Stanley Bailey restored per Paul Sellers rec

[RodB]

I have several Stanley planes that I had reground by Tablesaw Tom and they are beautiful but a few months ago I restored a bailey  #4  by flattening the bottom per the philosophy of Paul Sellers (but I used wet/dry sandpaper on my granite stone) and completely flattened the bottom, sides, rounded most corners with a file and sanded them smooth... took off a bit of material along each bottom edge (about 1/4" width ) then blended the same technique to the toe and heel.  This made for a plane that would never gouge your work piece because of sharp corners. The top of the wings were also rounded and smoothed. Obviously the blade (iron) has the corners brought up and softened a bit to avoid any plow marks along the edges of the blade. The edges of the plane iron, cap iron were also rounded and smoothed. The knob and tote were completely refinished with 4 coats of amber shellac and hand rubbed with 0000 steel wool. All  threaded screw holes cleaned up, de-rusted with phosphoric acid the rinsed and oiled for no rust ever again. All Screws wired brushed and oiled to look as new. 

I used to completely strip the plane with less than perfect japanning and repainted with a technique to mimic japanning but thats just not worth the labor and changes nothing with performance especially with a plane with over 90% good japanning. The contact points of the frog and plane body were lapped with diamond paste and the top of the frog was flattened on my granite stone. Finally the leading edge top corner of the mouth was filed to open the top opening at a 15 degree angle to allow for easier movement of wood shavings when using the plane. 

This plane took me over 7 hours not counting the bath in phosphoric acid (which only removes rust and zero healthy metal) and washing her clean plus buffing with a soft brush on a grinder, etc and sharpening.  Paul Sellers is right, once you refit one like this, (even a brand new Lie Nielson would benefit from some of this)  you just love how it handles and feels in your hands and how it works. 

The only hicky on this plane is a very small chip on the corner of the lever cap as seen here which has zero affect on the performance of the plane. 


Now I have a few of these and this one I'm going to sell to purchase some diamond sharpening stones. The price for this plane is $125 plus about $13.60
for fixed rate priority mail box. Paypal is best way to pay.