Recent content by 54Strat

I recently bought a replacement 2 3/8" stanley cap iron and iron, marketed as a 'double'. In short, it doesn't fit the older planes. There's a thread on it here

I bought a very cheap old beat up oak bookcase from an ad on Gumtree for £20, and got about 5 usuable 900mm lengths from it barring a few holes. The look on the sellers face when I 'disassemmbled' it with the help of a soft hammer and saw in front of the boot of my car was priceless.

Poor man's kaleidoscope? Or more practically, a herb chopper? Paul

I use the Ultex ones, same set up as Brian18741 but use a 6000g water stone before stropping (only because I bought it beforehand and need to justify the cost). I've found them excellent, though you do need to make sure they're cleaned and dried properly as they can get spots of rust on them...

Hi, After the sales rep making enquiries, it seems the new 2 3/8" Stanley cap irons will only fit Stanley's new planes. Mine are all pre 1970's. This is no surprise really, but without a new Stanley to compare against I've no idea where the design changes are,(i.e in the frogs, the bed or the...

Pete, the original one is salvageable. I was hoping the new one work save me the effort. Hmm. ED65, good suggestion. I'd not thought about epoxies and I can see your method working. To be honest, removing 5 to 6mm from the tip would be really daunting for me and I know I'd botch it. Rebuilding...

Yes, you're both right in that it's not fit for purpose. I bought this as a 'double iron', i.e. a Stanley iron and a cap iron and the cost was £15 as opposed to £11 for just the iron. For £4 it's not worth the postage, however I will drop an email to the vendor where I bought to explain the...

Thanks D_W. I'm afraid a new adjuster slot position is too close to the original position, the slots are 5.5mm deep and would need to be moved 6mm. Good idea though. I think the only recourse is to take off 6mm from the tip, and hope that there's enough left to maintain enough spring left in it...

Hi, I've just bought a new Stanley iron and cap iron for my old no.7 which had seen some abuse in the past. On fitting I found I couldn't withdraw the iron and on closer inspection I found that compared to the old cap iron, the new one was about 6mm longer when measured from the yoke slot to...

The RFC became the RAF in 1918, so it's definitely WW1. Although British planes were wooden framed, some had metal skins (RE8 for example). I know Germany had at least one all metal plane, the Junkers J-1l, slow but strong. And there's plenty of engineered metalwork on a plane, e.g. the engine ;)

I've built quite a bit with scaffold boards, and after a few months drying inside (stored under my bed) I have to disregard about 1 in 3 as they either twist or cup way too much to save. Not too bad as I get them cheap enough. I did want to preserve the worn look, so planing wasn't really an...

Spanning, I gather refers to the sole of the plane spanning the edges of the box to get it's level. I initially tried planing it, but didn't think to rotate the plane and continue onto the adjacent edge so gave up for fear of tear out when hitting the 90 degree edge. I did use my 220, then my...

Thanks Sploo. Yes, that's very similar to planing jig I previously made. Instead of the two side rails on the link you posted, I made a square shallow box out of mdf. The router runs on a split bridge that rests on the box's two opposite sides and is free to move in one axis and constrained...

Not cheating at all ;), I prefer hand tools for the challenge and learning, plus I have the luxury of it being a hobby. I also work in the kitchen so it's a little bit quieter. I do have an old Bosch Router and I have a planing jig I built a while back for flattening stock. This jig is deep...