Last Saturday the Mid-West Tool Collectors Association held their semi-annual national tool meeting in Des Moines, IA and I had the opportunity to go. For those with even a passing interest in vintage hand tools, I highly recommend checking out this organization, and if you get the opportunity, one of their Tool Meets. You won’t be […]

Click here for part 3 of this series First, I’d like to apologize for the long delay in this final installment. Time, it seems, is always in short supply. In the last post, we left off with the plane parts cleaned and ready for reassembly. There is a wealth of information out there on the […]

Click here for part 2 of this series The next step in the process was rust removal of the steel parts, and for that, I chose to setup an electrolysis bath. While there are multiple ways to remove rust, including the low tech method of an abrasive and a heavy dose of elbow grease, this […]

Click here for part 1 of this series The first step in restoring the plane is to take it completely apart. Explaining the anatomy of a hand plane is beyond the scope of this article, but if you aren’t fully familiar with how the parts fit together, a quick internet search will turn up several […]

There is really no better example of a tool that captures the essence of working wood by hand than a vintage smoothing plane. Finding and choosing such diamonds in the rough is a topic for another day, but I can promise you that putting some time and effort into restoring one is well worth the […]