Not only does it seem fitting to use old tools on an old house, but practical, a well made old tool is often better than its modern counterpart. To this end I have been collecting some old tools, some belonging to my dad (and possibly his grandad). There’s something nice about using something your parents or grand parents used. I don’t have many such tools, a couple of screwdrivers, a hacksaw, some chisels and on my last trip to the UK I picked up my dads, “Made in England” Record No. 4 wood plane. This plane is a smoothing plane which is used to ‘produce a finish that equals or surpasses that made by sandpaper’.
Concerning ‘Made in England’, I also have a lovely ‘Made in USA’ Bailey/Stanley plane which I picked up on ebay, again an old plane, but built with quality. Aimee has used this one quite a lot while working on our back door restoration and the results were most pleasing.
This model was in production from 1931 to 2004 and from this excellent site on Record planes I’ve dated this plane from somewhere between 1952 to late 1957 which gives it an age of between 62 to 67 years old.
As you can see in the pictures it has quite a bit of surface rust but I’m hoping to remove this and return it to a decent condition. The trick I picked up for removing rust is simply to soak it in vinegar for a few hours. Luckily there doesn’t seem to be much pitting, which you can’t do much about.
These pictures are the before any cleaning. I’ll post some pictures once I’ve cleaned off the rust, sharpened the blade and re-varnished the handles etc. Probably take me a few weeks to get around to this.
That looks just like the one Dad said he wanted me to bury him with.
Well he can have it after I get buried