this plane is grounded

I finally took the time to start refurbishing the Stanley "Handyman" H1204 plane I picked up a short while ago. It's supposed to be a present for my brother-in-law (as far as I know he doesn't read this blog).

as found...

Disassembly was easy; there simply aren't that many parts. As I expected, the bed and frog castings were heavily painted, so neither the bed-to-frog nor frog-to-iron matings were actually solid.

I trued the sole of the plane and cleaned up its sides using medium and fine emery papers laid on my surface plate. The mouth is in decent shape; I don't want to open it. The mating surfaces of the bed and frog had all of the paint cleaned off with my least important single-cut file.

in pieces...

I took a cabinet scraper to the tote and knob, removing a cracked, nasty, shiny black paint. I'll still need to sand these handles before I refinish them with a Minwax stain.

The tip of the cap iron was cleaned up and flattened where it will contact the iron. The iron was then sharpened using my DMT red/blue and 5000 grit ceramic "stones". I picked these up at the now defunct Bingeman's Wood Show in Kitchener a year or so ago and they are working well for me. A bit of camber was added to prevent the iron's corners digging in on wide boards.

Reassembly of the components was straightforward, BUT...

I now understand why the plane was sitting forlornly (yet not too bad looking) at the antique barn. No matter how I adjust the frog, I cannot get the iron to square up with the bed; the left edge remains out of contact unless the adjustment lever is set over to nearly its limit. I assume that the previous owner(s) had little luck using it for any but the most basic planing tasks; there was no evidence of adjustment of the frog at any point in its life so I can only assume this is how it left the factory..

The iron has been re-ground dead square on the Delta grinder + Lee Valley grinding rest combo; there were some massive nicks at the edge. The mouth opening is squarely located on the sole.

back together but not ready for prime-time

The only solution that presents itself is to accurately mill the mating surfaces of the bed (fairly easy) and the frog (more difficult) to guarantee the iron's alignment. The next task will have to be (finally) setting up the Taig mill which has been is mothballs since before the move.

I think this is a good thing.