Announcing The "Rust Bucket" Challenge!!!

Grading criteria:

1) Scope of Work, and documentation:

• If you have acquired a handplane which is so rusted that it requires a hammer and/or heat torch to loosen the parts so that you can begin with the disassembly and cleanup, followed by a serious investment in time to clean and restore all of the individual rusty and crusty parts -- obviously this will receive more credit than an individual who has brought in a slightly older and used Lie Nielsen or Bridge City Toolworks plane that only required a light buffing to bring it back to its original shine.
• If you found any part of the restoration process to be difficult or extremely time consuming, we want to know about it!  This will be brought up as part of the Q&A portion of the September meeting, and the ensuing discussion helps to serve as an educational and informative talking point regarding hand tool restoration amongst other guild members.
• "Pictures are worth a 1000 words…"

As part of the documentation process, please take plenty of pictures of your tool find before you begin your restoration, and tell us as much as you can about the initial state of the tool, and just how dirty, rusty, and crusty your particular tool was in its initial state.  Additionally, take pictures during the course of the tool cleanup, and document what methods you used to bring the rusty tool from a "Loser" to a "User".  

2) Aesthetics, Customization and Personalization:

If you have buffed the casting of a handplane to a mirror finish, if you have jointed and re-soled a wooden bodied transitional plane, re-japanned the painted bits of a router plane, of if you have performed a custom engraving on the side of hammer, or copper plated and / or painted your hand tool to match other "user" tools in your shop --- These are things we want to know about and see.

3) Aftermarket upgrades, or direct parts replacement:

If, as part of your tool restoration process, you have determined that an aftermarket or replacement part was necessary to bring back (or improve upon) your tool's usability -- this is both interesting and informative to the rest of our guild community.  Tell us about it! Also, let us know what details informed your decision to purchase these add-on parts, and where you sourced these parts from.

4) Final tool performance, post-restoration:

Demonstrate how much this tool has improved "performance-wise" as part of your restoration process:  Please bring in wood shavings of your restored hand plane or be willing to demonstrate how quickly your (no-longer rusty and dull) handsaw breezes through cuts of hard maple... as examples. 

5) Tool History (optional; likely lower weighting on judging criteria)

If you can document any efforts you went through to identify what tool you have, as in:  "This rusty hand plane revealed itself to be a 'Stanley Bailey #5C; Type 15' manufactured in depression era of the 1930's" as part of your research - This is will be credited as part of your scope of work.

Additionally, if there is a story behind the tool that is excellent, for example: your great great great grandfather brought this wooden bodied plane over on the Mayflower and you have restored centuries old tool to its full glory, or if this tool was an original produced by the infamous Victor Bailey, or if the Norse God "Thor" broke  the legendary Mjolnir and the hammer brought in was re-forged from the broken bits and pieces to showcase the tool brought in for show and tell --- this is encouraged.