Good Afternoon!

I was not sure where, if anywhere, was appropriate for me to share a few pictures of couple of recent projects.  Jan shared with me a post about some of your woodworking projects.  Tell you what; some of you folks have some mad skills!

Anyway, I recently completed restoring a couple of hand planes.

First, I found a Capewell hand plane at my parent's house that I thought my sister would treasure if it were in better condition.  We lost my dad back in 2012, and my mom passed away last fall, so being able to finish something that I believe my dad intended on restoring is something special.  Hopefully for both myself and my sister.

The Capewell was definitely a learning experience.  Size-wise, this was about the equivalent of a Stanley #5 plane.  Capewell hand planes had different paint colors than I was used to seeing on those old Stanley planes.  I had a very difficult time finding much information on these planes at all.

Carefully disassembling the planes and cleaning every component up, I found what I was certain was some original paint.  Matching that paint color was not an easy thing to do, but I was able to clean everything up, and overall, I was happy with the end result.  One of the things that surprised me most was that Capewell did not use the same type of wood in both the tote and the front knob.  I did have to repair a split in the tote.  My personal taste is to show of the beauty of the wood, so I deviated from the original lacquer finish and used boiled linseed oil and furniture paste wax.

Capewell - rear before

Capewell - rear after

Capewell - front before

Capewell - front after

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My second hand plane project was a #4 Stanley (type 19 - ≈1950s).  I followed a similar process as with the Capewell ; doing a whole lot of clean up.  Everything on the plane is original, just cleaned, polished and the sole and frog was painted.  Once again, I could not bring myself to covering up that wood with lacquer, so I once again I used BOL and wax.

I unfortunately did not think to get any 'before; photos.  But I am happy with the end result.

Please enjoy the photos and if anyone has suggestions, I am certainly always looking to improve projects.

Thanks for looking!