Buying my Record 043 plough plane

You may recall my partially successful attempt at building a plough plane. I noted that I would look for an older Record or Stanley, and it just so happened that I found a Record 043 on Gumtree the next day. It was complete with three cutters, in what looked to be fantastic condition. I rang the seller up, paid his asking price, and a week later it arrived.

Unpacking it eagerly, all parts were accounted for, and as per the photos, it really was in outstanding condition. It even came with instructions!

My intention is to use the ¼ ” most of the time, so took it out of the plane, ran it over my 1000 grit diamond plate and my new 12,000 grit Shapton stone (which only arrived the day before), and with much anticipation ran some grooves.

Well, that was an experience. Note to self: “square your stock first”. I was so excited I grabbed an off-cut of rough sawn Myrtle, which was anything but. Out of square, with a bow. It was also a little hard to keep the fence against the side, which I put down to the bow. For good measure I ran a second groove against the grain, which had been a concern for me. I was pleased to see while there was tear-out in the base of the groove, the walls were perfectly acceptable, and would clean up nicely with a smoothing plane run over the top.

You may notice that I set the fence rails up as per Derek’s suggestion to make it more comfortable to hold. With the rails protruding out of the far side, it’s easier to cradle the fence. While this necessitates a screwdriver to make adjustments, I figure it’s a once per job operation, so of little consequence. Naturally I can still fine tune the fence with the knurled knobs (it’s not often you get to use two words with a silent “k” one after another; the simple pleasures of life brought to you by the English language).

We had guests staying with us at the time, so couldn’t spend too much time in the workshop, so that was the end of my playing for the day.

Later in the week I got up early whilst the guests were still sleeping, and took to opportunity to give the plane some spit and polish (or a rub against the buffing wheel). Oh how it shone! I also got around to making up a larger fence plate. In hindsight, I will need to cut it down, as it’s simply too deep to be practical on narrower boards, such as draw parts, which it what I anticipate its main use to be.

And naturally I put it to use and ran some more test grooves. It was so much easier with the larger fence, but noted that I really need to make an effort to keep the plane vertical, and not rely on the registration of the fence to do that for me.