Store find: Stanley Baley #3

[Aubrey Kloppers]

Hi Guys
This is my first post :)
I am a total novice, but a Technical Engineer and watched about 100 hours of youtube videos just on planes :)

I have found this great plane in a 'thrift' shop. I did not take before pictures, but it was rusted to the point where nothing wanted to turn or move. I sprayed a product we have in South Africa called Q20 all over the plane and then did some cleanup.

What I did was:

Re-Finished the sole by sanding it with 100 grid paper and then progressively up to 400 grid.
Sanded the handles and fixed 2 breaks in the tote.
Re-finished all the hardware (Including all the blade hardware) with water-paper and scouring pads.
Re-finished the blade. Now this one was tricky, as I have never done any blade-work before. The blade was butchered by the previous owner. He must have taken a grinder to the blade as it was skew and had deep nicks in it, as if the owner hit nails repeatedly. The entire blade was also off-square. I do not have a grinder, so decided to take 100 grid paper and get the blade flat. after getting all the nicks out of the blade and getting it square, I worked progressively up to 1000 water-paper.


This is the end-result. I am most impressed as I have not worked with a plane for 40+ years (last at primary school) and never did any blade-work before. You will see that in my novice state I got quite nice shavings with the very first stroke using this plane:
359075
359076
359077

[Jim Koepke]

Howdy Aubrey and welcome to the Creek.

Interesting to find one of these so far from home. I can't quite make out the text behind the frog. Does it say "Made in USA"?

For me the #3 is a very useful smoother. Set one up for a friend recently with a bit more camber on the blade so he could use it as a scrub plane. He has two #3 size planes.

jtk

[Aubrey Kloppers]

Howdy Aubrey and welcome to the Creek.

Interesting to find one of these so far from home. I can't quite make out the text behind the frog. Does it say "Made in USA"?

For me the #3 is a very useful smoother. Set one up for a friend recently with a bit more camber on the blade so he could use it as a scrub plane. He has two #3 size planes.

jtk

Hi Jim
Thank you for the reply. This one is made in the UK (England). Yes, it is still far from home! I have the most horrid time finding any tools worth it's price in South Africa. Our market is flooded with Chinese-made Ryobi rubbish!

I did however find an amazing Planer Thicknesser that is 22 years old and will take any new tool on! It is called a "Scheppach HMT 260 planer thicknesser" from Germany! I got this from a gentleman going on retirement and he had to scale down. Also did a cleanup where it was rusted and the first time I used it 100% square! I can not comment on the newer Scheppach tools, but this one is AWESOME!

This is the machine and the quality I got from re-cycled wood:
359079
359078
So basically, we have to either pay 10X the USA price for good quality tools or recycle, recycle, recycle!

[Frederick Skelly]

Welcome Aubrey. Glad to have you join us!

I have a US made Stanley #3 and it's one of my favorites. I got lazy and never did clean it up. I put it straight to work. But looking at yours may motivate me to pretty mine up too.

Again, welcome!
Fred

[lowell holmes]

I have a full compliment of Bedrocks, a 604, 605, 607. My #3 Bailey is my most used plane.

[Josko Catipovic]

I have one (Type 11, 1911-1918) and find the mouth is too narrow to accept a thicker PM-V11 blade. Would it make more sense to file a wider mouth or give up on thicker plane blades?

[Hilton Ralphs]

You don't find a lot of 'Made in the USA' Stanley planes here as most were imported from the UK. I did find one though so I have three of the #3s ready for restoration.

Good job Aubrey.

[Don Orr]

Beautiful job on the cleanup of the #3! Looks good and if it works well that's even better.
That Scheppach is certainly a beauty as well.

[Jim Koepke]

I have one (Type 11, 1911-1918) and find the mouth is too narrow to accept a thicker PM-V11 blade. Would it make more sense to file a wider mouth or give up on thicker plane blades?

Hi Josko and welcome to the cave by the Creek.

A little careful filing never hurts unless your plane has such collector value that it shouldn't be used. If one of my tools is such, it will usually be sold to pay for the same tool without the collector value.

A thin file is needed to file the mouth on most planes. It helps to scribe a line in front of the mouth as a guide. It is only necessary to take off enough to allow your thickest shavings to pass. File a little, test, file a little more until the shaving doesn't have to be pulled free. Then break the sharp edge and remove any burrs.

jtk

[lowell holmes]

I have filed the mouth opening on my Bedrocks to accommodate after market irons. I've never regretted it. It made them perform like modern planes.
I put Veritas irons and breakers in the planes.

[Kees Heiden]

I would use the original iron if it is not too far gone. Those were really good. And they look a lot better in such an old plane too.

[lowell holmes]

Kees,

I agree, however . . .

Sometimes good old plane irons are not easy to find. If you are desperate for an iron, I can tell you from experience, the Lee Valley iron/breaker combination
will make an old plane feel like a new one. It made one of my Bedrock planes a top quality plane.

[Pat Barry]

A little careful filing never hurts unless your plane has such collector value that it shouldn't be used. If one of my tools is such, it will usually be sold to pay for the same tool without the collector value.
I don't get this. If you had a collector tool you would basically trade it, even up for a user tool? No, you probably meant to say you would sell it and buy several more tools with the proceeds, right?

[Jim Koepke]

I don't get this. If you had a collector tool you would basically trade it, even up for a user tool? No, you probably meant to say you would sell it and buy several more tools with the proceeds, right?

No, my statement says it would be sold to pay for the same tool without the collector value. I didn't say what I would do with any extra money from gathered from there being a collector value.

I do not have anything against collectors and if they want to pay me ridiculous prices because of condition or original box, I will not stop them. If a pristine example is only worth what a user is worth, then it will be put to use without the bother of selling and buying another.

My tendency is to buy tools cheap and fix them up to use or to hold until the time comes to sell a lot of tools to raise money to buy a new tool.

jtk

[Aubrey Kloppers]

My boy playing with some shavings!

360083

[Frederick Skelly]

Cute boy! I see a yound woodworker in training!

[Stew Denton]

Hi Aubrey,

Like Jim, one more welcome to the creek. I also saw your post on the #5, so you are definitely making progress. Very nice job on restoring the planes and planer!

Stew

[Jim Koepke]

One of my daughters, a grade school teacher, likes shavings and some of my remains from drilling with forstner bits for her pupils rainy day class projects.

They glue them on paper bags to make "Fandango puppets" after the ones that appeared in early theater promotions for Fandango. They are also commonly known as "bag puppets."

jtk