What's more fun than raking leaves?

This weekend, most of the trees in my yard decided to drop their leaves. Of course, this came just days after I had cleared all the leaves from the house and the yard. My neighbor and I were standing out in the yard talking when the maple tree decided to rain bright, yellow leaves down on us. It was like a yellow blizzard and covered the ground with leaves in seconds. It was a disheartening experience to say the least.

So, when "the dump" occurred, did I rush out to clean them up again? No, I retreated to the workshop to clean up several old planes. Seems perfectly sensible to me - let the leaves for another day.

Actually what turned out to be more fun than raking leaves was cleaning and adjusting a couple of planes. Over the last several years I have bought several old planes at auctions. My intention was to clean them up and learn to use them. They have set untouched for a long time and I decided to try working with one.

I had just watched a Podcast from Woodsmith which reviewed how to recondition and maintain older wood planes. I learned a lot about dismantling the planes and cleaning the various parts. I had previously taken a class in sharpening plane blades. So with all this knowledge but no previous experience, I chose a Sargent plane to be my first. I took the plane completely apart, used several grades of sand paper to work to flatten the base of the plane, used the same sand paper to flatten the back of the plane and create the 25 degree bevel. I had some success in using WD40 to clean the parts. Since my workshop is in an unheated garage next to a lake, I have two sources of moisture to attack metal in my shop. The WD-40 will hopefully help prevent rust on the plane surfaces.

Putting the plane back together seemed simple enough and I was feeling rather smug until I realized I had installed the blade upside down. After making that correction and adjusting the plane, I was producing some nice, light shavings on a scrap of cherry. It was a nice learning experience and I am looking forward to working on a few of the other planes still waiting for attention.

I didn't spend the whole afternoon fixing one plane. I did move on to work on two different projects.

I drilled and set brass inserts in 11 bottle stopper blanks - four cocobolo, four bicote, and three acrylic. I also trimmed and sanded the box lid I have been working on. The picture shows the bird's eye maple veneer lid with mahogany edging and paduak splines.