Old Mallet Restoration

This old wooden mallet may have been hand-made, or it may have been purchased. I didn't see any maker's marks on it, I think it was hand-made. Its got a nice size and weight to it, maybe 50% bigger than the wood mallet I made for myself a few years ago, so I think it will be handy to have around the shop. The handle fits into the head in a tapered hole, so the harder you swing it, the tighter the head gets, yet and easy tap is all it takes to loosen the head up. Between the two parts, the handles is probably slightly more complicated, so making a new head would have been pretty easy, but i wanted ti try and keep as much of it as I could.

So I planed off the big break at the top of the head, and matched it to a piece of white oak I had in the shop. After the glue set up I trimmed it on the band saw, and then took it down to rough shape in the vise with a hand plane. I finished up the shaping on the power sander, and then went over it with files and sandpaper to get the shape right. I didn't want to try and chuck this up in the lathe, so doing it this way was a little fussy, but the results were good.

After I got it shaped up I scribed the detail lines in with a marking knife, and then deepened them by running a thin wire in the slot. The final step was to clean the wood with grain alcohol and a utility knife blade, and then coat the wood with raw linseed oil.

You can see a video I made of this build on YouTube.

Almond Drill Chuck Refurbish

I picked up this small chuck with a bunch of other old tools, and I've had it for a number of years. It was coated with rust but still usable. I've used it in a bit brace and to drill very fine holes just holding in my hand, and twisting it with my fingers. After taking the center out the tail stock in my lathe for the hundredth time, it occurred to me that the taper of this small chuck may be the same. 

Click here to see a YouTube video I made about the refurbish.

After a quick check, I dropped it in Evaporust overnight to clean it up. When it came out of the rust remover, I washed it with a wire brush and hot water. The hot water heats up the metal so that when I'm finished washing and dry the part, the heat dries out the piece really well. 

Here it is in the lathe after I cleaned it

 

I put it in the four jaw chuck in the lathe and  put a clean surface on the tapered arbor. Once it was clean I could see the makers mark on it. Its a T.R. Almond Mfg Co. model 40 - 50 drill chuck. Almond sold these and Morse Taper arbors separately, but the arbor isn't marked, so I'm just assuming that its also and Almond product, as it seems to match the illustration in this catalog page I found on the Internet Archive.

Click to expand, or use the link above

Almond Mfg made this Jacob's style drill chuck at some point after Jacob's brought his invention to Almond in1902 and Almond refused it, saying that it had no significant improvements over his own, hand-tightened chuck. After Almond refused him, Jacob began manufacturing on his own, and patented his invention, and after his key tightened chuck became popular, the T. R. Almond Manufacturing Co., now owned by former company treasurer Carlton A. Hubbel, copied it and was successfully sued by Jacobs for patent infringement. According to the judgement, Almond Mfg could still make their version of Jacobs Chuck, but there were restrictions on where it could be sold. The two companies then feuded over the situation for some time. Most of the information I found on the T. R. Almond Manufacturing Co. and their feud with Jacobs was found on Vintage Machinery's website.

The Morse Taper was invented in 1864 by Stephen A. Morse to easiliy join two rotating machine components. Earlier in the same year, Morse invented the modern twist drill, and with a $30,000 investment from supporters, he opened the Morse Twist Drill and Machine Company in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and soon saw the need for a simple, and easily repeatable method for driving his bits. He came up with the tapered shaft. 

A lot of the information I found on the Morse Taper Arbor history is from the PubMed Central (PMC) site, which is the archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM) which talks mostly about how the tapered arbor is still used in medical implants, such as hip replacements.

 

  

ECE Coffin Plane Restoration

ECE Coffin Plane as found in Wells, Maine

The E.C. Emmerich Company was founded in 1852, and  they're still in business in Remscheid, Germany. I found this 7-inch coffin plane at an antique shop in Maine looks like its labeled for sale in the US given that its labeled with both 51mm and 2" dimensions on the iron. I downloaded their catalog, and it doesn't appear that they still offer this plane. This plane doesn't look like it was used very often, but has sat unloved for a while and humidity has lead to rust on the iron, which in turn discolored the wood parts that come in contact with the metal. I've just cleaned it up and put it back to work. 

You can see a YouTube video I made about this restoration here.

There was some spray paint over-spray on the wood, and some general grime. The iron and chip breaker were rusty but not very pitted. There was some limited pitting on the back of the iron where the chip breaker was pressed against the metal. That took a little while to grind out but I don't think the back of the iron was ever flattened, so most of it came while doing that in any case.

Click on the pictures for larger view

I soaked the iron, chip breaker, and screw in Evapo-Rust over night to loosen the rust. While those pieces sat, I worked on the wood parts with a utility knife blade as a scraper, some small files, and sandpaper. I decided not to try and remove the rust stains as that would remove too much wood, and the worse of it is covered by the iron assembly when its put together.

The completed plane

The completed restoration produced a really nice plane. I had to square up the cutting edge and reestablish the bevel, then I worked on it with 400 and 100 grit stones before stropping it on leather with compound. The result was very satisfying. I flattened the sole by hand by marking it with a pencil and using sandpaper on a flat bed (my belt sander with the power off.) I rubbed the wood (except the sole, and the insides) with raw linseed oil.

The tuning of a wooden plane takes a little to get used to but once I had it set, it was taking beautiful shavings from a piece of quarter sawn beech I've had in the shop since 2015.

The wood shined after this pass

Check out the video if you get  chance. Leave a comment here or there (or both places!) and let me know what you think. Do you have a wooden plane, or two? How do you like them compared to metal planes?

Stanley No. 5 Restoration

As my efforts to be greener and all natural in the shop have evolved, I've naturally been more interested in hand tools. You just have to take a quick spin through the handful of posts that precede this one to see that. Hand planes do some things that other tools just can't do, and they do some things better than the alternatives. Even some power tools don't stand up to what can be done with a hand plane. That being said, there are also some limitations that need to be considered. In this post, I'm going to walk you through how I cleaned up an older plane I bought for jointing,* while also touching on what I see as the benefits--and the limitations--of hand planes.

First off, there are lots of different types of hand planes, from general purpose smoothing planes like the Nos. 4 & 5, to specialty planes like routers and rabbet planes, to wooden shaping planes; Stanley alone has over 200 planes in their (historic) catalog. Want to know more, go see Patrick Leach.


The Stanley No. 5, or jack plane, is a general purpose bench plane, but has a long enough bed for jointing in a pinch. The 5 I've fixed up is a cast iron bodied plane with rosewood handles (tote and knob) a heavy steel blade and chip breaker assembly and an adjustable steel frog, fitted with a brass and plastic knob to set the cutting depth and a lateral adjusting lever to adjust the squareness of the blade against the bed of the plane. All of this adjustability hardware means that the cast iron bodied smoothing plane can be tuned and adjusted on the fly without tapping on the cutting iron, wedge or plane body with an adjustment hammer as you would on a simpler wooden version.**

The adjustablity that is built into the Stanley-type bench plane, means that the plane can be broken down to its basic parts. This really helps when it comes to cleaning. Once the plane is broken down, the parts fall into three major groups: The plane body, the rest of the metallic parts, and the wooden knob and tote. The cleaning methods I used on the plane body and the rest of the metallic parts is similar, but the size of the body, and the flatness of the working surfaces, make it a little different than the other parts. The wood parts clearly need a different kind of a attention.

Once its apart, I dust everything off and set the wood parts aside. Next, I take each of the metallic parts to the sink and wash them with scouring powder and really hot water. I know, rust. The hot water brings the temperature of the piece up to a pretty toasty temperature. I wash and rinse them one at a time, and then dry them while they are still hot. I knock or blow the water out of the screw holes and the heat in the metal evaporates off the rest in no time. Take care cleaning the blade, its easy to cut yourself.

Next, I chip off the paint drops--why are there always drips of paint on old tools?--being careful not to damage the Japanning. For this I usually use a sharp piece of hardwood, like maple, rather than a metal tool. After that, I check for rust. Fine surface rust comes off easily enough with some steel wool, or fine sandpaper. For the flat parts of the plane, I'm careful to clean them on a flat surface, coated with sandpaper, to make sure the surfaces stay flat. For bad rust, I drop the parts into some white vinegar overnight, and then its back to sink for more scouring powder and hot water. After the heavy rust is removed, I clean them parts as noted above. A wire brush is handy for hard-to-reach places, but I don't use it on the Japanned areas, or the brass/plastic bits.

The wooden tote and knob usually clean up nice with a little steel wool and some paste wax, but if you've got a broken tote (and it happens, boy) then you've got a more serious problem on your hands. I've done some tote repairs on planes and saws in the past. Getting the original shape right can be the tricky part. Luckily, this plane didn't have any damage to the wooden bits.

Once everything is clean and rust free, I put on a coat of paste wax before I put it back together. A little light oil goes in the screw holes and on the threads of the screws. I pay special attention to the paste wax on the raw metal parts such as the face and the cheeks of the plane, the blade, and chip breaker, and the lever cap, as it really helps to keep the rust at bay.



* I've since picked up a Union No. 7 jointer plane at a yard sale for just a few dollars. It's in pretty bad shape, but I'm going to see if I can tune it up and get it working.
** Stanley (and others) also make wooden planes with metallic inserts (often referred to as transitional planes) that allow a lot of the same adjustability as their metallic counterparts. I'm comparing metallic planes to the traditional wood plane with a wood wedge holding the iron in place against a bed that's carved right into the body of the plane.

Disston No. 7 Refurbish

This is number 2 of 2 posts about two saws I just refurbished. The other is a Carcase Saw. I've had this saw for a little while and wanted to fix it up. I wasn't sure it was a number 7 until I cleaned the plate, but I guess I'm getting ahead of myself. It was clear from the medallion that I had a Disston from 1896 to 1917, and the tote looked like the No. 7 design, but it was chipped in two places. The upper horn was missing a chunk, and one side of the lambs tongue was gone.

The tote after I removed it and cleaned it with denatured alcohol

So I pulled the saw apart and set the plate in vinegar to loosen the surface rust. You can read more about that process on the carcase saw refurbish. The tricky part of this refurbish was the tote. The chip at the upper horn left a lot of wood at upper part of the horn, and I wanted to keep as much as I could, so I clamped it up in a hand screw clamp and cut out the damage with my small backsaw. I used a small try square to keep thecuts straight. Then I used a chisel to square up the notch for the patch.

The try square held tight to the hand clamp acts as a cutting guide

For the lambs tongue, I used the chisel to flatten the area, and then glued in a small piece of quartersawn beech in both places, doing my best to align the grain. I set up a series of small bar clamps and rubber bands to hold the little patches in place. The rubber bands are great because you can wrap them around the patch to apply pressure from a variety of angles.

The rough cut horn patch

Once the glue dried on the patches, I cut them roughly to follow the shape I was looking for and then went to work with a chisel, and then some rasps and files to clean up the shape, trying not to remove any of the existing wood in the process.

The rough cut lambs tongue patch

The lambs tongue ready for sanding and toning

The horn patch ready for sanding and finish, note the contrast in color

Touching up the color of the patches was next, so I tried a darkening agent first; vinegar mixed with steel, which reacts with the tannins in the wood to darken the surface. Once that dried I touched it up with some sandpaper and  rubbed the entire with raw linseed oil. A short time later I wiped off the excess, and set it aside to dry. In hindsight, I wish I'd adjusted the color better before putting on the linseed oil, but I couldn't see how poorly the color matched until the oil was on there; that made the next step difficult. I tried some wood stain to darken up the patches some more, which I let set and then rubbed off. The linseed oil kept the stain from penetrating, and while the lambs tongue turned out nice, the horn patch is not dark enough.

Steel and vinegar solution after a few minutes

After the solution dries, a light sanding evens out the tone

While the linseed oil dried, I turned my attention back to the plate. My one piece of advice, don't go too heavy with the sandpaper grit, its hard to get the scratches out later. Okay, one more nugget; keep the sanding strokes long and straight, they show when you're done, and short, wavy strokes look wrong. After a dip in the vinegar and some cleaning and light sanding the plate looked pretty good, so I put some paste wax on it and set it aside.

The etch confirms its a no. 7, early 1900s

I put a few coats of shellac on the tote, sanding lightly between coats. When it was good and hard, I rubbed some paste wax with a fine steel wool to take down some of the sheen and add some protection. The saw bolts and medallion I cleaned just a little with a Scotch Bright pad; I like to see some of that old color on the brass. The fleck in this quarter-sawn beech is beautiful.

The finished tote. The lambs tongue looks like it grew there

The refurbished Disston No. 7

All in all this was a fun project, and the two saws that I ended up with look great and are ready to go back to work. I guess I'll have to put them in the next rotation for a little tune-up sharpening!

Carcase Saw Refurbish

This is 1 of 2 posts on saw refurbishing I just did. I also cleaned up a nice Disston No. 7 I've had around for a while, and this saw, a reasonably new purchase for me. I was looking for a carcase saw that was a little bigger, and not quite as heavy as the W. Tyzack, Sons & Turner saw I fixed up last summer. This saw has a 14-inch by 3-inch plate, 13 PPI, crosscut.

Looks like a beater, but there's potential there

This Jackson is probably a little older than the Tyzack, but new enough that all of the detail had been designed out of the tote, similar to the Tyzack. It also doesn't have a Disston medallion, so I'm not sure when it was made, but I'm guessing something after 1950.

A little worn, a little rusty, a small chip in the chamfer, and no style

The plate was in good shape and the tote was solid, with just a small amount of play where it was mounted to the plate. And the tote? Its just ugly. All curves and no angles. No balance.

The tote after cleaning with denatured alcohol, with the inspiration tote

So I pulled it apart, and soaked the plate for a short while in white vinegar. I know, folks say that ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is supposed to be better, or some commercial rust remover that I can't afford, but the vinegar worked good for me. After just a day, I pulled the plate out and scrubbed it with hot water and soap to remove the vinegar, the carbon left on the steel, and whatever general crud was left on there. Then it was wire brushing and the scotch bright pad to clean up the metal.

I'm not trying to make the tote look new. I like the age, it tells a story

The tote I repaired by cleaning off the broken chamfer square and gluing in a small piece of beech with the grain aligned. Once that was dry, I shaped it to match the opposite side with a chisel and then re-shaped tote, adding back the V-notch, a double nib ahead of the top horn, and I sharpened up the notch ahead of the bottom horn. The changes are subtle, but the make a difference. I cut the shape with the band saw and some files, and then cleaned it up with some finer files and then sandpaper.

After the vinegar bath, a good wash, and dry scrub with a Scotch Bright pad

Once the re-shaping was done, I gave the tote another light sanding. I'm not trying to remove all of the marks, dings and scars, just most of the dirt, paint drops, and the crud. It tends to build up in the shellac as it gets damp and sticky over the years. Its hard to see, but just before finishing, I added an extra chamfer stop to each cheek. It looks like there might have been a very small one there, so I deepened them.

Click on the picture for a blow-up. The grain in this quarter-sawn beech is nice

When it was clean, I rubbed some raw linseed oil into the tote, to protect it, bring out the grain, and to swell the wood up a little. I think the dried out wood was part of the reason for the loose fit on the plate. If its still loose when I put it back on, I figured I'd file a little bit off of the bolts to keep them from bottoming out in the nuts, but it worked out fine and I didn't have to do that.

The refurbished carcase saw

The next day, while the linseed oil was still uncured, I wiped off the excess and put on a coat of 2# cut shellac and left it to dry overnight. The shellac gets mixed up with the oil on the surface, and the next day the shellac is still a little sticky, and even oily in some places. I sanded off any high points and put another coat of shellac on, which dried up fine. The linseed oil and shellac mix make a kind of varnish (this is what I tell myself anyway) which I think helps to binds the shellac to the wood, and slows the drying of the linseed oil. Time will tell, but I think it may work out to be pretty good.

Before re-assembly, I touched up the saw bolts and medallion with the Scotch Bight pad, but didn't remove all of the color. The bright brass is pretty, but too pretty for a saw that looks its age. I put paste wax on the tote and on the plate to protect them. I used a fine steel wool which takes some of the shine off of the shellac so its a little more matte, which looks good.

I haven't even sharpened this saw. It cuts great. Now it looks great, won't rust anymore and the tote doesn't wiggle. That's worth a few hours, and I did the Disston No. 7 at the same time, so... efficiency, baby.

Atkins Saw Restoration

After falling in love with old timey wooden saw totes after building my own, I went out and bought an old timey hand saw with some of the money I made selling buttons over at my etsy store. That's right, I'm putting the money right back into the wood shop.

This is how the E. C. Atkins looked when I got it

This was almost unavoidable I'm afraid; that's what I'm telling my wife in any case. After all of the research I did studying up on saw totes, restoring an old saw was the logical next step for me. Most of the information I found on designing and fabricating wooden totes is from the folks who do that while either making new saws in the old way, or restoring saws. And trust me, I thought about making a saw from scratch too! Maybe not this year though.

The tote is beautifully carved with a flower pattern

The fun part is, you can pick up an old saw for a pretty good price in some cases. And really, all that's missing is a little time and effort to clean the plate (the blade), clean and repair the tote, sharpen and maybe set the teeth, and then put it all back together. Here's how I did mine.

Surface rust and some slight pitting near the tote

First I took lots of photos for record, and so I could get the thing back together properly. I set the tote and the saw bolts aside and focused on the plate. The teeth are in good shape, and the are still pretty sharp and have a nice set to them so I leave them alone and go for the rust. It isn't too bad and the pitting is pretty limited. I start in the sink with really hot water and a scouring pad with some cleaning powder. It gets rid of a lot of the dirt and loose rust which made the next step easier. The hot water heats up the plate so when I dried it, the small amount of water that was left evaporated off pretty quick.

Next I sanded the plate. I set the plate on some newspapers and using glass cleaner as a lubricant, I sanded the plate in long straight strokes with 220 and then 300 grit paper. When I was done, I gave it another good scrubbing in the sink with hot water, dried it and polished it with some paste wax.

The etching on the plate shows pretty well

 The tote was tricky because of the raised flower figures. There was still some finish on it, especially along the edges and in the depressions so I tried some denatured alcohol to it with a rag, and that helped dissolve away what I think was some of the old shellac that had become embedded with dirt and grit. I worried off some paint splatter with a wooden stick to reduce the chances of marring the wood, and then did some very light sanding here and there with 300 grit paper.

Grimy finish, left, and discolored and chipped finish, right

After cleaning it up, i rubbed it with a little raw linseed oil and set it aside to work on the saw bolts. I don't know a lot about saw bolts, but these were heavy, nicely made, and no stripping or damage when I took them out. They look like they might be nickle plated brass. I made a custom screw driver with a wide, thin blade from an old putty knife by grinding it down on the bench grinder. I didn't want to strip out the slots in the saw bolts by using a screw driver that didn't really fit. I cleaned the bolts with a tooth brush and some scouring powder. Once they were set I went back to the tote and added a few coats of shellac to protect the wood.

The cleaned bolts and refinished tote

I tried to be careful not to clean anything so much that it looked like new. I love the age and the history you can see in an old tool and all I'm trying to do is clean off the stuff that causing damage, and add a little protection so the tool can keep on working. So if you look closely (click on any of the pictures to see a larger version) you can still see the old finish in places under the new shellac, dents, nicks and wear, and that's just how a saw this old should look.

The cleaned plate. I haven't touched the teeth.

I don't know a lot about this saw. What I do know is that its an E.C. Atkins & Co., Inc. of Indianapolis, Indiana, 26-inch 6 ppi, and it may be one of the Silver-Steel Perfection line, but I'm not sure. I also think the etch says that this is a no. 65. I may know more if I end up darkening up the etch so I can read it better. If anyone knows anything more about this saw, put it in a comment, I'd love to hear it.

This got me excited about cleaning up old tools, and I was especially interested in some of the techniques I learned for removing rust. This has made a huge difference in the performance (and appearance!) of some of my old tools. In fact, I have some tools that were in such bad shape that I replaced them over the years. So I pulled some of these rusty things out and cleaned them, and wow! I think I may sell some of the surplus over at the etsy store.