So after some sanding on the bottom and sides to do a little flattening and rust removal, I worked on the frog. Once I flattened the areas on the frog, I put sticky sandpaper on the newly flatten surfaces and flattened the mating surface on the plane base.
Here are a couple of shots of the whole plane after I worked on it. I started at 100 grit, went down several grits down and did a final polish with some 600 wet dry I had laying around.
Then I did my first test run. I got crumpled shavings and a lot of chatter on the first pass.
So I pulled out the blade and chip breaker to see if I could see light between them and sure enough, I still had some light peeking through. I took the chip breaker, clamped it up in my honeing guide and made some more passes over the sand paper.
This time I got nice ribbon shavings and a lot less chatter. I might need to work with the chip beaker some more to get all the chatter out .. we’ll see on I get my workbench back in operation.
I added a shot of the honing guide set to 35 degrees. I used this to get an even edge to mate with the blade.
Here’s a good summary video if you don’t want to buy a dvd (thanks Tico Vogt!):
PS. please feel free to make suggestions. After all, that’s what all this blogging is about, right?