So, it starts with finding a ton of hand planes that need restoring. After finding a huge lot of planes to restore, it’s sifting through what is actually “worth” restoring, not for reselling, but worth my time investment to bring them back to life. If I won’t use it, then it isn’t worth my time to mess with it. Many of the planes in the lot I purchased below, were given away to other woodworkers that would use them after they restored them. Out of 40 planes, I’m keeping about 10 or so, the rest are destined for new homes.

Now in this huge lot, there were three No. 5 Stanley Bailey planes.

There is also the number 3 shown on the left that will be restored as well. The two No. 5’s with holes in them…the far right, are the two that were restorable, the No. 5 without the hole, had a cracked sole, almost split the plane in two….so, unfortunately, it’s not salvagable, at least not by me.

So this is the BEFORE picture of the plane being restored.

Time now for disassembly of the plane.

So, I didn’t take any images of it really, but I use a brass wire wheel in my drill press to remove the bulk of the rust from the steel pieces. This is something taught to me by the folks over at timetestedtools. After the bulk of the rust was removed, I used Rustoleum’s Rust Remover, to remove the rest of the rust.

While the steel parts were being soaked (these were soaked for 24 hrs.), I proceeded to work on the wood parts, refinishing them by stripping with sandpaper, and coating again with gloss wipe on poly from Minwax. While this isn’t the historically accurate method for refinishing the wood parts, it was quick and it’s durable. Many times restorers use walnut oil, but I didn’t have any of that on hand.

My goal isn’t to make this historically accurate, it’s to make it serviceable again, so it can actually be used. Three coats of wipe on poly later, and they were in much better shape than when I started. The next day the parts were taken out of the rust remover solution, cleaned and then I coated them with a layer of Johnsons Paste Wax to give it a nice polish and protective coating on the newly exposed steel. The results are shown below. Some of the pictures show the unrestored No. 5 next to the one I finished restoring. The comparison is very stark, at least to me.