Thomas Conroy wrote:
> I hesitate
> even before sharpening a plane blade (I do it, but I
> hesitate) because the bevel I destroy shows how the
> real woodworker who used it approached sharpening----
> it shows whether he used a single or double bevel, how
> much he cared about a flat back, what bevel he ground
> to, how fine a whetstone he considered fine enough.

I don't hesitate before sharpening a plane blade.  I am holding a *tool* 
in my hands that is intended to accomplish a job of the current user of 
that too.  In all likelihood, that is how the previous holders of the 
tool viewed it.  They may have used a single or double bevel, or they 
may have rounded the bevel due to inattention.  They may have cared 
about a flat back, or they may not have -- all that matters is whether 
the back is flat enough for me.  I don't even necessarily know the names 
of the previous owners of the tool, and I certainly have no idea who 
they are, even if they have stamped their names into the tool.

Even with tools I've inherited from my great-grandfather, I would have 
no compunction about flattening the backs of the irons and reshaping the 
bevels.  My great-grandfather wasn't a historical figure or a 
significant woodworker; he was a butcher in Albany, N.Y., making stuff 
for his family.  Nobody cares, or ever will care, whether he chose to 
round the bevel or it just happened, or whether he screwed up flattening 
the backs because he didn't have time to flatten them or didn't knwo any 
better.

My great-grandfather's planes were used by his son, my grandfather, and 
have been lying around in boxes for the last fifty or so years.  I now 
own some of them.  I have a baby chair and doll bed that my grandfather 
made for my mother around 1920.  They may have been made with the planes 
I now possess.  Is that a reason for keeping the bevels the same, or not 
flattening the backs?  Hell, no.  My great-grandfather and grandfather 
used the planes as tools, as means to an end.  They were utilitiarian 
consumables, not artifacts.  My grandfather used to take old saws that 
had worn out and cut them up to make knives.  Frankly, they weren't very 
good knives; they were too flexible.  But he would much rather have seen 
his old planes turned into painted gewgaws than preserved as useless 
testaments to a bygone age.  I do think he would be honored far more by 
having his planes rebeveled and their backs rehoned to flatness for use.

> Often it is the badly neglected tools that look prime
> candidates for skinning that have the most potential
> information--- because they have been left alone for
> longest. I'm not saying that a wreck shouldn't be made
> useable, but that a measure of discretion should be
> used even with common tools. Anyone can clean 'em, and
> no-one can unclean 'em.

Badly neglected tools that aren't of historical interest to collectors 
are far better off being overcleaned and made into the most useful tools 
possible than being left in a box uncleaned.  And if the owner of said 
tools would rather use them (in honor of their prior owners, or 
otherwise) than sell them to collectors, I have no problem with that.

I'd go so far as to say that if Cesar Chelor's ghost were consulted 
through a medium and asked whether a beat-up example of his work should 
be sharpened, honed, polished, and finished and put to work, or sold to 
a collector for many times what it cost his master to buy him at a slave 
auction, he would probably prefer being honored through conversion of 
his work to usefulness.

> Speaking for myself, I do a lot of cleaning up of
> tools, and would rather have one in terrible condition
> that I can bring back to life. Leaving aside those
> still sitting in their as-found crust of corrosion and
> grime, I can think of no tool where I think I did too
> little cleaning--- but I have quite a number where I
> did too much. They look better with with their life in
> their faces. Let 'em keep their wrinkles.

I agree to some extent.  But I wouldn't shrink from doing anything I 
deem necessary or appropriate to make a plane I own more valuable to me, 
whether or not it makes it less valuable to someone else.

-- 
Michael D. Sullivan
Bethesda, MD (USA)
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