Thread: lapping a plane sole

To lap the sole of a plane , a surface grinder would be the best machine , but you can do it at home your self with a long strip of sand paper and a glass plate .

To remove the flaky nickel plating on the lever cap I used a wire brush set up on my 8" grinder ,its not very thick an should come off with a bit of persistence.
I just polished mine to a nice finish using polishing wheels on my 8" grinder.

Kev.

There are several alternatives:

1. Seek an old-time machine shop with a manual mill and/or surface grinder and have the side milled square to the sole with a face mill, end mill or fly cutter.

2. Better: have the plane Blanchard ground (blanchard=name of the kind of machine that first performed this kind of grinding). This will leave you with a square and true sole for a little while. The body will move after machining to some degree, just the nature of the beast.

3. Ensure that the frog, blade and cap are installed and tight. There's no point in machining the body true unless it is stressed by tight fasteners holding everything in place as per normal.

4. All of this will cost more than a good plane on eBay.

5. Are you sure that you are being aggressive enough with your lapping? If need be you can start with a coarse file, or 40 grit paper on glass. You should be able to get down past the pits in less than an hour. Afterward it is straight forward grunt work checking frequently with a square as you progress. Hopefully you will arrive at the three conditions of flat, square, and polished all at the same time.

6. Been there, done that. Good luck.

oh yeah, the plating: as Woodlee said, or investigate reverse plating (involves electrodes and possible toxic waste...fun!). I just peeled my plating off, then finished with the wire wheel too, then polishing.

There should be elctroplaters that might re-do it for you as part of a batch for small money.

Also: Holy moley, nice work so far on the restoration. You should be proud.

Thanks all, some good tips there. If the machining is going to cost a lot, the 40 grit sandpaper might be the best option. Boy my arms are sore just thinking about it!!!!

I bought a steel wire brush for my bench grinder last weekend, but haven't tried it on the lever cap yet, I tested it but found it too aggressive, it left the metal surface with deep scratches. I'll experiment a bit and see how it goes. I guess if it stuffs up, I can always fork out for a new lever cap.

The restoration has gone really well, but I did cheat a bit by buying a hock blade and cap iron gee it works so well, I LOVE the weight of the 4 1/2. I really can't see myself getting much use out of my 4 and 5 from now on.

Hi, I've recently bought a Stanley No.4 on Trademe (NZ's E-bay) which has over 90% of the lever cap plating (nickel or chrome?) missing. I'm considing having it re-plated. Has anyone had experience doing this? Does it need to be dismantled (i.e. knock out the pin to remove the cam lever, and drill out the rivet to remove the spring plate) or can it be done while still assembled, without seizing up the mechanism?

Originally Posted by Vann

I'm considing having it re-plated.

I can't advise on this, but second hand ones cost about $18 here in Aus (plus postage).

My cap came up okay once I polished the steel that had once been covered by the plating, you have to look twice to notice that most of the plating is gone (see photo above, ignore the thumb prints on the cap iron)

I tried a wire wheel sandpaper etc to remove the remaining plating, but it is firmly in place.

One issue you may have with re-plating is the old coating areas will show up under the new plating.

There are kits available here in Oz to do chrome plating at home ,Last time I looked at this kit it was around $500.00 to set up ,but you can do a lot of small jobs ,even chrome plate aluminium and its alloys.
Bit expensive for a one off job , but you could cut your costs by offering a chrome plating service to other hand tool ,motorcycle and old car fanatics.

http://australia.caswellplating.com/

There was a guy in Perth that was doing plating kits but his web link no longer works
www.eplate.com.au

Kev.