Some time ago I bought a molding plane in an antique shop. It is one of those woodworking planes with a molding shape at the sole and the cutting edge of the iron in the same shape as that molding. These antique woodworking planes are not usually in very good condition (not the ones I find here in Galicia, because humidity and weather conditions ruins them and besides give the perfect conditions for woodworm attacks after years unused if they are not keep correctly), so I thought it would not be worth more than for decoration.
The thing is that one day in a hardware store I found a gouge sharpening stone (a multiform sharpening stone) and I thought that with the shapes that this stone had I could try to sharpen the iron of the molding plane.
What I did was take the blade away (the iron) and cleaned the rust off with metal sandpaper. And then, with some patience, I sharpened the iron of this antique plane taking advantage of the shapes that these sharpening stones have. Little by little, adapting the different curved areas of the sharpening stone to the curved areas of the iron of the molding plane, and doing the same with the flat areas of the whetstone and the flat areas of the blade, I managed to sharpen it enough to think that this old plane might be able to get some shavings out of a wood piece.
Con una tabla bien sujeta verticalmente en el tornillo de banco puse el cepillo sobre el canto de la tabla apoyando el saliente lateral del cepillo contra el borde de la tabla, y empecé a cepillar. Tuve que empujar el cepillo con decisión, y al principio las virutas se atascaban en el cepillo, pero poco a poco la moldura en el canto de la tabla se fue revelando. Y si habéis trabajado con cepillos de carpintero sabréis que se puede conseguir una terminación en la madera que no se consigue por mucho que pasemos la lija.
Now I have some other antique wooden planes, and maybe I’ll get around to sharpening them and trying them out, but I don’t know if I’ll dare to do a full woodworking project with them.
Al menos ahora se que los puedo afilar, aunque necesitaré un poco de paciencia. Lo mismo que cuando necesito afilar formones con la guía de afilar. Si intentamos afilar con prisas es muy posible que no consigamos un filo de corte lo suficientemente afilado.
