Michael Faurot
09-19-2009, 3:35 PM
I recently acquired a No. 48 and a No. 49 tongue and groove planes. The No. 49 had a problem with flaring on the left blade hold-down as mentioned in Patrick Leach's description of the No. 48 (http://www.supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan7.htm#num48). The hold-down was flared enough that the screw was just barely making contact with the blade. So I attempted to fix it, but wound up breaking the hold down instead. Apparently, those hold-downs are made of cast iron, or at least something that's brittle.
As you might imagine a cloud of obscenities soon erupted and may well still be lingering in the walls of my shop. After the angst abated I got down to figuring out how to really repair this. My first thought was epoxy. I mixed up a batch and applied it to the two halves of the broken hold-down. A few moments later, a much better idea occurred to me--sliver solder. I hastily pulled apart the two halves and fortunately the epoxy had not had time to set. So I pulled out a band saw blade repair kit (http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/2004491/8461/Deluxe-Bandsaw-Blade-Brazing-Kit.aspx) I got from Woodcraft. I then filed down the jagged edges from the two halves of the broken hold-down, applied some of the flux, stuffed some of the solder between the pieces and then heated up everything with a torch. After a few false starts, I was able to get the two pieces married back together and then filed things down to get them smooth and uniform. As the break was right across the pivot hole for the hold down, I also had to drill that back out, as I had made it smaller when I did the initial filling to get things cleaned up.
So, what I should have done, to start with, was just file that hold-down instead of what I attempted (which I won't mention due to embarrassment). :) In the process of getting things repaired with the silver solder, I used up much of the silver solder wire that came with the bandsaw blade repair kit. I'm wondering if someone can point me to an online source where I can get more of that silver solder? I know Woodcraft sells replacement solder and flux (http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/2004491/8462/Replacement-Solder-and-Flux.aspx), but I'd like more solder than what's in that.
As you might imagine a cloud of obscenities soon erupted and may well still be lingering in the walls of my shop. After the angst abated I got down to figuring out how to really repair this. My first thought was epoxy. I mixed up a batch and applied it to the two halves of the broken hold-down. A few moments later, a much better idea occurred to me--sliver solder. I hastily pulled apart the two halves and fortunately the epoxy had not had time to set. So I pulled out a band saw blade repair kit (http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/2004491/8461/Deluxe-Bandsaw-Blade-Brazing-Kit.aspx) I got from Woodcraft. I then filed down the jagged edges from the two halves of the broken hold-down, applied some of the flux, stuffed some of the solder between the pieces and then heated up everything with a torch. After a few false starts, I was able to get the two pieces married back together and then filed things down to get them smooth and uniform. As the break was right across the pivot hole for the hold down, I also had to drill that back out, as I had made it smaller when I did the initial filling to get things cleaned up.
So, what I should have done, to start with, was just file that hold-down instead of what I attempted (which I won't mention due to embarrassment). :) In the process of getting things repaired with the silver solder, I used up much of the silver solder wire that came with the bandsaw blade repair kit. I'm wondering if someone can point me to an online source where I can get more of that silver solder? I know Woodcraft sells replacement solder and flux (http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/2004491/8462/Replacement-Solder-and-Flux.aspx), but I'd like more solder than what's in that.