Reviving hand tools and learning their history.

After diving further into woodworking as a craft more so than a hobby, I find myself taking my girlfriend antiquing and shopping in vintage/consignment shops because she enjoys it... it also night be a ploy to buy more tools, but she doesn't need to know that.

One thing I love about restoring old tools is learning the history behind them, and making them "mine". When leveling the faces of a plane, you'll quickly learn what it was used for. Did it live in a shooting board, hence why one face has a hollow and the other is level? Was it used to round boards, hence why their is a hollow directly in the middle of the cutting face? These questions can be quickly answered with time and elbow grease.

The most rewarding aspect for me however, is it becoming my tool on the process. This isn't a new toy from a big box store, and this isnt a $400 tool from one of the usual suspects. This is a piece of history that I have re worked to perform better than the day it was made.

In the process of bringing these tools back to life, sometimes you'll notice things that shouldn't be there, and wouldn't be discovered by someone less motivated. Here we can see the No. 5 plane has a burr that was missed during the milling process. One simple little burr that would drive a man crazy if he were a stickler for precision. This is the type or issue that gets a plane retired to a shelf due to the craftsman pulling the rest of his hair out trying to figure out why his shavings are uneven, even after hours of tweaks and adjustments. A tenth of an inch save 4 thousandths. Some people wouldn't notice it, others wouldn't mind it at all, but either way, it's fun to go back in time and call out the guy on the milling machine.

I guess it must have been a Friday.

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