Stanley #7C Restoration, Part 2: Clean-up

Part 1 of this series is here.

Did I mention this thing was dirty?  Thank goodness for wire wheels in a drill or dremel.  Here's an example:

Knob post looking rusty

Another view

Drill clamped in vise, cleaning post with wire wheel

Et voila!  Looking almost new!

I used this technique for all of the screws, washers, nuts and posts.  I ended up not needing a citric acid bath for anything.

The iron, cap-iron and lever cap all got sanded and/or wire wheeled.

Before

After

The cap-iron has a little bend in it that I hope will not affect performance.

The bend is revealed by changing light reflection at left of left-most hole

You can see the bend when looking carefully on edge

I like the old lever caps that were not chrome plated.  The plated ones you can't clean up as well.  This one cleaned up nicely.

Lever cap nicely cleaned up

The lever cap screw in the frog was stuck hard.  I had to spray some WD-40 and let it soak a while.  I also gave it a rap with a hammer to dislodge any rust holding it in place.  Finally it came free, but it doesn't seem to want to screw in any further than what is just barely needed to secure the lever cap.

Lever cap screw stuck

Sprayed WD-40 from above and from below

The depth adjustment brass nut was in really grungy condition.

Yikes!

But it cleaned up nicely with wire wheel in a drill and mini wire wheel in a dremel tool

I also took the wire wheel (and then later sandpaper) to the plane sides and sole.

Half of the plane side cleaned up - what a difference!

I let the inside of thee plane body and the frog soak a while in Simple Green before cleaning all the grunge out of them and that worked well.

Next time I'll report on the flattening of the sole and fettling the iron.