Tom Conroy writes:
> I don't know about raw oil, but around twenty years ago I bought a
> "new old" English smoother, one of dozens of identical planes found in
> a barrel in a hardware store completely unused and never finished in
> any way. I stopped the mouth with glazier's putty and kept it full of
> boiled linseed oil until the oil showed at the ends. As best I
> remember it was dry enough to handle and to have been used in a couple
> of weeks
and
> As it happens the plane never has been used, but that has nothing to
> do with the oil: the problem is that the blade is made out of pot
> metal. This was my first wooden plane and I sharpened it and set it
> and tried it over and over again trying to get it to work;
Over the years I have acquired several small wooden planes, simple
things, 7 1/2" long with single irons 1 1/2" wide and with a tallish,
thin, mushroom-looking knob at the front. With two of them, although the
beech timber was sound enough, the irons were as Tom describes,
incapable of holding an edge. A Czechoslovakian firm made similar planes
but with a bead along the side under the "Tigre" brand but their irons
are superb.
The maker of the planes with the dud irons did not bother to disclose
his name or country of origin on his products but I suspect that were
made in the U.K. shortly after the war when good materials were as
hard to come by there as they were here. My reason for suspecting that
they were made in the U.K. is that I have what appear to be older
planes of identical pattern with "Sheffield" on the irons.
Fortunately, I had managed to acquire at the flea what must once have
been someone's stash of old irons, doubles and singles, amongst which
were several 1 1/2" or 40 mm irons, one being a "Two Cherries", which
replaced the original apologies for irons quite satisfactorily. These
little planes can easily be used in one hand and are useful for all
sorts of light cleaning-up work.
Regards from Brisbane,
John Manners
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|