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My October Surprise. And a Tool Rehab.. [1]
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Date: 2022-10-09
A Stanley No. 112 scraper plane, circa 1920's.
I picked up this promising-looking Stanley No. 112 scraper plane on eBay for about $175. The plan was to clean it up and make it usable again. The black Japanning looked decent enough in the auction photos, and the tote and front knob appeared solid, too. So I bid on it and now it’s mine.
Stanley made these from 1885 until 1943. Scraper planes are used for putting a fine finish on a wood or veneer surface. A tool like this would have been in most any furniture/cabinet maker’s kit a hundred years ago. My example dates to the 1920’s, based on the markings.
So naturally, the first thing I do is take it apart. So far, so good.
That took all of three minutes. Time for a beer!
First, I started with the plane body. I wanted to see how much of the original black Japanning was left. Not much, as it turned out. It just kept flaking off, revealing more and more rust underneath. Shit. Ultimately, about half of the finish was still there. That’s right around my threshold for preserving versus restoring. I said the hell with it and went for the full monty — That old crap had to go.
There’s more rust than meets the eye here..
That decided, I proceeded to strip off the remaining Japanning. I would have liked to completely take this thing apart, but the card bed (A card is a scraper’s cutting blade) is hinge pinned to the body. And the lever cap is then pinned to the card bed. Trying to punch those pins out would only have resulted in a broken casting and many tears of abject despair. So I worked around it.
The joys of paint stripping. Time for a bowl to go along with that beer.
After two Eternities of unrelenting toil, the body is down to the bare metal, more or less. It still took another couple hours to get it fully prepped.
Getting there. Still more to do. They only had light beer at the store last time. Sigh..
I’ve talked about Japanning before. It’s basically a mix of finely ground asphaltum powder, turpentine, and boiled linseed oil. The mix is the consistency of cake batter, smelling like, and resembling tar. You paint it on and cure it with a series of one-hour bakes at increasing temperatures, finishing at 400 F. Then I apply a second coat and repeat the cycle.
Japanning in a Toshiba toaster oven. Ironically, the Japanning process was developed in Europe in the 1800’s as an attempt to mimic the black lacquer in fine Japanese furniture.
While the Japanning was curing, I sharpened the scraper card. For this tool, you give the card a 45 degree bevel, clean up the burrs, and then use a burnishing rod to roll over a nice crisp cutting burr toward the back side of the bevel in the orientation shown below. Online videos explain the process far better than I can for those interested..
My homemade burnishing rod. A 12” length of 3/8” diameter tungsten carbide with a handle I made for it.
Now for the wood handles. They were both nice, with only a few minor nicks and gouges. I removed what was left of the old finish, sanded them down, and gave them a few coats of shellac, keeping in line with the original coating Stanley used.
Ready for a shellacking. Where’s that (light) beer?
And here’s the finished project! The new Japanning looks great, and it’s as hard as nails. The tote and front knob came out real nice, too. Time for a test drive.
To set this up, you drop the cutting blade down until it’s squarely resting on the surface you’re working on. Then you tighten the forward-facing thumbscrew on the lever cap. The depth of cut is adjusted by moving the two horizontal locking thumbwheels back and forth, changing the angle of the blade.
Here’s what I get with a piece of 2” wide oak. Works great. You want really fine shavings — Leaning the blade angle forward about fifteen degrees from the vertical seems to work pretty good as a starting point.
That mess in the background is another project. I need new bearings for that motor, and they’re a bastard size. Sigh. The bearings have to fit a 1/2” shaft and a 1 1/4” bore, and be about 7/16” thick. It’s a 1950’s Dunlap motor, 1/3 HP..
Some will say that I’ve wiped out any collector’s value of this tool by taking the restoration this far. I fart in their general direction.
Seriously, this is a really nice scraper, a joy to use, feels just right in the hand. The onion-skin thin shavings just peel off with nearly zero effort. I really like how this one turned out. And I’m glad I decided not to try knocking out those pins..
Another view. I finally got some real (not light) beer, BTW!
Lastly, Joe Biden has announced a pardon for all people federally convicted of simple marijuana possession, and has also directed the FDA and DEA to look at re-scheduling cannabis from it’s current Schedule 1 status. The pardon only affects about 6,500 people as most possession convictions happen at the local/state level. Still, it’s a good symbolic start — State governors are encouraged to follow suit WRT pardons. The move on rescheduling is the real BFD, if it’s done right. IMO, cannabis should be treated like alcohol and tobacco. In other words, removed from the Controlled Substances Act schedule completely. Good on you, Joe! I’ll forgive, if not forget, your past position on this particular issue..
Here in Michigan, we’ve had legal adult-use cannabis for a couple years now, and medicinal since a 2008 ballot referendum. We’re can grow up to six plants per person. So this year, for the first time, I bought some seeds online (Acapulco Gold, how can you go wrong with that?). Five seeds for $100. Yikes. I remember when seeds were worthless, sorting them out on album covers, then throwing them away. At $20 each, at least all five sprouted, so that was good.
Anyway, we live fairly far north, and I started them kind of late, indoors in May, and with no special lighting. We had a cold early summer, and they didn’t get put into the ground until late June. Here’s a photo from a week or so ago. They were thriving at this time, but only about waist-high or so. That’ll have to do..
Almost ready, just give me another few frost-free nights!
I had to harvest on the 7th, even though it wasn’t optimal — Overnight temps were forecast to be in the high 20’s — low 30’s and the weather isn’t getting any warmer going forward. Tonight, my personal October Surprise is curing out in the garage. I should get about four ounces of decent-quality bud, and an ounce or three of trim.
I’m going to use it to make bubble hash, utilizing only cold water, ice cubes, micro-filter bags, and agitation. Even with legal cannabis here, you can’t get bubble hash in the stores — It’s too labor-intensive to make and sell at a profit. But when done right, bubble hash is heavenly sublime.
I should net about 10 grams of good-quality product out of this batch. Videos on the bubble hash making process abound on YouTube. Next spring, I’ll get some full-spectrum LEDs and a timer and germinate them in March-April out in the shop. That should maybe double my yield. Looks like I may have another new hobby..
Stay safe, everyone!
ER
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