The End of the Taylor Toolworks Saga

Now they work.

For the last couple months, I’ve been stewing about the Taylor Toolworks Bed Rock-style planes we purchased and reviewed. In all, we examined four smoothing planes (three No. 4s and a No. 3). One of the planes was good to go. The other three had problems that would vex a beginning woodworker.

This morning, I packed them up in my satchel for my morning walk. I was going to hand them over to the metal recycling company a few blocks away (they take a lot of our steel scraps). When I got there, I realized I was too early. They weren’t open.

When I got back to the shop, I had a change of heart. I felt a bit sorry for the tools. They didn’t ask to be made like that (apologies for the animism). If the tools had their way, they’d rather be in the hands of a woodworker, chewing wood.

The yoke problem. Ground down to work.

So I spent a couple hours fixing up two of the planes. The primary problem was the tool’s yoke was too long. The yoke is the Y-shaped casting that moves the iron/chipbreaker forward and back. If the yoke is too short, the iron won’t move reliably – if at all. If it’s too long, it can rub against the spring of the lever cap, making adjustments to the iron impossible.

The yokes needed to be ground back about 3/32". We have a metalworking belt sander here, so I put the planes on the machine’s table and easily ground down the iron yokes. Then I filed off the burrs, shaped the ends properly and colored the ground area black to match the rest of the yoke (I’m a picky wiener).

Then I did some other maintenance, mostly removing burrs from the insides of the tools and easing the edges of the soles, which were sharp.

Both planes are now sharpened and ready to go.

Oh, one last task: I buffed off most of the Taytools logo on the sidewall (I couldn’t get it all off). I don’t want to encourage a new user to buy a whole set of Taytools planes based on one tool.

So now what?