dave brown
>I use a modified 5-1/4 as my scrub plane and it works great.

Scrub planes are of more value than one might think. Their obvious use is to take a huge amount of wood off in a hurry. When you set the blade to take a light cut it can take off smaller amounts of wood with little effort. Because it is so short, it can get into areas that a try or jack plane can't. Sometimes a jack plane is just too big for the job but with the scrub you know exactly where it's going to cut -- like piloting a big 4x4 through Baja when you'd have more fun in a dune buggy. ;-) And as Derek said the scrub gives you a lot more sensory feedback. I even use mine to remove paint when I'm recycling wood from old projects -- does a much quicker job than a scraper.