Some of the best tools on our benches came out of house clearances: a tired jack plane in a cardboard box, a tenon saw hanging on a garage nail, a roll of chisels at the back of a cupboard. Old steel was often better than what is sold new at the same price. The skill is telling a tool worth rescuing from one that will only take your weekend.
Planes: check the body first
Ignore the rust and look for cracks. Run a fingernail round the mouth, the cheeks and the area behind the frog. A crack in a cast body is fatal; everything else can be fixed. Check that the frog adjuster and lateral lever move, and that the sole is roughly flat when you lay a steel rule across it. Missing parts are easy to replace on common sizes and hard on rare ones.
Saws and chisels
Sight down a saw plate for kinks. A gentle bow can be corrected; a sharp kink usually cannot. Teeth can always be recut. On chisels, look for pitting on the back near the edge, because that determines how much steel you must grind away before it will take an edge. Loose or split handles are a small job.
What the chest tells you
Tools that come out of a damp cellar often arrive with more than rust: wooden totes furred grey, a tool chest that smells of wet earth, and paper labels gone soft and spotted. Clean the steel, let the wood dry slowly and wipe it down, and keep that box away from the rest of your kit for a few weeks. One reader in Tennessee bought a whole cellar of tools with a house and found the same growth climbing the walls downstairs; he had mold damage specialists in Nashville treat the cellar before he set up his own bench there, which is a sensible order wherever you live.
Cleaning up
Strip each tool down completely. Remove light rust with fine abrasive and oil, working along the steel. Soak stubborn parts in a mild rust remover rather than attacking them with a wire wheel, which rounds edges and removes markings collectors value. Flatten and sharpen the working surfaces, wax the bare metal, and give wooden parts a coat of oil.
Know when to walk away
A cracked casting, a saw plate kinked near the toe, a chisel pitted half-way down its back or a handle replaced with something crude are all signs to leave a tool where it is. There will always be another clearance next weekend.