Plane restoration #6 – Iron and cap iron

 

The iron and cap-iron cleaned up pretty well. There wasn’t a great deal of rust, just some patina, and that can stay as it does no harm.

 

The main issue with the iron is a bad flat  on the cutting edge. This will take a bit of time at the sharpening stones.

I still use a honing guide as I am not yet confident in my ability to sharpen freehand. I have a set of old budget chisels that I intend practising on. Until then, it’s the honing guide or nothing.

 

 

 

As usual, some auto glass cleaner is used to float off the swarf. Once I have achieved a burr on the coarse stone, I go down through the grits. Then before honing on the strop, I take the iron out of the guide and go back through the grits to feather out the ‘wings’ of the iron.

 

 

 

 

The reason for doing this is similar to feathering the long edges of the plane sole. It provides a lead in for the cutting edge and means that the work wont be marked by the abrupt corner of the iron. I can to this bit freehand, and then polish the whole bevel on the my leather strop.

 

 

Nice and shiny! All that’s left is to put it back together and see how it shaves…

…but that’s for another post.