I picked up a Rockwell 653 Versa Plane 10A 3" hand planer with a carbide spiral cutter head a few years ago and did a full restoration on it. I figured its about time that I post it here.
I replaced all of the bearings, belt, cord, brush caps, replaced all of the screws with stainless, cleaned the housing and then buffed the entire planer to a quick somewhat mirror finish and took 250 grit sandpaper to the cutterhead to remove a little bit of rust.
I stripped the handle and dust chute, put on 2 coats of primer, 3 coats of flat black, 3 coats of high gloss black and 2 coats of clear coat.
Before
’
Disassembly / Reassembly
new bearings & retention ring
new cord installed and cleaned field installed. The field and armature looked basically brand new when I removed them and still had all of the painted factory markings on them like they were brand new.
Finished
I polished the entire house with a buffing wheel on my grinder, drill and dremel and a little bit of white rouge compound. I had never really buffed anything on a buffing wheel prior to then, so I was pretty happy with the results.
Sharpening guide for carbibe cutterhead.
Sharpening bar and grinding wheel. The planer came with the sharpening jig, instructions for the sharpening jig and the planer.
Edge guide. I still need to polish the aluminum and strip the bluing on the still and redo the bluing on the guide plate.
Polishing is a HUGE undertaking, but totally worth the effort in the end. My original hope was to polish my Monkey Ward planer, however, the pitting was pretty bad throughout, so after a bit of polishing prep, I decided to take the paint route.
What did you use for pulling paint on the Rockwell? I will admit I am a bit of a newb when it comes to polishing, so I can always learn more about the process and it looks like you have it down pretty well.
Amazing restorations on all of your planers by the way!
I have my shop set up so everything can be pulled out of the shop and the floors and walls can be scrubbed down. The walls are painted with a very durable ultra gloss paint so I just spray them down with windex and awesome to clean them.
All my cabinets and table tops are melamine so they can be scrubbed clean as well.
I try to thoroughly clean the shop after every project or at least once or twice during prolonged projects.
Nice work Bree. Hey, how do you remove the small pulley that’s attached to the cutter head shaft so the whole assembly can be removed from the body. I got the blade off the shaft, now I want to remove the pulley to get to that snap ring.
Both pulleys are threaded on, I believe with reverse threads. To remove the pulley from the cutterhead shaft, remove the cutterhead and then use an adjustable wrench on the square part of the shaft and a rag and pair of pump pliers on the pulley to loosen the threads so you can unscrew the pulley off the shaft. Once you unscrew the pulley, you can just tap out the shaft and have full access to the bearing for replacement.
You can source all of the bearings, snap rings, cord, brushes, etc. through Toolpartsdirect under Porter Cable 653.
Removing the pulley from the armature is a little bit more painstaking / terrifying.
I always hate taking a pair of pump pliers to almost anything I want to put back together, especially pulleys, where nicks could cause excess wear. I guess just yet another reason for me to dream about wanting a cnc mill someday so that I can make my own custom sockets and removal tools.
As a welder, past electrician and moving into the A&P field… the question should really be “What’s a nice guy like you doing talking to a girl like me?”
Good stuff Bree. When I rebuilt mine, I painted it. Wish I would have polished it. Looks so good! Then again, I am a painter.
Part of the problem with using these for surfboard use is the inability of using the quick depth adjust while planing. I tried to modify the handle to solve this. Witteled it down, but just don’t have long enough fingers to use it like a Skil. Opted for a Shift knob which brought my hand closer to the adjuster. Works better this way.
The spiral cutter is way more efficient and less prone to tearing. It’s a better set up than the 100’s I think. You can tell by how the shavings will curl instead of chipping. Try using a sharp chisel on a piece of wood. Cut going straight and then on the skew. Shaving is better than chipping or plowing.
