Sometimes you are in the right place at the right time. Three weekends ago I was at a Guild of NH Woodworkers period furniture group meeting held at Al Breed's shop in Rollinsford NH. Al happened to mention that a friend who was retiring and getting out of woodworking had dropped off 70 wooden planes and that to make matters simple they were all $5 each. The stampede began. Most of the stuff didn't interest me since there were a lot of hollows and rounds, a few profile molders I had similar ones to, and a bunch of other stuff. There were however some nice rabbet planes that needed some work. I was able to rescue 2 rabbets 3/4" wide that had pretty good irons, but that were extremely grungy to the point of being almost black. Both carried owner stamps, but there was not even the vestige of any makers marks so they had no antique value and I figured I cound do pretty much anything I desired to make them good users.
I started with a mineral spirits and elbow grease scrubbing with minimal results so I went over them with 150 grit sandpaper. A good cleanup of the irons was done without too much work and they got reshaped and sharpened in about half an hour. Both were worn enough that they need new soles to add life and close up the mouths which had gotten too wide. The major work was epoxying on new soles from some Lignum Vitae scraps I had lying around. Here are some photos. My apologies for forgetting to take the obligatory "before" phootos. Total rehab time bof both planes was about 4 hours plus epoxy cure time.