Thread: Inherited Tools

Hi John and welcome to the forum, you may want to post a few photos of your tools to give us an idea of what needs to be done to them.

Fettling a wooden plane is something I have not had to work on too much. I found that the sole on my big wooden plane was good enough for me not to try and flatten it.

If you did have to flatten it the most common way I can think of is to use some 10 or 12mm thick float glass (float is flatter than hardened/toughened as it does not get re-heated a second time). Then stick some sandpaper down to your glass and start lapping your plane...

There is a great article here > Wooden Bench Plane Basics | Handplane Central

About wooden handplane basics and how to set the blade etc.

Cheers

Simon
https://sites.google.com/site/wooden...den-hand-plane

Might be worth taking a look at phil edwards site in England or Clark and Williams in the US - they are still making them and the info from the maker might point you to what can be done

Neil

Unfortunately I don't have camera to take Pictures of the planes. Here is rough description of the wooden planes,

1. this plane is about 25mm thick and has a half-rounded base and blade.
2. the next one has about 6mm blade and is fitted with a side guide as though it has been used for cutting grooves.
3. this last one is about 20mm thick with a flat base but the blade is shaped to cut to the outside.
There are also 3 wooden spoke-shaves as well.

They sound alot like they are wooden rabbet or rebate planes.

Do any of the planes on here look familiar at all?
Old Wooden Woodworking Planes

I've not read anything about restoring those sort of planes perhaps one of our other, I did find a reference to fettling bench and block planes on TJMAHAFFEY's website

I'm not sure how much use it will be in your situation though.

Thank you Simonmags for the information of the site on Old Wooden Woodworking Planes. By looking at this site I was able to find out the names of 2 of the planes number 2 in my previous message was a Fillister Plane, the other one a round plane These planes had been my grandfathers Who was awheelright by trade.

My Understanding is that most of these wooden planes rarely need any work to get them to a useable condition. But I do remember reading about leaving them in your work shop for at least a few months to a year so that they acclimatise before attempting to fettle them.

The big three things to look at are the sole of the plane, hopefully yours are pretty straight and true, have you checked them with a square at all?

The blade, you want this to be nice and sharp, so some googling on scary sharp, there are some good videos on youtube as well I think they are tutorials by lee valley or one of the other US company tool makers.

Dan's Shop has a good post on using scary sharp, and you may recognise.

If you have a camera on your phone and managed to take a picture of the planes with that i could post them up for you if you like. I'd be interested to see an old wheel wrights planes...

Hey John, good to see you've finally posted.

I'll bring our camera over and take some pics if you like, and help you put them up.