Calling on Roubo book owners

Re: Calling on Roubo book owners - who read French

Joel

>He might - I just can't read French :(

Re: Calling on Roubo book owners

Frank D. in Montreal

>Hi Wiley,

In "Le Menuiser en batiment" he says it's the fore plane and the jointer. The jointer he describes as around 27" long, with a tight mouth, a bed of around 50�, and a blade with a straight edge relieved at the corners. The fore plane is about 6" shorter, has a crowned edge on the blade (he doesn't say how much), and a 45� bed. Nothing about a scrub.

Roubo doesn't say it explicitly (from what I've read or recall), but I strongly suspect that any truly heavy stock removal was done with a saw. There's a whole page on how to resaw thick boards to get the right final dimensions, and a detailed dsecription of saws. WHen Roubo talks about drying and cutting wood, he says that a joiner must always have a good selection of resawn wood (thicknesses) so he doesn't have to get any boards resawn while he's working. There's also a nice plate of a lumberyard that's well-stocked with planks of various dimensions.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Re: Calling on Roubo book owners

Dean J in MN

>I have not run across any reference to a "scrub" plane in older texts, and as you say Moxon describes using the fore plane.

This is also the way I do stock prep, my fore plane is quite a bit longer than a scrub, but the blade still has a pronounced cabmer and it has a wide mouth. Moxon's account talks of the 'dawks' left by a fore plane, which tells me they also had a good bit of camber on their blades.

Someone here a while back described a scrub plane as a tool most useful for edge work. I tend to use a hatchet followed by a fore/try to deal with out of whack edges, but I can see a srcub being used as a "safe" version of a hatchet. (Safe as in depth of cut control)

Frank makes an important point, cabinetmakers didn't thickness their stock, they purchased it at the correct thickness. A fore plane is just the tool to flatten rough lumber. It is interesting to note what the saywers made available and in what thicknesses. Primary woods in 4/4 (3/4 to 7/8 in the account I have) and secondary woods in 4/4, 1/2, 3/8.

-Dean

Thanks to Joel, Dean, Frank--and Frank,

Wiley Horne

>you must be getting along great with that older French to get all that information from the book! Thank you very much.

Seems like the foreplane has gone out of style as a roughing plane, excepting Dean who's enjoying his. Whelan, in The Wooden Plane, p.41, says that an English 'Builders Dictionary' of 1736 identifies the foreplane as being 18" long. Clark & Williams makes theirs about 20" long.

Thanks again, Wiley