Here’s the way I made lemonade.
A couple weeks ago I bought a Stanley no. 4C at the flea market. What caught my eye was the mostly intact decal on the tote and the fact that the wood was very good on both pieces. I gave it a cursory inspection and paid the guy the 10 bucks he was asking.
It sat on my work bench for a couple days when I finally got around to disassembling it for cleaning. It was during this process that I found what I should have seen when I bought it. The dreaded "crack". This one ran all the way up the side. Totally unrepairable by me.
I kicked myself a couple times for not noticing it at the market...I probably would have bought it anyway for the parts, but I could have probably gotten it cheaper. So again I set it aside.
I hate to throw things away so I thought about what I could do with it. I came up with this...a bull nose no. 4 plane. I got out a cutoff wheel for my Dremel and cut a groove up the other side to weaken it, and snapped it off.
I didn’t want to use the good Stanley parts so scrounged through my parts bin and found a generic lever cap and a tote that fit. I wanted some kind of a knob for the front so used this one that I had in a drawer. It’s not a plane knob but works.