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Monday, April 7, 2014

Reconditioning a Danish Wooden Smoothing Plane

Well I picked up a Danish wooden smoothing plane this weekend and I think it will be a good user.
I am waiting for the hinges to come from Rockler for the tv cabinet so to keep busy I thought I would spend some time on this plane and recondition it.
I did a little research on this plane since I could not find any maker mark on the plane body I thought it might be a little difficult to figure out.  But the plane iron had the name Erik Anton Berg.  It turns out that the plane is Danish made and probably had JPBO on it somewhere. It stands for Johan P. Bendixen Odense.  The firm is no longer in business since bankruptcy in 1992.  The plane was probably made in the 1970's.   The Danish did not make the steel so they turned to the Swedes to make the irons.  That is why the name on the blade is Swedish.
The wooden body is in good condition but could use some cleaning.  The blade needs grinding since it has a lot of nicks in it.  So, I started by taking all the dirt and rust of the blade and cap iron.
I used sand paper and a wire brush.  Then I started to grind the iron at 25 degree angle on the Worksharp at 120 then, 220, etc.  You will see the progression in the video.
Once I got a decent edge on the iron with the Worksharp, I switched to hand honing.  I used the 3M micro sheets at 5 microns and .05 microns.   I added a minor camber to the blade.
All I did was set the iron and tried it out on a piece of maple.   I have some more work to do to get it running good but I thought I would let you know how I was doing with it.
Here is the video:

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