Paint on Vintage Plane?

[John Serna]

Hey all,

I came into a nice vintage Stanley plane. It has some small flecks of paint on the Japanning. Any idea on the best method to remove this without removing the Japanning?

Thanks!

[Phil Mueller]

My personal experience is that the japanning is tough stuff. I first just try to pop off the specks with an Xacto, but I also have found that paint thinner or lacquer thinner on a Qtip will remove it without damage. Is there any vintage tool in the world that doesn’t come with paint specks? :D Let me guess...it’s either white or green.

[lowell holmes]

I would scrub it with steel wool and paint thinner and then coat it with Johnson floor wax. The wax protects against corrosion and rust.

[Stephen Rosenthal]

I keep my tools in tip-top condition, but a few paint specks? Unless you’re intent on flipping it for a quick profit in today’s crazy marketplace, or want to make it a shelf queen, who cares? If you purchased it to be a user, tune it up and put it to work.

[Jim Koepke]

It seems one of the purposes of our beloved vintage planes was to anchor painter's drop cloths.

My recent purchase of an old block plane appeared to be another example of this.

Another recently read about discovery did amazingly well to remove a lot of rust, paint and even blobs of an unknown type of glue from the Japanned surface of the plane without harming the plane's surface:

458461

This was a seldom used chisel ground to a 90º bevel. Here it is shown removing rust. Since this chisel was converted to a 90º bevel it has been rehandled and an 1/8" & 1/4" chisel have been purchased to also convert to 90º bevel tools.

If you do not have a spare chisel, you might try this with a piece of scrap steel or even grind the point of a 16d nail flat and give it a try.

jtk

[Kyle Iwamoto]

+1 on I'd leave the paint on if it's a user.
Option 2, use a box cutter razor blade scraper like a cabinet scraper. You can find one at the box stores in the paint area. These also scrape away light surface rust. They also cheap. I think the original intent is to scrape trim paint off of window glass.

[John Serna]

Is there any vintage tool in the world that doesn’t come with paint specks? :D Let me guess...it’s either white or green.

Lol. So true. It's white and greyish blue. Close!

[Russell Nugent]

I got my grandpa's 7 and 5 last year, all have paint specks matching the house I grew up in. White and green.

[lowell holmes]

Start with one speck and see what works.

[lowell holmes]

If you have a rusty plane, black automotive paint does a nice job making it look good.