Can you make a SCRUB PLANE out of a regular

Re: Can you make a SCRUB PLANE out of a regular

John Todd

>Open the mouth way up by adjusting the frog and grind a three inch radius bevel on the blade and you're set.

Wide mouth, cambered blade

Dave (Arlington, VA)

>Hi Alan -

Some (many?) do as you suggest...i.e. convert a #3, #4, or (usually) #5 into a scrub plane.

The main thing is the well-cambered blade so you can "scoop" out large bits of wood, and a large mouth so these chips can be easily ejected.

Some make the case that since scrubbing is (for many people) a rapid-fire, (kinda) jerky motion (taking off the high parts of a board) that weight is a consideration. Others demur.

The choice of a modified #5 or a dedicated scrub might depend on how much scrubbing you do, or how dependent you are on a scrub as your primary means of removing large amounts of wood.

I am sure others will have other views.

Regards -

Dave

Re: Wide mouth, cambered blade

Alan Tolchinsky

>Hi Dave, I just have several old planes that I got on "that auction site" and I wanted to put some of them to a different use. I have a jointer and planer but sometimes the wood I get is wider than my jointer. So I hand plane those boards flat on one side to go through my planer. I thought a scrub plane might make this easier/faster. Thanks Alan

Re: Can you make a SCRUB PLANE out of a regular

Alan Tolchinsky

>Thanks John, Is there a best angle to grind this 3" radius at? 25, 45 degrees? Thanks again John.

Re: Can you make a SCRUB PLANE out of a regular

Bob Hackett

>I find that a cheap horned plane makes an excellent scrub plane.Usually the mouth is already worn wide enough and having that horn on the front allows both hands to do equal work.

Look for one with a relatively narrow iron unless you have arms like Popeye.

Mainely,Bob

Re: Can you make a SCRUB PLANE out of a regular

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>A lot of people find a #5 a bit heavy for the type of exercise they get using a scrub, especially if they prefer the smaller #40 size to the Stanley #40 1/2 or the scrubs offered by LV and L-N that are about that size. So, if you can find a dogmeat #3 sized plane at a reasonable price, even one with the lateral adjuster broken off, you might want to start there.

I also prefer the smaller #40 because it fits in a coat pocket, an advantage when I want to reveal the figure of rough sawn wood at a sawyer's yard in inclement weather.

Another design issue that is important to a scrub that is not important to a bench plane is that the edges between the sole and the sides have a pronounced radius on the scrub. This makes it easier to steer, since you don't want the corners digging in to all the high spots in the board, and pushing you off course. I speculate that this may have been the steering problem ALF had that she menitioned in her review of the LV scrub, which has chamfered edges, but that still retains sharp edges.

If you find your converted bench plane too difficult to push, just decrease the radius of the edge and back the sides of the blade up inside the plane.

Re: Can you make a SCRUB PLANE out of a regular

James Watriss

>Well, the idea is to hog out lots of wood at a time, hence the radius... you're digging mainly with the bottom part of the curve. But you still want to be able to dig with relative ease. IMO, 25-30 should work out just fine.

Also, IMO, when you're using this plane, it's easier to go either straight across the grain, or at up to a 45 degree angle. The idea isn't to make shavings, it's to tear off chunks until you're close enough to flat to start using a regular plane.

Dumb SCRUB question

Frank D. in Montreal

>Sir William or anyone,

What are you supposed to do with the chipbreaker? I helped a friend convert a #5 but we had to grind the chipbreaker to fit the new radius on the blade. Then the problem was the chips getting stuck between the chipbreaker and the blade (the chipbreaker didn't fit the blade anymore). There's probably some simple solution I'm missing...

Re: Dumb SCRUB question

Joe Rogers, Northern Virginia

>Back it off and leave it square. Index the corners of the chipbreaker just back of the corners of the radiused cutter.JR

DOH! Thanks Joe

Frank D. in Montreal

>

Re: Can you make a SCRUB PLANE out of a regular *LINK*

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia)

>Alan, I have included below a link to a post I made a few days ago about grinding a scrub plane blade. This may help in part.

I have a few scrub planes and use them a lot since I do not have a powered thicknesser.

A few observations:

I do not have a favourite since each seems different in a positive way.

The first one I used was one I made out of a ECE-type horned wooden (Norwegian) smoother. This has a great 1/8" thick by 1-3/4" wide blade. In some ways this is the perfect scrub since it is light and comfortable in use for long periods.

Then I bought a vintage Stanley #40 (just because it looked so cool), and what I like about this scrub is that it has a bit of heft and this is helpful when taking deeper cuts in hardwoods. There is a differeence, I believe, in "scrubbing" hard- verses softwood. I prefer the lighter horned scrub for the latter, but the heavier #40 carries more momentum and makes it easier with hardwood. I am looking forward to trying out the new LV scrub plane for this reason. But it is also why a bigger, heavier plane (such as a #5) may be prefered as the basis of a scrub for some, and not for others (who would go for the woodie). In fact, I am thinking about cambering a blade for a spare #5-1/2 I have to use on hard Jarrah.

The third scrub I use was the result of a disaster. The only plane I ever inherited was my late father-in-law's Stanley #3. I used it for several years, quite happy in my ignorance that it had a very wide mouth and could not cut anything but pine, and even then was more like a short jack plane than a smoother. For some years it had lane on a shelf unused. Then a few months ago I decided that it would be more honourable to find a use for it than to abandon it as it was. So I opened the mouth some more (it really didn't need much more!) and ground the blade to a nice radius. You know what, even with the thinnest blade of this bunch, it does a nice job. What is special is the fact that I can adjust the depth of cut and this makes it possible to go from a trim to a deeper slice, which is useful when taking off high points.

So there are some options: make your own, buy your own, or rescue one.

Pictures of my three scrub planes below.

Regards from Perth

Derek




Grinding a scrub plane blade

Re: Can you make a SCRUB PLANE out of a regular

Alan Tolchinsky

>Derek, Thanks so much for all the info. I remembered your previous post and you actually gave me the idea to convert one of my planes into a scrub plane. I'm going to give it a try and see what happens. I'm going to do the 3" raduis you suggest and a 25 degree bevel I read here. Thanks again for all your help in my quest to reduce the amount of electrons I'm using. Alan in Md.

Yes, but...

paul womack

>It won't be as good as a dedicated scrub. It may be "good enough", and it will scrub better than an unmodified bench plane.

A "true" scrub has a narrow, thick blade, heavily cambered edge, wide mouth, good handles, and is quite light.

You can modify a bench plane to have quite a few of these features, but not all.

BugBear

U R Correct

Jim Reed @Tallahassee

>I have spent many sweaty sessions with my LN scrub and with my Stanley #40. Even a toenail of protruding radius will result in a man sized workout with real sweat and wheezing. The true scrub plane needs to be STOUT and the blade needs to be NARROW and THICK. Seems to me that a converted #5 with its flimsy blade would just not work on the hard maple warps and twists that I was dealing with.

Adjuster problem

Roger Nixon

>If you move the chipbreaker back very much, the adjuster doesn't have enough travel to retract the blade.

You Could, but I wouldn't

Todd O. Cronkhite Maine Native in FL. Exile :~(

>I cannot for the life of me see transforming a plane meant for one thing into a plane to do something else, that once done is irreversable. I believe, (as I've never done it) that the totes of regular bench planes are not stong enough to take the stresses of being used as a Scrub, that you'll soon tire of using the tote of a regular bench plane as a scrub. On a #3 especially as you'll be rubbing your fingers on the back of the frog. A scrub plane has a big beefy handle with plenty of finger room so as not to cause blisters. A #4 and 5 would be way to big for most people. Next best choice in my opinion would be a 5 1/4, and brother if you're man enough to modify a 5 1/4 you're a better man than I am.

Alan, do yourself a favor before you go mucking up perfectly good planes simply buy a dedicated scrub. You'll be thankful that you did. I have vintage Stanleys and a LN and I love them all. Of the two vintage ones, one is wider than the other which sometimes the narrower one really comes in handy, and one is as wide as the LN. I would have to say that if I could only keep one of them it would be the LN as I really like the big tote and the extra weight of it as compared to the the vintage ones.

Todd O.

I wouldn't do it...

Steve Kubien

>Several beat up #5's have crossed my path over time and I opted to spend about 2 hours making my own wooden scrub. I got an ECE scrub iron from Lee Valley and a hunk of 3x3 cherry from a pallet. I laminated it together ala Krenov. Simple, and I had never built a plane before that.

My 2 cents

Steve Kubien

Totes

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>I'm too tired tonight after a 13 hour day starting with getting up at 4:30, leaving for the airport at 5:30, meeting in LA, flying back, and watching hundreds of people waste dinosaur soup with me on various freeways for 2-1/2 HOURS (13 hours start to finish, and do I sound a little cranky? sorry) to go out to the shop and measure, but I'm pretty sure there's no discernible difference between the tote and knob on my Stanley sweetheart era 40 and any of my Stanley bench planes, except the 40 doesn't use rosewood but some lighter colored wood. In fact, it doesn't even have a front screw on the tote like a No. 5 has.

I've got an Eclipse bench plane* that is no particular use as a bench plane, that I plan some time to convert to a shade tree scrub, as being discussed here, and try to do some comparisons between shade tree and true scrub.

If I didn't have a garage-sale-find scrub ($6 - beep-beep) and couldn't afford to buy retail (as, in fact, I can't), I'd buy a replacement iron from LV or LN, whichever was cheaper, and build a Krenov-style wooden scrub plane around it.

I would go to some effort, including the above, to own a scrub plane. They're way more useful than I realized when I bought the tool.

*Hey, I can't help it. I see them, they're cheap, they follow me home. In this case, I bought one with the toe broken off at the knob for possible parts, and several years later, another with the hole for the lever cap screw stripped out because it had a really good, heavy duty lever cap for the stripped No. 5-1/4 I'd picked up for $2, and later realized they were the same model of Eclipse plane: roughly No. 4 length, with a 1-3/4" iron - sort of a 4-1/4.

Bill, realizing that he's babbling but lacking enough brain cells to edit

Re: photo? Please?

paul womack

>

Confirmation

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>Yep, the tote on my No. 40 is identical to that on my No. 4, except it's made of maple or birch rather than rosewood. I don't know if the maple is more shock-resistant or just cheaper. I suspect the latter, since a similar or maybe identical wood is used for the totes on transitional planes.

It has, indeed, kind of surprised me that it holds up so well under my scrub plane technique, which is rather karate-like, but I suppose the soft flesh of the hand holding it provides a lot of shock absorption.

Re: photo? Please?

Steve Kubien

>I don't have a digital camera but I will try to get my hands on one. I'll post it in a seperate thread.

Cheers,

Steve Kubien

Ajax, Ontario

Re: Confirmation

Todd Hughes

>After 1950 rosewood was used on Stanley scrubs....Todd