I am trying to restore a hand plane belonging to my father in-law. I need to know how to redo the finish on the handle and knob. I appears that all of the finish has worn off as well any stain. It is a very old Stanley No. 4. smoothing plane. I am open to any and all ideas.
Fred
Replies
The finish on Stanley knobs varied widely over time and between the different models, so there is no single right finish and there isn't some magical finish that you need to reproduce, unless you are trying to perfectly restore the tool.
The easiest thing to do is nothing and the plane will be fine. The next easiest approach is to remove the remaining finish, I just scrape it off with a small knife blade, and then lightly sand and apply an oil finish, this looks fine with the dark wood knobs that were on many of the earlier planes.
Some Stanleys had naturally dark rosewood knobs that were simply lacquered, you could do that simply with spray can lacquer if you wanted the original glossy finish. If the knobs, when they are stripped, are light colored, or not evenly dark, you can apply a thickened gel stain, probably in mahogany, without wiping too much off to reproduce the heavy, almost opaque, stain that Stanley used and then finish to a gloss with spray lacquer.
John White
Edited 4/3/2008 7:50 pm ET by JohnWW
Perfect, just what I needed to know. Thanks again.
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