shape

This shows the angle of the cutting edge
required due to the skew of the iron in the plane

There was a little damage to the aft end of the boxing -
not enough for me to worry about

I started with the body of the plane, specifically the sole.  I was mainly checking to see if it was flat, but what I saw was a HUGE amount of twist!  I had to plane that out and it didn't take long.  Then I looked at the right side, which I wanted to be square to the sole.  It too had a HUGE amount of twist, so I planed that out, too.  Planing those two surfaces and making them square to each other had the additional benefit of crispening up the corner between the two.

Plane held in vise upside down, winding sticks showing twisted sole

Plane lying on its left side and winding sticks show twist on right side

Got both surfaces twist free, flat and square to each other

While I was planing, I also flattened the fence (only the face that mates with the plane's sole) and made the edge that rides on the work square to that face.

Squaring up the fence

Cleaned up the brass inserts and screws

Planing the surfaces that I did leads to predictable consequences.  First, since the fence is now a little thinner, the screws holding it to the body bottomed out in their holes before tightening the fence completely.  I didn't want to deepen the screw holes, so I added washers that would bear against the fence's brass and that fixed the problem.  But now the screw heads protrude just a little bit beyond the bottom of the fence.  Not really a problem - it just doesn't sit upright as stably as before.

Second, planing the right side of the plane body made it so that the dado that would hold the new nicker iron was not as deep.  Before planing I had measured it at .137" deep.  The steel I'm using to make a new nicker is .125" thick, so I thought I might have to use a shim to get the cutter to be at the level of the plane's surface.  But I planed enough off the right side that the .125" thick nicker would have been proud of the surface.  I ended up routing the bottom of the dado to make the cutter level with the surface.

The dado for the nicker.  Note how it is tapered in its length
as well as its depth, getting wider at the bottom.

Some notes about how to make a new nicker

Getting the nicker close to the right shape

But because I planed the right side of the body, the nicker sits too high

So I used a small router to deepen the dado.

To complete the nicker, I hacksawed and filed a notch that
allows one to remove it from the plane

Then shaped the cutting edge on the grinder

Then heat-treated and tempered it and gave the edge a final honing

The plane's rabbeting iron didn't need too much work.  After removing any rust with abrasives, I reshaped the cutting edge to mate well with the plane's sole.  Another consequence of planing the right side of the body was that the iron now extended too far out the planes' side.  So I had to grind and file that back to be in line with the plane's side and the nicker.

You can see how much the iron extends past the planes' right side (top in photo)

Grinding a new cutting edge was tricky due to the angle of the edge

You can see the laminated iron in the bevel

First test cut: rabbet cut along the grain - nicker removed

Second test cut: nicker used here to cut a cross-grain rabbet

A couple of test cuts gave nice results.  But I really had to be diligent about pressing the fence against the workpiece when cutting with the grain to avoid getting a rabbet of tapered width.  The small test rabbet cross-grain using the nicker was great.  It really worked well.

After all the work was done, I gave the wood two coats of BLO.  It's been drying 2-3 weeks now, and here's the final product.

Glamour shot

After I use it a while, I might find that the wedge needs work to fit better.  There's a slight gap down near the iron's cutting edge.  It didn't seem to affect the test rabbets, but I'll keep an eye on it.