Japanning

[mahking51]

I've got some old planes that i have always felt like 'doing up'; nothing valuable or antique.
I have dug up various recipes for redoing the japanning, most of which involve comandeering the oven and putting up with the ensuing divorce!
Has anyone actually done any of this process?
Does it work? In the past I have had some sucess by bead blasting the castings and just using well applied primer and smooth hammerite but they do look a bit 'new'.
Also what are the ethics of restoring the good stuff? Repaint or leave alone?
Find all this old tool stuff really interesting.
regards
Martin

 

[AndyBoyd]

I inherited some bedrocks with about 1% japanning left, so the ethics did not matter for me.

I put on the japanning in thin layers I warmed it and painted it on by hand so it would stay smooth, 4 layers was fine.

I built a small electrolysis bath to fully strip the old rust away:
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~alf/en/electrolysis.txt

Worked a treat, throw everything in.

I then scotchbrited it with warm saopy water, dried it , then japanned it.

I'm delighted with the results.

I then treated myself to fancy new handles made by an old friend in Texas:

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/mike_in_katy ... efault.htm

I use Mike in Texas to do up planes I buy via ebay, in the US I get them sent to him, he restores them for me and ships them onto me, no tax as this is a repair job! Cheeky huh the savng in tax pays for half the repair.

 

[ydb1md]

Ewwww . . . japanning some old tools . . . now there's a fun weekend project. Yes, the recipes that you will find online do work. It takes some practice to get the formula just right. And the smell, well, let's say that it's worse than powder-coating, if you've ever tried that. It shouldn't look as shiny as paint and, as you know, will be a lot tougher. You can always antique the finish once you get it on there.