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Thread: Stanley #3 Plane Oddities - Normal?

  1. #16
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    yep, yet another one that doesn't like getting thy hands dirty...and maybe just a hint of elbow grease....

    That type 20 No. 4 I just posted....took about 90minutes to do..start to finish.....nothing hard, no "hours of sheer drudgery.."just clean, sharpen, and tune....


    Ok...I have always had a standing offer in regards to planes like the OP's......IF one can't seem to rehab a plane to get it in working order, don't have the time.whatever...Box the plane up with a return postage label inside the box...all it costs is the round trip postage ( medium flat rate box, USPS) and a LOT of bubble wrap. Send it to me, I will rehab and fettle and sharpen, pack it back up and send it back.....all they have to pay is the postage each way....nothing else. PM for the address , I will reuse the box to ship it back.

  2. #17
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    Ok...I have always had a standing offer in regards to planes like the OP's......IF one can't seem to rehab a plane to get it in working order, don't have the time.whatever...Box the plane up with a return postage label inside the box...all it costs is the round trip postage ( medium flat rate box, USPS) and a LOT of bubble wrap. Send it to me, I will rehab and fettle and sharpen, pack it back up and send it back.....all they have to pay is the postage each way....nothing else. PM for the address , I will reuse the box to ship it back.
    Steven, that's a very kind offer. But I'm going to do as you suggested and (carefully) take a file to it. If it's just the base I should be able to get it pretty close.

    Thanks,

    - Leo

  3. #18
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    I'm in the S.F. Bay Area and I don't think there are nearly as many opportunities to find tools in a similar venue. But even if there are I'm probably better off not finding out about them; my wife and I have a long-running disagreement regarding how many tools are enough.
    That makes me feel lucky, my wife seldom objects to my tool purchases. All it took was turning a nice profit on selling a few tools.

    The other way she was convinced was by making things for the house and mentioning how a recently bought tool made it so much easier to make.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  4. #19
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    That makes me feel lucky, my wife seldom objects to my tool purchases. All it took was turning a nice profit on selling a few tools.
    Really, she doesn't give me much more than a good-natured "You bought another tool, didn't you?" look these days. She was a bit more questioning when some heavy machinery purchased off Craigslist many years ago started filling up the garage with not much output to show for it. I sold the bulk of that stuff, so the garage has been usable and she's pleased I'm making a bookcase for her reading nook.

    The next project is a moxon vise with small integrated bench, based upon Jonathan Katz-Moses' design. So yeah, back to "making things that make things". Don't tell my wife.

    - Leo

  5. #20
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    A while back, went to a Garage Sale ( and kept going back, too) Found a Stanley No. 3...
    Thursday Garage Sale, Stanley No. 3.JPG
    Had a small crack at the mouth...the chipbreaker was missing...and the "iron" was from a block plane...
    Thursday Garage Sale, parts issues.JPG
    Rear handle was a replacement. They had re-drilled it to allow a front knob's bolt to fit....
    Thursday Garage Sale, patent dates.JPG
    Replaced that with one a little better...found a few patent dates, too..
    Thursday Garage Sale, No. 2 sole.JPG
    Sole was easy to clean up. And find a small crack at the back of the mouth...
    Thursday Garage Sale, side view.JPG
    But, hey, what you expect for $2.....weird part? Once I picked this up off the table...I could not set it back down...

  6. #21
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    Sole was easy to clean up. And find a small crack at the back of the mouth...
    Looks nice! It's interesting that it's a corrugated model and has a crack in the mouth. My great-grandfather's 4C has the same issue. Is that common with the corrugated models, or just a coincidence?

  7. #22
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    They may have hit something a bit too hard...knot, rock, nail....that shoved thing back at the mouth....area is quite thin there,,,,and easier to crack...

  8. #23
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    Hi Leo. I'm another new joinee. Your post immediately caught my eye when I began browsing the forums because I picked up one of those exact same planes just two weeks ago. When I took it apart, it felt like something was wonky with the frog to base connection. But I thought it was just me because I'm just setting out to learn restoring and tuning planes.

    So now I'm a bit anxious. I have a couple of beaters to work on before I get to this one so we'll see if its as bad as yours.

    One odd thing that I found was little piles of rust crystals between the frog and the base. At least I thought they were rust crystals. You can see a pile here under the upper right pad (I already cleaned out under the upper left pad) and some more piled against the base on the right. But looking at the circular markings on the pads above the threaded openings, I'm wondering if what really happened is that the assembler, rather than machining the frog/sole joining, just squeezed out a couple of dabs of some kind of bedding material, bolted the frog down, and called it good? Is that possible?
    Plane bed cruft.jpg

  9. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Douglas Mosman View Post
    When I took it apart, it felt like something was wonky with the frog to base connection. But I thought it was just me because I'm just setting out to learn restoring and tuning planes.
    [edited]
    I'm wondering if what really happened is that the assembler, rather than machining the frog/sole joining, just squeezed out a couple of dabs of some kind of bedding material, bolted the frog down, and called it good? Is that possible?
    Plane bed cruft.jpg
    Does the frog sit between what looks like raised areas on either side of the metal behind the screws?

    Yes, the assembler or the machinist being less than stellar in their jobs happens a lot during certain time periods of American manufacturing.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  10. #25
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    See this a lot...however....not a factory thing.....it is from a user not having things set up quite right, they used a few times, it clogged up with dust and shavings....it sits unused for a while, the wood scraps in there draw moisture (rust)....sometimes there is so much it looks like a nest....other times just a little is all that is left...until the next other opens things up.....The "assembler" would NOT have the time on the line to just pack the area with "bedding material"..whatever that is.....install frog with 2 screws,send it along the line to the next assembler....

    Just clean the rust out, make sure those tabs will let the frog sit stable enough...and put the plane back to work. And..NO, it does not need any shims or washers under the frog. Frog also has to make contact with that sliver of a ramp behind the opening of the mouth...makes things stable. And, yes, I have worked on assembly lines (Honda Transmissions) and know just how many seconds one has to do a task....like installing two bolts to attach a frog to the base casting....(drop in the reversing gear, with it's bearing, pop two solenoids in, add 2 screws to them, and send it along on the moving line, 6 seconds)

  11. #26
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    Just clean the rust out, make sure those tabs will let the frog sit stable enough...and put the plane back to work. And..NO, it does not need any shims or washers under the frog. Frog also has to make contact with that sliver of a ramp behind the opening of the mouth...makes things stable.
    Good advice Steven. Shims or feeler gauges can help when trouble shooting plane problems to find gaps. Learning this may have helped me years ago. One of my planes had a loose frog. The frog screws were too long. There are a lot of things that can slip through the cracks when corporations are more interested in making great profits over making great products.

    Many years ago either Bob Smalser or Harry Strasil Jr. posted about making a 5 or 10º wedged shim to slip under a frog to create a higher angle plane.

    Another great resource for Neander knowledge is > https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?103805 < This is a link to the Neanderthal Archives.

    Unfortunately the person who was tending it has many life projects outside of woodworking preventing his ability to spend much time here.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  12. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by Leo Butler View Post
    Steven, that's a very kind offer. But I'm going to do as you suggested and (carefully) take a file to it. If it's just the base I should be able to get it pretty close.
    I attacked the base casting with a fine file and did my best to remove material in the right places. The frog is now in contact with all four machined surfaces and the overall geometry is improved. But the iron still needed to be skewed quite a bit to line it up with the mouth properly.

    The plane was working quite well but that skew was bothering me so I went back and re-established the primary bevel referencing the center line of the blade rather than an edge (there's a taper in the blade) and that has reduced the amount of skew required by about half. I consider it acceptable now.

  13. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by Leo Butler View Post
    I attacked the base casting with a fine file and did my best to remove material in the right places. The frog is now in contact with all four machined surfaces and the overall geometry is improved. But the iron still needed to be skewed quite a bit to line it up with the mouth properly.

    The plane was working quite well but that skew was bothering me so I went back and re-established the primary bevel referencing the center line of the blade rather than an edge (there's a taper in the blade) and that has reduced the amount of skew required by about half. I consider it acceptable now.
    Leo, your frog may be seated out of square or it may be leaning to one side. If you are happy with it now, then leave it until you want to get in to some advanced fettling.

    A piece of a business card can be set under one side to be under the frog at the mouth and the seat to see if this changes things. If it corrects the lateral adjustment needed, then the other side may be a hair high. This can be on the base of the plane or the mating surface of the frog. If it makes the situation worse, then that is likely the high side.

    It feels good to correct one of these types of problems.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  14. #29
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    Thank you for your input guys. I was able to go back and look much more intelligently at what I've got. And, as I was looking at it, I remembered that the no. 5 that I also just acquired is a type 19 as well. So I dug it out to compare, which also helped. So I have some things to try. For now, I'm going to quit hijacking Leo's thread. (I only jumped in here because we seemed to have the same plane and I thought it was possible that my input might be a help to him)

    So I'll be back in a while in my own thread. Thanks again, I feel like I have some direction now.

    Doug

    P.S. For what its worth, I set the frog back on the sole and did some gentle back and forth rubbing. The rust glaze worked to highlight the current points of contact. You can see them as the bright spots on the upper pads in the picture. (and no bright spots at all on the lower pads )

    Plane base to frog mating.jpg

  15. #30
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    Sounds good Doug looking forward to how this turns out. BTW, Welcome to the creek.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

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