Removal of Stanley Plane Lateral Lever - How To?

[Tom Veatch]

I'm refurbishing an old Stanley 10 1/2 plane and need to temporarily remove the lateral lever from the frog. There are some irregularities on the frog surface that could be corrected much more conveniently if the lever were not in the way. Can anyone advise me on the method used to attach the lever. Or, more to the point, how to remove the lever without damaging the frog?

Since the lever rotates on the pin, it appears that the pivot pin is a small interference fit in the frog and a peened over clearance fit in the lever. If the pivot pin is simply a straight pin, I should be able to drift it out of the frog from the bottom. However if it has a small head on the underside of the frog, that would be a counter-productive approach. The frog is quite thin in this area, and I have no desire to break the top off the frog with any over-exuberant pounding.

Alternately, I could grind of the peened head on the lever side and remove the lever. That might require fabricating a new pen which may, or may not, be a trivial task.

Incidentally, the frog assembly on this plane is very similar, if not identical to the frog on a type 5, 6, 7, or 8 Stanley Bailey #3. The plane is being cleaned and refurbished as a user. Although I would like to keep the plane as close to original as practical, the intent is to have a good user plane. I am indifferent to any "collector value" the plane might have or retain.

So, anybody have

Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA

[Tom Veatch]

Never mind, I went ahead and drilled out the pin. It looks to be a straight shank,

5/32" dia pin. Shouldn't be too difficult to kludge up a replacement pin.

Thanks, anyway.

Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA

[Frank McVey]

Exactly what I did - NP - riveted in a suitably sized and trimmed nail.

Cheers

Frank

Shouldn't be too difficult to

[Patrick Olguin]

[clip]

Carefully grind or file off the peened over pin end on the backside of the frog, then push the pin out. Do your lapping/surface grinding of the frog. Replace the pin later with a mild steel pin and peen it over. You'll want to make some sort of cradle or jig for the frog in order to support it and protect from snapping it. An incident of that sort is known in my biz as, "having a bad day."

Did I mention you should be very very careful?

If you do bust it, a #5 or #4 frog of similar vintage will work in it's place. DAMHIKT.

Humbly submitted, O'Deen

[Tom Veatch]

Thanks, Frank and O'Deen. The lever and frog have been separated, and the frog (so far) is still in one piece.

This is the first time I've tried removing the lateral adj. lever on several planes that I've refurbished. But the frog surface on this one was too bad to just let go. Had planned to just use the flat plate and sandpaper technique to level out the plane bed. But it looks like some places are so low that flattening would leave the top part of the frog too thin. So, I'm trying to build up those sections with some metal filled epoxy first. We'll see how it goes.

Thanks again, Guys.

Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA

[AArDvarK]

I have a mint- Bailey #4 type 19, perfectly useable and it has never even been tuned, last year made was '61 so it is older than ME ('64)! The pin on it's frog is not even peened-over so I guess I would use pin-punch with light tapping. But the face of the frog does need to be lapped, very crude grinding. as far as the lever-cap there is that lower edge that is down towards the cutter edge, is also very (somewhat) crude, should it also be lapped to even flatness?

Alex

[Tom Veatch]

To paraphrase Patrick Henry, in this 4th of July season, "I know not what others may say, but as for me, can't hurt, might help."

According to Garrett Hack's _The Handplane Book_, "... lightly lap or flat-file the bed (the surface the iron lies on) to take out any burrs and check that it is reasonably true and flat." In compliance with that statement, I would stroke the frog across a piece of sandpaper, ala "Scary Sharp", several times and observe whether or not there is any significant indication of areas that are out of plane. The key words are "_reasonably_ true and flat". If the shiny parts are fairly evenly distributed, I wouldn't go any further. Otherwise, pop off the lateral lever and put some elbow grease into lapping the bed until you do have a good, even distribution of shiny spots. The goal is to get good, evenly distributed support for the iron. It should not be necessary to work the entire bed to a mirror finish.

As far as bench planes are concerned, the lever-cap doesn't make direct contact with the iron. That distinction is reserved for the cap iron. Therefore your tuning activities should be concentrated on the cap iron rather than the lever-cap. As long as the lever-cap makes good contact with the cap iron across the entire width, that should be sufficient.

Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA

[AArDvarK]

That's excellent, thanks. You made perfect sense, and I'll have to get that book! I did buy a nice flat peice of rectangular marble from an antique slash old-stuff store along with a peice of float glass 18x18x3/4", 'a-la-scary sharp'!

Alex