One of my passions in life is restoring old tools to give them new life and bring the beauty out of them. Although today's tools maybe more accurate and more durable they just do not have the hand made beauty of older tools. It's very rewarding when I can take a well used, sometimes abused tool and bring the beauty back out.

Here are some wooden levels I've found recently, I want to share the process of the transformation.

Typical condition when I find them.

I only buy them if the level bubbles are intact.

First sanding.
Then I wax them, notice the brass on this one.


Here are several Torpedo levels that I found.

Sanded

Then finished

This was a heavy one with lots of brass.





This one is a Stanley brand.

Notice how nice it looks all done.


This one was really rough.

But cleaned up nicely.


Nothing special about this one...

Until the wax went on and look at how great it now is.


This one was stained blue.

I didn't sand all of the blue off.

Here it is finished with some of the blue still showing through.

This was the ugly duckling


Not ugly anymore.


Here is the finished lot.






Time to look for more candidates.