This blog series is migrated here from another site.  So there may be some out of date remarks or references to posts in the comments that don't make sense.  Please excuse any discontinuities.


Recently I decided it would be beneficial to have a rabbet plane in the shop. I don't generally buy tools unless I know they'll get used. I've had several times recently I've had to set up the router table or a dado stack in the table saw to cut a single rabbet and thought "there has to be a more efficient way". So I had almost settled on buying a rabbet plane but then decided to poke my head into the Stanley #45 thread here on Lumberjocks and see if maybe that was a good alternative that would provide added function. And really, it's just cool and I couldn't really pass up an excuse to buy one ;-)

So Mosquito and the boys over there enabled me and Mos' went a step further and offered to sell me one of his spares at a price I couldn't turn down. So, a couple of days ago, this arrived on my porch:

Oh man, it's soooooo cool. I wanna play with it! But first, I wanna make it pretty

So I called this an "overhaul" rather than a restoration. I did so because I'm not intending to bring it back to its original condition. This is strictly a user. It didn't arrive in collectible shape so I don't feel bad about taking some leeway and making this puppy my own.

One of the first things to do will be to clean up all the rust. The thin nickel plating is flaking off in lots of places so I don't know if I'll make any attempts to preserve it. Never been a fan of that gray/green look anyway. I like my babies shiny or black… or both. Maybe with some red highlights (MF reference for those not familiar with my bench plane preferences ;-P) But don't worry, I won't take THAT much leeway and put red highlights on this guy. Probably.

Anyhow, I've been wanting to blog something so I feel like I'm contributing. So there's the intro. And here's a teaser for next time:

Until we meet again….