With the completion of the Defiance 1205 under my belt I made a choice to take on trying to get a complete set of the Stanley Defiance planes. Should be a simple enough task given that they’re not the high end collectible planes people are after and that they’re considered “junk” by a lot of collectors… more on that in another post because I have a theory I want to test.
So I snagged another Defiance off eBay last week and turned it into another desk project so it’s taken me about a week to get it mostly finished.
This one is a Stanley Defiance 1204, denoted by the 9″ sole and 2″ iron. Here are the before pics of the plane I got as taken by the seller.
As you can see it’s not really in bad shape, the tote was broke and held together with athletic tape but other than that, everything was present and in fair shape.
The plan for this one is to get it all prettied up like the Defiance 1205 and do the handle and tote in gloss black. I might go back and do the handle and tote on the 1205 in gloss black as well so everything in my set matches. Of course it’s also going to feature my new Defiance sticker on the lever cap.
NOTE: As I was putting the finishing touches on this today I noticed that the iron is smaller in width than the chip breaker and not actually 1 3/4″. The chip breaker has a width of 2″ meaning the iron should be 2″ as well making this a 1204 and not a 1203 as originally identified.
So here she is, the Stanley Defiance 1204 all prettied up and ready for service once more. I took pics at all the angles of the ones from the listing so you can get a better before and after view. And I have already removed the paint from the underside around the mouth that I missed. Now all that’s left to do is smooth out the sole and sharpen the blade and it’ll be time to make some shavings with her bigger brother.
Quick overview of the whole process when I got her was to remove all the parts and throw the iron, chip breaker, lever cap, and screws into my little tub of vinegar overnight while I worked on the other parts with varying grits of sandpaper and the wire brush. From there I rubbed everything down with some fine steel wool and worked the sole up to 400 grit. Once that was finished I repaired the tote and sanded down the wooden handle and tote and gave them a coat of gap filling primer before hitting them with the gloss black engine enamel. I then taped off the areas on the frog and sole that I didn’t want painted and gave them a coat of primer followed by a coat of the perty stuff which in this case is the Rustoleum Gloss Winter Gray which seems to be a fair match to the original paint I’ve found under both frogs so far and will continue to use. Then I just slap it all together when it’s dry and viola.
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