Another plough plane, this time a wooden one, which I believe is an EMIR No. 731.

EMIR was founded around 1937 and was quite late to the wooden plane making business. I’m unsure when they ceased plane production, but they were still making them in the 1960s and until recently, EMIR was still making workbenches. They appear to still exist, but their website is down, and they sold off their stock in 2021 so they may exist in name only now.

Originally, this plane would have come with three irons. Unfortunately, mine only has one, although it shouldn’t be too difficult to cut a piece of O1 to make some new ones if desired.

I have a soft spot for wooden planes, the history of them (even if this one isn’t that old) and the fact they glide over the wood so easily. They also benefit from being easier for woodworkers to repair.

The first step is to dismantle the plane so the metal parts can be treated with Evapo-rust.

Normally, I use boiled linseed oil (BLO) applied with fine wire wool on wooden planes, which cleans off the grime while keeping the patina, followed by a coating of homemade paste wax. I use BLO as wooden planes have often been treated with linseed oil by previous owners, so it is in keeping with the original finish.

This plane had not had any oil applied, so originally I wanted to leave it as is and just clean off the grime. However, after cleaning, it still didn’t look particularly good, so I decided, given that it’s quite modern and of little collectable value, to apply some tung oil. It had two coats of tung oil, followed by some paste wax.

The Evapo-rust has done a great job on the metal parts, and the tung oil has, in my opinion, left a nice finish on the wood.

To help protect the metal parts from rusting again, they were coated in paste wax. I’ve found paste wax to be a good way to prevent rust, and it acts as a lubricant during use, which is a nice bonus.

After putting it all back together, the plane looks a lot nicer than it did originally.

The final step is to try it out.

It works great. Sure, it is a little rough around the edges. The groove on the back of the iron, for example, could be cut cleaner, but the plane gets the job done just as well as any plough plane.