eBay groupings can provide

Every so often a grouping of tools comes together as a package via eBay and at first glimpse of a poorer image you might pass over it without thinking. This might have been the case when I bought the tools shown here. The image was quite unclear but the silhouette of the small router piqued my interest at first. I had wanted one for some time but they rarely come up on eBay and never elsewhere as far as I could see. This one, (below the larger brothers) had a superficial powder coat of rust but that soon came of with a brass wire brush. I recoated the knobs with shellac and refined the blade and so here you have the baby of the Edward Preston router plane back in service. It makes a nice addition.

For this wooden one it was a question of using it as a kit. The rectangular mahogany base had none of the shaping you see for thumbs and fingers and it was awkward to use. In a few minutes I had it fitting my hands and it works fine. I think I will file the back of the cutting iron flat to automatically align the blade to the depth lock screw so it’s presented square to the front of the plane and to prevent it from twisting under pressure.

The four longer burnishers are comprise three from the ones on eBay collection with the fourth one one of mine. They are very nicely made and came in at just the right time for something I am working on writing. Two of the three of them are made from old files as was mine with the hexagonal handle third from the left. I tried all of them and they work exceptionally well. They were made very beautifully and the thing for me was that one of the best was the triangular file made from a worn out saw file. With these burnishers the maker took off the file teeth and then polished them out. One is a three-square saw file, another a half round file and the other a tear-shaped one that was not made from a file.

The plane with the funny shape is for chair and rung making and has a half round blade in it. I can see this being a useful tool but whether I would have bought or made one outside of this collection I don’t really know. It does work nicely and really fits the hand well. The wood is beech.

This draw pin is of course for drawing up components and aligning holes in engineering but it draws up tenons into the mortise for using draw-bore methods for pinning tenons equally well. It will work equally well without adding a wooden handle so I will keep it as is.

The travisher was pretty grungy when I tame in but I was glad the rusted in tangs turned loose as the often don’t in spokeshaves and can break the wood. Of course this is a lot beefier. The tang is stamped Marples and Sons so I knew the blade was Marples but then as I cleaned off the wood there was a feint tracing of the same maker and Hibernia Sheffield stamped in the wood too. I haven’t sharpened it up yet but for chair seats this tool knows no equal.

The reamer here I am thinking will be just right for violin peg holes I think. Otherwise I would have no need for it. It will go to Joseph for his tools anyway.