03 Jan, 2021 – Oakland, CA
Despite my wife and children chiding me for stinking of vinegar last night, I decided to go back to the well, get that plane out of the bath, and see what was what.
Again, I failed to take any picture of the process, but I scrubbed the hell out of that thing and even got the Dremel out to do some fine-tuned cleaning/removal of old enamel. All the major rust and flaky paint were gone, but while I let it dry some surface rust came back. A little 0000 steel wool dipped in the vinegar solution and some elbow grease cured that right quick. On to sealing…
I used blue painter’s tape to cover the sides and areas near the throat/under the frog that have always been unpainted. The tape was trimmed with an x-acto and then I sprayed that thing with black Rust-Oleum semi-gloss as quickly as I could. It was a cold day here so I put the parts under a tent with a space heater blowing 85°F air while we took the kids to the park. Then it was dinner, then it was whatever, and after all were in bed, I went down to the garage to get a beer. Guess what I found?
That’s right, dear reader, hand-planing Nirvana. I rubbed some WD-40 on the exposed bits, polished it with car wax, and put it all back together before taking shavings from this piece of rough-sawn cedar achieving a glassy-smooth surface and gave myself a high-five. (Sadly, I touched it with greasy hands while setting up this image the next day.)
I’m now hip to the hand plane and can’t wait to use it in my work. I have a $100 credit at Home Depot, and am considering a Jack plane.
64 Slack-days left.
Speaking of stinking of vinegar – I have become aware of evapo-rust (https://evapo-rust.com/), which I hear is less stinky.