Well, I cleaned up and sharpened the first of my "user" wooden planes today-- this 16 inch jack plane. I wanted to make it a user in the traditional sense-- not too whispy a cut, but a consistant copy-paper thin cut. I sharpened the ancient spear and jackson iron with my wet sharpener-- it is a VERY thick tapered blade... the steel is quite hard and it took a LONG time to sharpen the 25 degree initial bevel. I put a 27 degree secondary bevel on the iron and rounded the corners of the blade slightly. I chose to not put a camber on the blade. I then tuned the cap iron on sandpaper and wire brushed the top round (not sure what that is called) I then re-flattened the bottom of the plane (it was quite gnarled up) on the jointer with a VERY thin cut and waxed the entire thing.
I set the iron in and tapped the wedge in place with my wooden mallet. As the back of the iron has been bent and has been peened over a bit it has obviously been hit with a metal hammer (a lot)
After a minute or two of messing, the plane took lovely shavings from this maple (not the most difficult wood to plane I'll admit, but it did the job)
I also glued up a crack and cleaned up the body of the trying plane. When I unscrewed the bottom piece and took it off, what looked like pieces of chalk were in the wood... Perplexed I carried on with the repair. After further investigation, I discovered it is lead rod placed in the plane to add weight
We're out of town this weekend, but I'll tune this one up next week and give-her a go as well
Just thought I'd share-- I've seen similar planes to my jack plane on e-bay for a song (under 20 bucks) and I can't imagine getting a new plane with the same quality iron for under 3 times that amount.
Lawrence