Putting your planes to bed.

**Fuzzie** · 19th December 2010, 05:15 PM

I have been doing a bit of a plane tune up today and came across a problem with rust forming under the cap iron on some blades. I was wondering how others treat their planes between use. I'm not thinking about mothballing, rather what to do between bench use which may swing from days to weeks depending on the project at hand.

Most of my planes are old and simply cleaned from as found state with no great amount of fettling or use of electrolysis. Any loose/red rust has been removed but the cap irons have not been made shiny bright and still have a dark oxidized patina.

At least one cap iron has a problem seating on the blade and as hard as I try to fix the mating surfaces I still get shavings jamming between it and the blade. Typically this is the blade that has the worst rust issue and I assume it's moisture in the wood shavings causing the problem. On blades with better fitting cap irons I assume wood dust is getting behind the iron and attracting moisture. Otherwise there must be some sort of native corrosion happening between blade and cap iron.

So what should one do to put planes to bed? Is it common practise to disassemble and apply wd40 or camelia oil or such to the blade between use?

**bridger** · 19th December 2010, 05:58 PM

areas that seem prone to rust get a coat of paste wax.

**rsser** · 19th December 2010, 06:12 PM

Sure, if you have shavings jamming, pull the chip breaker off and clean up. A wipe of light oil or any one of a thousand other rust preventatives.

Bottom line is to clean and to treat and to check regularly.

If you're cashed up but time-poor, my top two treatments are Ferro-pak G15 or TopSaver.

**IanW** · 20th December 2010, 08:51 AM

Yeah - you are up against it, Fuzzie, living so close to the sea!

I second Ern's advice - that cap-iron needs more attention to get it mating, or the lever-cap isn't applying even pressure. You should be able to eliminate the jamming shavings issue.

But the rust is another matter. I make sure I clean out as much wood-dust as I can before putting my planes to bed, but have had the occasional light rust form after planing wood of higher moisture content. I use oilstones, & there is a light residue of oil on the backs of my blades, so only have to worry about the tiny sliver of exposed blade, where any protective film gets rubbed away in use.

I think your best bet is as Ern suggests, a good squirt of something before bedtime (for the planes, too...

). I favour Lanotec, but don't overdo it or you end up with a very sticky mess...

Cheers,

**hybridfiat** · 20th December 2010, 11:43 AM

Try getting some Renaissance Wax, it is used by museums and resorers the world over for preservation. Its a microcrystaline wax that cleans and preserves. Renaissance Wax 200 ml (7 oz can)

**rsser** · 20th December 2010, 12:03 PM

IIRC mic-d uses paraffin wax dissolved in shellite? A cheap solution.

I also use Lanoguard, which is another sheep fleece grease product, sparingly as Ian recommended above.

To qualify my earlier post, I use TopSaver on cast iron not steel - Stanley plane soles, wood machine tables etc. This kind of cast iron seems rather porous and soaks up the goo.

As a woodturner I generate a lot of sanding dust and despite all the extraction gear a fine layer of dust still settles on the wood machine tables. My hunch is that this is below EMC off the lathe and then of course absorbs moisture and holds it. So the bandsaw table, which is closest to the lathe gets extra protection in the form of a fine cotton cloth sprayed generously with RP7 or WD40.

OK; that's a bit off topic. I'm just waiting for Jeremy's maul to dry

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