Rehabilitating a Stanley No.15 (i): de-rusting (with Evaporust)

A while back I talked about identifying a block plane, that turned out to be a Stanley No.15. The plane itself is a rusted piece of trash that I bought for $1 in Maine. The first step in rehabilitating the plane is de-rusting it. Then maybe some of the seized parts will be easier to deal with. Here’s a picture of it as it looks now.

The only parts that can be removed are the lever cap and blade. The front and rear brass knobs are seized, as is the mouth plate. The lever cap is damaged, and will be replaced.

I’m going to de-rust it by dunking it into a bath of Evaporust. After the first 24 hours, I was able to remove the front thumb-rest, and the mouth plate. The rust on the sole, and two sides was also gone at this stage. After an additional 24 hours, the rust on the inner portion of the plane had been removed, and much of the Japanning. The machine screw holding the lateral adjustment lever had loosened enough to remove it (unfortunately the screw required the use of vise-grips to remove, and will have to be replaced). Here is the plane (or at least the non-damaged parts), after de-rusting.

Looking a little closer, one can see that the rust has effectively been eliminated from the front portion of the plane, with some japanning left in place. In most regions, the rust obviously formed under the japanning, and was stripped off with the chelation action of the Evapo-rust.

The frog is also in reasonablely condition.

The best way to determine how well the Evapo-rust performed is to compare regions of the plane before and after de-rusting.

Even the lateral adjustment lever has been completely stripped of rust:

Overall, the Evapo-rust performed extremely well. In the overall scheme of de-rusting a rust-bucket of a vintage plane, that cost me US$1, the outcome is tremendous. As you will notice, the rust has been converted to a gray coating over the entire body of the plane. There is also a good amount of micro-pitting on the plane body from the effects of the corrosion. However, on the upper portion of the blade, where there was more corrosion, the remaining japanning will be removed, and the plane repainted. The sole and sides have minimal pitting, and will be sanded back to produce a smooth finish.