Comments on: Buying good tools cheap #6 – Deeper ploughing

By: J Guengerich

J Guengerich — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:06:00 +0000

Paul, great post and information. The 5th picture from the bottom really tells the tale for me. Luckily, the irons that I bought for my Sandusky (it only came with one iron) came with exactly this edge on them so that I don’t have to use the guide to establish the angle.
Interesting thing to ask about on the wood plough planes, going back to the ebay discussions, one of the screws that hold the fence to the wood screw arms was broken at the head, about half-way through. It was interesting to finally figure out how to remove the screw w/o damaging the wood…. I separated the arms from the plane and turned the fence which enabled me to get a vise grip on the screw bottom to turn it out.
Getting to the point of my ramble… the iron screw had rusted and almost fused to the wood. I replaced it with brass screws which, of all places and after a pretty intensive bout of research, I found at Home Depot.
I think that the guy I bought it from didn’t know that this situation existed with the plane, he had bought it years earlier from a boat builder and merely put it in his collection, never to be used… while I bought it to be a “user” tool.
hmmmmm, someone should come out with a guide of what ebay terms like “user”, “fine”, “good condition”, really mean. I’ve bought “as-is” tools that were better than tools listed as “minty”.

By: Paul Sellers

Paul Sellers — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 08:06:00 +0000

One thing I did miss in the blog was that I recommend using a honing guide to first establish a square edge and an exact bevel angle. I set it at 30-degrees. After that I went back to free-handing the camber and will likely do that forever from here on in.

By: William

William — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 06:40:00 +0000

Great follow up post Paul. Excellent pictures. I especially like the photos of the before and after sharpening and beveling the blade iron. I don’t know how to sharpen these irons yet, but now I know what the finished result should look like.

As always, you have out done your post with that great tip with using a chisel in place of the iron. Excellent.