# How Necessary is a Specialised Scrub Plane?



## Andy Kev. (15 Dec 2020)

The reason I ask the question in the title is that I use an old No 5 fitted with a heavily curved iron for scrub-type work. I read somewhere that an 8" radius is about right for this and so I cambered accordingly but as time has gone by, I find myself gradually making the curve milder because to have the iron extended to the point where it is all cutting makes the plane more or less unusable and very narrow cuts seem inefficient. It's also rarely the case that I have to take masses of wood off a rough piece. It does do the job though.

Purpose built scrub planes seem to have fairly radically cambered irons but I find myself wondering who would really need one.

Add to that that if you are using e.g. a No 5, you can have a cambered iron and a straight(-ish) iron and the case for a scrub plane starts to look a bit thin.

Any thoughts?


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## D_W (15 Dec 2020)

A scrub plane isn't as useful for rough work as a wooden jack plane. They don't remove material any faster and leave a far worse mess behind. I'm fairly sure Stanley introduced them as a door fitters tool, but even door fitters would've been better if off with a wooden jack.

I think they're easily marketed to power tool users now because the principle of their design " just makes sense ". Unfortunately, just makes sense doesn't always equal "makes more sense than..".


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## Woody2Shoes (15 Dec 2020)

Andy Kev. said:


> The reason I ask the question in the title is that I use an old No 5 fitted with a heavily curved iron for scrub-type work. I read somewhere that an 8" radius is about right for this and so I cambered accordingly but as time has gone by, I find myself gradually making the curve milder because to have the iron extended to the point where it is all cutting makes the plane more or less unusable and very narrow cuts seem inefficient. It's also rarely the case that I have to take masses of wood off a rough piece. It does do the job though.
> 
> Purpose built scrub planes seem to have fairly radically cambered irons but I find myself wondering who would really need one.
> 
> ...



I scrounge a lot of small (and sometimes larger) pieces of timber from nearby - I'm fortunate to live in one of the most wooded areas in Enlgand. I got myself a Veritas scrub plane for roughing out bits of yew/oak/lime/apple/sweet chestnut etc trees that would otherwise become firewood. I usually split a log with my froe and then use the scrub plane (which I've also used when fitting skirting boards/window linings to uneven masonry - the 'other' use) to get the timber ready for the other planes. I could just use my bandsaw and my P/T, but I enjoy using hand tools when I can (less dust/noise and better exercise). I find that the relatively narrow blade (2" I think) which is thick (1/8" from memory) and agressively cambered, goes through the bumpy bits like a knife through butter.

I suspect that a modified no 4 or 5 would not benefit from the thick blade and would therefore not be as easy to use (also the chip-breaker would be in the way, I excpect).

In short, my Veritas Scub Plane is excellent at what it does, but is not strictly an essential tool.


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## Jacob (15 Dec 2020)

Scrub plane much more useful than a jack for rough work and remove stuff much faster! But yes does leave a mess and much too crude for door fitting or any joinery at all. 
The metal ones are too heavy and not popular, virtually unknown in UK, but the little wooden European ones are brilliant. I wouldn't bother trying to convert anything with a blade wider than 32mm approx.
Particularly good for cleaning up rough old timbers for re-use, hence the name "scrub".
I use mine a lot - mainly because I've got loads of old timbers.
The narrow blade with a deep camber gouges down into the clean wood below and lifts off all the crud with the shavings. Still have to pull nails but the odd nick doesn't matter as they aren't for fine finishing and are very easy to sharpen.
I'll see if I can find some photos.


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## Fitzroy (15 Dec 2020)

I've a wooden jack with a cambered blade in it, no idea of the camber radius. I find it useful for taking lots of material off fast, but thinking about it I'm probably taking a max 3/4" wide chip, that is say max 1mm thick at the middle. The maths says the radius of my cutter edge is about 2", looking my coffee cup next to me that feels about right. The efficiency I think comes from deep but narrow cuts, not wide an deep cuts. I'd try a tighter radius but with less blade extension.

Fitz.


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## Jameshow (15 Dec 2020)

I use a newish cheap no5 as a scrub plane for smoothing up 1" pine board which I can get cheap and it's quite easy to get a smooth finish for a small table top of chest of drawers top which is thicker than 3/4 par. 

I also used it on used scaffold planks that a customer wanted when I wasn't prepared to take my nice planes to, which it scrubbed up well. 

Not one for massive reductions in timber anyway. 

Cheers James


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## Jacob (15 Dec 2020)

Woody2Shoes said:


> ...... I usually split a log with my froe and then use the scrub plane (which I've also used when fitting skirting boards/window linings to uneven masonry - the 'other' use) to get the timber ready for the other planes. .....


Yes thats another use for the scrub, where earlier generations might have used an adze or even just the axe.


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## pe2dave (15 Dec 2020)

I use a #4, with a rounded (7" radius) iron. AFAICT is 'is' a scrub plane?
Change the iron and it's my daily go to. I.e. I don't think you need any more
than the rounded iron.


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## Andy Kev. (15 Dec 2020)

Thanks for the replies and they all make sense: horses for courses, I suppose.

pe2dave, I think I'm in the same camp as you. If I were regularly being confronted with seriously rough timbers, then a (wooden?) scrub might be an idea but fortunately the rough sawn stuff from the local timber yard doesn't come into that category.


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## D_W (15 Dec 2020)

Jacob said:


> Scrub plane much more useful than a jack for rough work and remove stuff much faster! But yes does leave a mess and much too crude for door fitting or any joinery at all.
> The metal ones are too heavy and not popular, virtually unknown in UK, but the little wooden European ones are brilliant. I wouldn't bother trying to convert anything with a blade wider than 32mm approx.
> Particularly good for cleaning up rough old timbers for re-use, hence the name "scrub".
> I use mine a lot - mainly because I've got loads of old timbers.
> ...



If a wooden jack plane needs more camber, just add it to the jack (or get a second jack). It has less friction than a scrub plane, is more accurate and takes less energy to use. 

The average person would be far better off with a two handed continental plane with a short radius or a more radically radiused jack plane than adding a metal scrub plane, but the metal scrub plane is smaller and may be better for a site tool than a 16" jack plane because of it. 

If material removal is faster with a scrub plane than a wooden jack plane, something is wrong with how the wooden jack plane is begin used.


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## profchris (15 Dec 2020)

My scrub plane is an old Continental-style (horned front handle) smoother, which has a wide mouth and a 2 inch blade with a tight radius, between 2 ins and 3 ins. So it makes a scoop only around 1/2 inch wide when cutting.

I use it for thicknessing figured timber. I regularly need to reduce a board in thickness from 5mm or 6mm to less than 2mm. Working it down with conventional planes is very slow, and risks deep tearout if I try to go faster. My scrub, worked across the grain at around 45 degrees, never produces more than 1mm of tearout. So I can quickly thickness to 3mm, and then go slowly at the rest more conventionally. A ukulele side might be 14 x 2.5 inches, so you can see I can't easily use large planes.

For something beefier, like a guitar neck, I wouldn't use the scrub. I'll have sawn it close to final dimensions, so it just needs normal planing (no 5 or 5 1/2, then no 4).


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## D_W (15 Dec 2020)

Andy Kev. said:


> Thanks for the replies and they all make sense: horses for courses, I suppose.
> 
> pe2dave, I think I'm in the same camp as you. If I were regularly being confronted with seriously rough timbers, then a (wooden?) scrub might be an idea but fortunately the rough sawn stuff from the local timber yard doesn't come into that category.



You'd still want a wooden jack plane rather than any supposed purpose made scrub plane. Scrub planes weren't used to dimension rough sawn lumber because they make a mess of it and take more energy to use. I have a surplus of jacks. How anyone is going to set up a plane like a jack is going to be based on what's about a brisk walk effort level. 

I measured mine - the radius is hand cut, so I don't have a clue what it is. It's minimum effort level for hard softwoods through beech in medium hardwoods. When I make another plane and set the radius otherwise (narrower for "harder" woods or something where less cut is desirable, then those planes end up in disuse as it makes more sense to dimension just less cut on the main jack). 

At any rate, what I found just now for projection from the plane mouth is 1.4" of width protruding from the mouth of my jack plane and the peak of the projection is around 5 hundredths of an inch. Common pitch bedding, so the radius is steeper than that by something like the square root of two. 

Flatter than this, and removing wood becomes problematic. Less flat, and removing wood becomes problematic (due to tearout, separating of fibers, blowing out edges, etc, and leaving behind a surface that has unintentional deep spots in it - creating more follow up work). 

I hand dimension about 300-500 board feet a year (rough sawn). That's not a huge amount, but it's enough to get a very good idea of what's less effort and what's not (when to resaw, when to plane, when to rip, etc). I would guess that I use this jack plane to get within less than a 16th of a marking line and then clean up to the line with the try plane (which only has slightly more camber than a smoother). 

The guy who got me into woodworking likes the logical idea that a narrow short plane can really "spot work" on wood, and he loves the shavings that come off of the plane. I've seen him use it twice for wood that was too wide for his jointer (that was badly cupped or twisted). He made a mess of it and fortunately the wood was thick. To him, a jack plane is more like something more like a try plane or jointer, because that's how he'd use one. 

I do have a power planer (but no power jointer). On the rare occasion that I use a power planer a couple of times a year, a wooden jack is good enough to prepare wood for it -scallops or not, the board is flat enough and doesn't bind, and a pass or two removes all evidence of the jack plane (just like the try plane does). 

There's one other benefit of the wooden plane - if you happen to be working wet wood, it won't create too much friction. metal planes are terrible on partially dried wood.

(I suspect instances of older planes with really drastic camber - prior to the marketing of a scrub plane -we used to clean up wet riven lumber when the orientation on the face and the wetness make mass removal much easier).


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## D_W (15 Dec 2020)

profchris said:


> My scrub plane is an old Continental-style (horned front handle) smoother, which has a wide mouth and a 2 inch blade with a tight radius, between 2 ins and 3 ins. So it makes a scoop only around 1/2 inch wide when cutting.
> 
> I use it for thicknessing figured timber. I regularly need to reduce a board in thickness from 5mm or 6mm to less than 2mm. Working it down with conventional planes is very slow, and risks deep tearout if I try to go faster. My scrub, worked across the grain at around 45 degrees, never produces more than 1mm of tearout. So I can quickly thickness to 3mm, and then go slowly at the rest more conventionally. A ukulele side might be 14 x 2.5 inches, so you can see I can't easily use large planes.
> 
> For something beefier, like a guitar neck, I wouldn't use the scrub. I'll have sawn it close to final dimensions, so it just needs normal planing (no 5 or 5 1/2, then no 4).



I think the key here is that you're working on instruments (i've done the same - planing and scraping wood to thickness for instrument tops or planing guitar body parts). It's fairly little work compared to furniture and it highlights to me why I've gotten active planes from luthiers that were in use, but not set up very well (the planing is done in a flash). This kind of work is done more quickly with a wooden jack plane, too (and closer to the mark without ever having tearout as deep as a mm), but doing something in 6 minutes vs. 10 doesn't really make much difference on a guitar - it's not where the major time would be compared to making a case where the lumber prep is considerable vs. the detail work.


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## Jacob (15 Dec 2020)

D_W said:


> If a wooden jack plane needs more camber, just add it to the jack (or get a second jack). It has less friction than a scrub plane, is more accurate and takes less energy to use.
> 
> The average person would be far better off with a two handed continental plane with a short radius or a more radically radiused jack plane than adding a metal scrub plane, but the metal scrub plane is smaller and may be better for a site tool than a 16" jack plane because of it.
> 
> If material removal is faster with a scrub plane than a wooden jack plane, something is wrong with how the wooden jack plane is begin used.


The scrub gouges out a deep groove on even rough stuff which a normal jack would hardly touch. Never used a metal scrub but I imagine would be harder work than my ECE.


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## Jacob (15 Dec 2020)

Found some scrub snaps. I widened the mouth on the scrub which you can see in one of the photos



























Like a spoon through ice cream until the jack plane finally comes into use on this last one and it becomes hard work!


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## D_W (15 Dec 2020)

That's the first time I've ever seen a "sad" reaction on a forum!!


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## Jacob (15 Dec 2020)

Another scrub here. Only the second one I've ever seen. Was in the kit of a sadly departed old joiner from a famous Leicester firm and appears to be self made. Shallower camber but similar sort of use.


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## D_W (15 Dec 2020)

Jacob said:


> Found some scrub snaps. I widened the mouth on the scrub which you can see in one of the photos
> View attachment 98391
> View attachment 98392
> View attachment 98393
> ...



Which one is the jack? If the jack is set as fine as the flatness of that surface without scallops, then what should be done is to use one plane between the two of those leaving tiny ridges right at the mark only to be planed off right to the thickness line.


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## D_W (15 Dec 2020)

Jacob said:


> Another scrub here. Only the second one I've ever seen. Was in the kit of a sadly departed old joiner from a famous Leicester firm and appears to be self made. Shallower camber but similar sort of use.View attachment 98404
> View attachment 98405
> View attachment 98406
> View attachment 98407



This plane is set similarly to my jack - the width helps in keeping a surface in good enough shape that a plane that's not at all rank set will finish the job right after in a minimum number of strokes. 

Every woodworker I've talked to who works by hand ends up saying they've gotten obsessed (after learning the cap iron - if it's needed on the jack plane, usually not) with getting as close to the mark with the jack plane as possible as it's easier to push, and then the plane following behind it really only needs to finish the surface prep and they're at the mark. I agree with this, though on narrow sticking, like face frame bits, you can thickness with the try plane because the cut is narrow, and it's arguably faster.


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## Jacob (15 Dec 2020)

D_W said:


> Which one is the jack? If the jack is set as fine as the flatness of that surface without scallops, then what should be done is to use one plane between the two of those leaving tiny ridges right at the mark only to be planed off right to the thickness line.


Jack was a 5 1/2. I showed the ECE scrub next to a No3 just for comparison


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## D_W (15 Dec 2020)

got it. ECE sells that plane here, too, but I've never seen one. The primus planes are all over the place and little used. 

I found a couple of vintage continental types on ebay and like them, though. Different orientation but a very practical plane without the adjuster that looks like it was designed by the automotive industry aftermarket shocks and struts companies. 

Glad to see you back, by the way.


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## paulrbarnard (15 Dec 2020)

I use mine a lot. I have a LN 40 ½ 
I don’t have a thicknesses or a jointer so all dimensioning is done by hand. I’ve been preparing a bunch of oak for a project and the scrub has seen a lot of use getting the rough boards flat and to thickness. The deep camber let’s you remove high spots and extra thickness very quickly. I then use a No 5 to remove the washboard finish. It’s a combination that works very quickly.


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## OldWood (16 Dec 2020)

I'm not sure how to reference back to an earlier post partly relevent to this discussion so I'm just putting the URL









Der große römische Hobel aus Oberüttfeld


This is my latest adventure in making reproductions of ancient planes. In 1991, two planes and a billhook were found during archaeological excavation of the remains of a Roman villa near Oberüttfeld, Germany. I found three academic papers in German containing information about these tools and...




www.ukworkshop.co.uk





That post (mid August this year) was all about the re-creation of a Roman plane. Now at that point I had never heard of a scrub plane, and this current thread has re -inforced my opinion that at 78 I have not missed much and won't in future either. What is interesting about the Roman one, which that discussion described as a scrub plane, has a serrated cutting edge and to me a remarkably high blade angle. One can well understand that on those days such a plane would be a well required tool.


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## Jacob (16 Dec 2020)

OldWood said:


> I'm not sure how to reference back to an earlier post partly relevent to this discussion so I'm just putting the URL
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I'd never heard of the scrub either, until Lee Nielson started producing one a few years back. Then I spotted reference to "Bismarck" plane in Joyce which turns out to be the same thing (probably), with the name referencing European origin?
I'm interested in it because I've got a lot of old building timber to recycle - which was a very common practice in the old days and very noticeable if you work in old buildings - roof timbers with mysterious mortices, rumours of ships timbers etc.
Scrubs (or equivalents) must have been used a lot, by the Roman's as well, just a step up from the adze/axe, when timber was being riven rather than sawn in sawmills, or timber being used bushcraft style for log buildings.
Just had a look at Der große römische Hobel aus Oberüttfeld - it's a long bed scrub plane! Brilliant, and obviously very useful.
He's using it along the grain but the (un toothed) scrub works far better across. This is because lengthways means levering up and breaking out a thick straight grained shaving, but across the grain the shaving rolls more easily and comes out with less effort. Maybe the toothed version works better along the grain than untoothed


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## D_W (16 Dec 2020)

I'm curious regarding when it became fashionable for a 5 to leave smooth surfaces rather than scallops (aside from the site jack plane use where someone is flushing a joint where boards meet).

It sounds like a lot of people are using scrubs as a jack plane

(I had the LN plane, and a friend the veritas, or the other way around -I can't remember. Early on, we had this deal where when LV and LN came out with something, each of us would buy one and then we'd trade them back and forth to see which we liked better and then whoever really had a jones for one over the other would keep that one and the other would take the second. I bought the LN, ended up wanting the LV (it was easier to use like a jack as it's bigger and wider) and then ended up selling that after finding a stanley 40 to and also selling that in favor of the wooden jack


Jacob said:


> I'd never heard of the scrub either, until Lee Nielson started producing one a few years back. Then I spotted reference to "Bismarck" plane in Joyce which turns out to be the same thing (probably), with the name referencing European origin?
> I'm interested in it because I've got a lot of old building timber to recycle - which was a very common practice in the old days and very noticeable if you work in old buildings - roof timbers with mysterious mortices, rumours of ships timbers etc.
> Scrubs (or equivalents) must have been used a lot, by the Roman's as well, just a step up from the adze/axe, when timber was being riven rather than sawn in sawmills, or timber being used bushcraft style for log buildings.
> Just had a look at Der große römische Hobel aus Oberüttfeld - it's a long bed scrub plane! Brilliant, and obviously very useful.
> He's using it along the grain but the (un toothed) scrub works far better across. This is because lengthways means levering up and breaking out a thick straight grained shaving, but across the grain the shaving rolls more easily and comes out with less effort. Maybe the toothed version works better along the grain than untoothed



I don't believe any tooth planes were ever used for heavy removal, but more likely in single iron planes where breaking a chip to near finish a surface is desirable

(this is an obsolete idea now, but that doesn't keep modern boutique makers from pushing the idea along with things like steeper frogs. 

I'd guess the bismarck planes were used either with really really soft woods, or more likely to do dimensioning while wood was wet (just as a lot of the simple single iron planes with really big mouths were used - wet wood allows sloppier use and is easier to deal with like that).


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## Hedjmunky (16 Dec 2020)

I concur with woody2shoes the Veritas scrub plane is a joy to use, light enough for prolonged sessions and simple to adjust .
I recently used mine to finish off an octagonal post in Lelandii (non structural) ,loads of knots to contend with but work towards them and the scalloped grooves are very tactile, the metal sole marks just enough to show the high spots, A light sand with 320 and done.


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## Exluthier (17 Dec 2020)

Lie Neilson advertise their 40-1/2 scrub plane (shown in one of their videos; ‘Lie-Neilson scrub plane’ will find it) as being designed not only for thicknessing but also for ‘cutting to width‘ as they put it, of stock. It’s a fairly high-exertion exercise, when compared with ripping it with a table saw, but a lot less noisy, which counts, from my point of view.


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## Jacob (17 Dec 2020)

Exluthier said:


> Lie Neilson advertise their 40-1/2 scrub plane (shown in one of their videos; ‘Lie-Neilson scrub plane’ will find it) as being designed not only for thicknessing but also for ‘cutting to width‘ as they put it, of stock. It’s a fairly high-exertion exercise, when compared with ripping it with a table saw, but a lot less noisy, which counts, from my point of view.


I was going to post that the ECE works brilliantly too (see posts above) but at less than half the price. I think I paid £50 or so, then I checked and Amazon have it at just under £200 inc pp!!
Bit of a con trick I think, will catch out just a few very casual buyers. You get the same with sought after books - if they haven't got it they put it in at £200 and if somebody is mad enough to order it they'll be on their bikes scouring the country for a copy, or just ring one of their mates.
73 euros here Scrub Planes with single Iron | FINE TOOLS


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## Cabinetman (17 Dec 2020)

I was under the impression that a toothed blade was used to prepare a surface for veneering to in the old days when thick veneers were normal. Ian


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## Jacob (17 Dec 2020)

Cabinetman said:


> I was under the impression that a toothed blade was used to prepare a surface for veneering to in the old days when thick veneers were normal. Ian


Never used one myself but I've also heard that they are good for flattening difficult grain with less tear out. I suppose you'd finish with a very fine smoother or a scraper.


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## Cabinetman (17 Dec 2020)

Jacob said:


> Never used one myself but I've also heard that they are good for flattening difficult grain with less tear out. I suppose you'd finish with a very fine smoother or a scraper.


 No I think the idea is that it’s rough for the glue to easily grab hold of. I shall have to get my old books out.


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## profchris (17 Dec 2020)

Cabinetman said:


> No I think the idea is that it’s rough for the glue to easily grab hold of. I shall have to get my old books out.



A toothed blade is used for both, or at least I would do if I ever applied veneer. The toothing for veneers is a little fine for working curly grain, but it still does the job.


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## D_W (17 Dec 2020)

Cabinetman said:


> I was under the impression that a toothed blade was used to prepare a surface for veneering to in the old days when thick veneers were normal. Ian



It is. the segmented blades being offered by boutique makers now work about half as well (half as fast) as a cap iron, but most of the boutique makers either don't acknowledge that or they say that it's too difficult to learn. 

I haven't ever come across an older toothed iron that was mostly blade with a few grooves vs. just as much groove as tooth (the latter being more for scuffing a surface to prep for gluing). 

I have seen some replica planes or pictures of older planes (long before double iron) that have irons like that, but it's a modern fix for something that isn't a problem. Like "high angle frogs". Solve a problem by creating a bigger one.


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## Jacob (17 Dec 2020)

Just remembered it was Paul Chapman keen on toothed planes Toothed blades for bevel-down planes
not heard from him for a long time


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## D_W (18 Dec 2020)

The key commentary is in the first part of that thread. Fear of tearout. That fear is now gone. 

I have to admit that before I figured out how to use the cap iron effectively, I had high pitched planes and for some reason never bought a toothed iron, but I'd heard of it from LN and saw testimonials from people who used them. 

But since then (and this is unrelated to the OP) , the most excited folks here in the states in regard to the toothed irons are people who just wanted to get them, try them, and they were happy that they worked. That creates a pretty low bar in terms of effectiveness. Dimensioning 100 feet of wood over a couple of projects puts effort into focus very quickly (and if the work is reasonably fine, adds an appropriate demand for planing right to a mark, and not short of it or past it).


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## Exluthier (18 Dec 2020)

Jacob said:


> Never used one myself but I've also heard that they are good for flattening difficult grain with less tear out. I suppose you'd finish with a very fine smoother or a scraper.


I use a toothing plane (wooden one, made in Germany) both for keying surfaces which will be veneered, and for creating a glueing key on the non-visible side of joints in some hardwoods that might otherwise ’hold’ less well. A couple of gentle swipes diagonal to the grain will do the job, in the latter instance.


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## Bedrock (18 Dec 2020)

Having sold my P/T before we moved, and not yet replaced it, I bought a European scrub plane for £12 and have to say I am totally converted. My plane has no maker's mark on the blade or body, but it works, so who cares. Seeing the prices Jacob mentions, I am even more pleased.


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## deema (18 Dec 2020)

I have the LV scrub, the original question which is a dedicated Scrub necessary has to be it depends! If you do very little dimensioning of rough stock, then no. If you do a lot, then from having both modified a No4 and having the LV scrub I have to say yes. 
The Scrub is lighter, narrower, and has a far stiffer blade which for deep cuts stops as much chatter reducing the effort required.
The scrub is for fast rough removal of stock, getting initial twist or bow out of stuff, hogging off 1/4” or any other such requirement. It’s not for refining the stuff.
Now, I have machines, so what do I now use mine for? Well if I have a 10 foot length of 5”x3” oak to plane straight and true then the scrub is my first weapon of choice to get it near enough before sticking it on the PT. Saves my back, arms and minimises the time taken. 
A 4’ section of 3x2 just gets the PT as it’s easy to handle.


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## Nigel Burden (18 Dec 2020)

A few years ago I won a bid for two coffin smoothers on ebay. I paid £4 for the two including postage. When they arrived the smaller of the two had a tighter mouth, but the single iron blade, no makers mark, and was useless. I bought a new, old stock blade from G & M Tools and it work s fine now. The larger plane had a very wide mouth so I cambered the blade, one cheap scrub plane to go alongside my no 4 that I bought at a car boot sale for £2. When I cleaned the no 4 up I could see that the edges of the mouth had cracked on either side. The previous owner must have been using it as a scrub plane judging by the camber on the blade. Both of these planes work well sa scrub planes though.

Nigel.


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## D_W (20 Dec 2020)

I still think you guys are making life difficult for yourselves, but you're entitled to. I found out just by using one vs. the other for a while (jack vs. "scrub") but have since found that texts from the early 1800s and before describe no short planes with really coarse mouths for this work (because it's less productive). 

If you search for Nicholson's "mechanic's companion", a description of bench plane is given. It starts at jack plane, lists doubled iron characteristics, 17" long, and describes the radius to be based on the difficulty of the wood worked (as in, go coarse if the wood is easy working - coarse and deep). No short planes. 

The work done with initial dimensioning is to be done in the direction of the wood in lengths that equate to extended arms, moving forward to the next length if the board is longer than that - until done and ready for a trying plane. 

If you're going to do this seriously, you owe it to yourselves to set up a coarse jack plane of the type (vs. a narrow metal plane) and see how much easier it is to do neat work as fast or faster than the coarsest short plane you can think of. The reason that it's not prescribed cross grain is simple - it feels good to take a big scoop cross grain, but if the grain is workable in the long grain direction, it's faster to work with the grain. You work with longer shavings and they're more continuous. 

If this isn't believable, I'd propose:
* get a jack plane. use it for a while, set it up optimally for what you do in terms of rough work
* work some volume of wood from rough to finish with a jack plane, and then do the same with your scrub plane. Time it and see both how you feel in comparison and how long it takes

You'll be done faster starting with the jack plane every time. It requires getting comfortable with using the jack plane first - as in, the popular thing in the internet will be to buy one, use it for 10 minutes against something used for 3 years and then declare it not as good. That's not going to help you.


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## Andy Kev. (20 Dec 2020)

It's interesting that you mention planing along the wood with a jack. As luck would have it, I tried precisely that once out of interest. The wood was a fairly normal piece of American Poplar, cupped and with a bit of wind. I first planed diagonally the two high corners to get them down a bit and then planed along and worked inward from the two high edges towards the middle, using what I suppose you have to call the 3-2-1 method: a pass on each outside edge, then once each to the inside of them and once more on the inside of them with the lowest point - the middle - being untouched. Then just two passes on each edge followed by just one inside of each of them, then a final pass on each edge. The blade was only lightly cambered and was set for a fairly light to medium cut.

That got it to something approaching flattish and then it was a matter of working diagonally along the board until it was flat enough for working along the length. Obviously straight edges and winding sticks were consulted frequently. It worked.


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## Jacob (21 Dec 2020)

D_W said:


> ..... have since found that texts from the early 1800s and before describe no short planes with really coarse mouths for this work (because it's less productive).


Adze/axe much more in use for rough work?


> If you search for Nicholson's "mechanic's companion",....No short planes.


But there are now


> .....
> * get a jack plane. use it for a while, set it up optimally for what you do in terms of rough work
> * work some volume of wood from rough to finish with a jack plane, and then do the same with your scrub plane. Time it and see both how you feel in comparison and how long it takes
> 
> You'll be done faster starting with the jack plane every time. It requires getting comfortable with using the jack plane first - as in, the popular thing in the internet will be to buy one, use it for 10 minutes against something used for 3 years and then declare it not as good. That's not going to help you.


What I found (see photos earlier) was simply that the scrub was much faster than a jack, for that sort of work. In fact a jack would hardly touch the rough surface and just clip the high points. Also would get blunt very quickly - the scrub cuts deep into the clean wood underneath avoiding nearly all the grit etc. n.b. planing across the grain is fundamentally less work because the shavings roll more easily.
Basically the deeper and narrower a cut the more material you can remove, for a given effort.


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## D_W (21 Dec 2020)

Jacob said:


> Adze/axe much more in use for rough work?
> But there are nowWhat I found (see photos earlier) was simply that the scrub was much faster than a jack, for that sort of work. In fact a jack would hardly touch the rough surface and just clip the high points. Also would get blunt very quickly - the scrub cuts deep into the clean wood underneath avoiding nearly all the grit etc. n.b. planing across the grain is fundamentally less work because the shavings roll more easily.
> Basically the deeper and narrower a cut the more material you can remove, for a given effort.



There's a point to this that you're ignoring, Jacob. The nicholson text was written when it would have been important to do this efficiently. All of the short planes aside from the two hander continentals were developed by a company specializing in site work and specifying that the short narrow plane was for site work. It's more important that it fit in a tool box and not change with the weather with disuse because it may not be used often. 

The lack of the short planes along with the technique that nicholson mentions (instead of traversing the work) is important as it reduces effort and cuts time. You can use a coarse jack plane and go straight to a thickness planer (it may never be on some peoples' radar to dimension entirely by hand, but it's very practical to not have a jointer and use a jack plane. It removes wood with less effort, more accuracy and can fit better even in a power tool rotation. 

It's so efficient that sometimes when I get full-on into the joinery part of a case, I get resentful that the ease of dimensioning by hand has to wait until the next project. With a short narrow plane, you're instead left with a tool that increases effort due to lack of controlled rhythm and you have to do a bunch of checking to make sure you're not creating hollow areas - something you don't really need to do with a jack. 

As per the instructions of arm length strokes, I started (and before reading that as someone else pointed me to it) liking just initial high points and then walking the jack up and down a board so as not to tire in the arms. I was wrong about it, just as anyone here who thinks a scrub is better for stock removal than a wooden jack is off due to poor supposition. I went to the method that nicholson describes and counted time and it's far more efficient. And thus sold my scrub planes. 

A lot of people get into this hobby believing that the "jack plane is the jack of all trades". It's a stupid thought, but it sounds witty, I guess. 

It's just an instance of if you want to learn to do something well, then first turn to the people who had to do it well and see what they did. Then, after that, you can see if there's improvement. 

All of the little nuances like this are the difference between stabbing around and doing some work by hand from time to time (all the way down even to using a metal jack instead of a wooden jack - the effort level is so far different that anyone who spends time with a wooden jack will then use a metal jack and say "ew, I just can't keep wax on it fast enough"), vs. becoming efficient and choosing to do the work by hand, accurately. I may be incompetent with power tools (That's probably true), but I can thickness a board to a mark by hand and have no variation greater than 5 thousandths just as a matter of routine. It is the same as taking a brisk walk, and I'd hate to go back to ideas that became popular post-nicholson when nobody was actually doing the work. 

If a short plane was the way to go, it would've been in nicholson as such solely due to economics.


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## Jacob (21 Dec 2020)

We talking at cross purposes here: I don't use it for _thicknessing_ as such - I use it for _scrubbing_ which for me means cleaning up some old rubbish, which can then be thicknessed, with a jack, or power thicknesser, without wrecking the blades.
It's good on old joists as per above, or heavily painted stuff which will blunt a normal jack very quickly.
It's also very quick and easy, controlled and rhythmic, a pleasure to use!
I guess another use for it would be cleaning up half lap joints in log buildings, where you might use an axe or an adze, and I wonder if this is why it was known in USA and N Europe where timber buildings more common than UK , where it was hardly known at all, until Lie Nielsen brought out a retro version. They are trying to pass it off as an essential but I don't think it is - it's highly specialised with very limited use.
n.b. to make it even more efficient I opened the mouth a bit more on my ECE woody.
Its only for rough cuts so a nail chip in the edge doesn't matter and it's very easy to sharpen - you scoop (ed: and twist) it along a medium oil stone sideways from one end to the other as though trying to put a sharp edge on the front end of a spoon.
LN do a sharpening vid which is slightly hilarious as he clearly doesn't have the faintest idea - they don't half struggle if they can't buy a honing gadget to fit!


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## D_W (21 Dec 2020)

These two things are the same - thicknessing and spot scrubbing. If spot scrubbing is done below a flatness level or relatively not flat locally, it doesn't make sense as you've created a cavity doing it. 

The average hobbyist isn't doing timberframing, restoring timberframing or working out of a tool box. 

The sharpening method you describe is true across jack planes, but nicholson's text is also true - you set the curvature of the edge based on what the material will allow (I would use the term brisk walk - you set it to whatever is equivalent to a brisk walk - not a relaxed walk or 25% effort, but something like 70%. Someone working a little longer will eventually get toward sawing and planing with both arms. This sounds like witchcraft to someone new to the work, but it's just sensible work so that you can do it for a while. Just because it works for thicknessing much better and is more efficient doesn't mean that it shouldn't be used to do exactly what I described above - trim off high spots so that you can run a board through a thicknesser without having to do a full face joint (which is a waste of time if you're working on something you really don't want to do). 

A scrub plane won't be able to do that. 

My point with all of this is that there's no reason to do this more than once. It does take getting through some hard headedness and nonsense about "people back then were simple minded and punished themselves for no reason, we're smarter now and can think of something that works better - like CPM121 rex plane blades at 68 hardness. 

I went through the hard headedness twice - once in making tools (ooh, I just want to make some tools, which results in not using said tools) and second then in looking for modern planes and then reading larry williams' thoughts on the other end to determine what to do working wood by hand. I don't think larry has ever worked much rough lumber by hand to finish for cabinet work - and few people buying a stanley 5 for site work could've afforded to do much of it by hand vs. ordering material with the rough work generally done industrially. 1775 to the mid 1800s was probably closer to what we would do in our own shops with wood that is not first growth and absolutely perfectly straight. 

I was able again this year to get my hands on one of the planes that they use at CW (not larry's but one made in the toolworking shop there - single iron with a blacksmithed iron). It's pretty, would look great for someone in costume. I'd have to hire someone part time to search for wood perfect enough to use it. It's horrid in typical FAS cherry (and probably would've been used on old growth pine that wasn't totally dry yet until the very final work was to be done). 

In this case, doing it better costs less, too. How much does a mathieson jack plane cost on the ground in the UK? I got one on ebay for $17 with a good double iron with most of its life left and no broken handle or anything. The one barrier to entry for someone else may be getting the fit right to use it - I offer to do this for people no charge here in the states if they're willing to mail a plane, but no clue who would do it well over there. The comment when someone gets their plane back is usually "i can't believe how well it works in really thin shavings and really heavy shavings - it just works". Of course it does. I've never refit a jack plane for someone and then seen them use a scrub plane again.


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## D_W (21 Dec 2020)

Andy Kev. said:


> It's interesting that you mention planing along the wood with a jack. As luck would have it, I tried precisely that once out of interest. The wood was a fairly normal piece of American Poplar, cupped and with a bit of wind. I first planed diagonally the two high corners to get them down a bit and then planed along and worked inward from the two high edges towards the middle, using what I suppose you have to call the 3-2-1 method: a pass on each outside edge, then once each to the inside of them and once more on the inside of them with the lowest point - the middle - being untouched. Then just two passes on each edge followed by just one inside of each of them, then a final pass on each edge. The blade was only lightly cambered and was set for a fairly light to medium cut.
> 
> That got it to something approaching flattish and then it was a matter of working diagonally along the board until it was flat enough for working along the length. Obviously straight edges and winding sticks were consulted frequently. It worked.



Yes on the method. A few more times and the diagonal stuff goes by the wayside because it keeps the plane in a continuous cut less to be working across scallops. You'll just see the high corners and work them off with through shavings. If you can keep the plane sort of "loaded" in a continuous shaving all in the same direction vs. working the tips off of wood, it'll go longer between sharpenings (more feet of wood worked) and you'll be able to feel like you're working 25% less fast but if you put a watch against what you're getting done, you get about twice as much done. 

The only thing you have to put up with is when you're engaged and you've got that warm feeling of muscles engaged, people will say "it looks like you're taking it easy". One of my coworkers is a stellar golfer (plus handicap). He hits the ball on the short end of a pga tour pro, which is 75 yards beyond the average person, no matter how many people think they hit a ball 300+ yards. When he swings, the only indication of the speed other than the ball flight is the sound. Everyone tells him "you swing so easy and hit it so far". I doubt it feels like a casual walk to him. planing all in one direction is kind of like that - the plane is fully engaged in the cut, so it feels like more work than it looks like .Everything the plane does then is automatically aligned with the try plane so follow-on work is really easy and safe. 

I don't have a scrub plane, or I'd give a scrub and my jack plane a whirl for 10 minutes each on separate days and weigh the shavings. That usually ends the debate. I used to also make fun of things like that (everyone probably does at the outset). I saw someone who is no longer on the forums talk about trying things and measuring them and measuring time when you're taking up a new skill. Drastic differences show up. A simple one is when I tested irons. I thought I could make an O1 iron that would match V11 if it was good quality and the temper was ideal. It felt like it in real work. 

V11 worked twice as long in clean wood - my brain just didn't have a chance to plane continuously with one right after the other and compare real data. Double the planing corresponded with double the work completed (double the strokes on a sharpening stone, though, too, for each session).


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## Jacob (21 Dec 2020)

D_W said:


> These two things are the same - thicknessing and spot scrubbing. ......


I'm not doing either - I'm just scrubbing the surfaces clean.


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## D_W (21 Dec 2020)

Jacob said:


> I'm not doing either - I'm just scrubbing the surfaces clean.



What you're describing is literally jack plane work. Or trying plane work if the wood is nice enough not to need a jack plane. Forum wisdom here in the states described the need for something to "Scrub" (figuratively wash?) the surface off of old wood, as if the plane had to be a different shape than what would do the same on clean wood (and the different shape would be less efficient and more destructive). 

I've learned over time that there's not really anyone alive who has done this stuff professionally and can provide good advice for someone who actually wants to work by hand as the thickness planer eliminated the need for anyone to really learn any of it.


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## Jelly (21 Dec 2020)

Jacob said:


> Yes thats another use for the scrub, where earlier generations might have used an adze or even just the axe.


I was about to say that if you have serious material removal to do by hand an axe and adze are superior to the scrub plane...

It takes *a lot* longer to develop finesse and control with them compared to a scrub plane though, but once you get your hand in, great tools.


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## jackal (22 Dec 2020)

I quite like the texture from an adze and the scrub. I just made my own from an old Rapier N04.


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## Jacob (22 Dec 2020)

D_W said:


> What you're describing is literally jack plane work. Or trying plane work if the wood is nice enough not to need a jack plane. Forum wisdom here in the states described the need for something to "Scrub" (figuratively wash?) the surface off of old wood, as if the plane had to be a different shape than what would do the same on clean wood (and the different shape would be less efficient and more destructive).


Yes but not "figuratively wash" more "literally scrub" off a defective surface. And as it happens also highly efficient in terms of material removed but not in quality of finish


> there's not really anyone alive who has done this stuff professionally and can provide good advice for someone who actually wants to work by hand as the thickness planer eliminated the need for anyone to really learn any of it.


I've learned over time that you can't use a thickness planer on recycled wood as it contains nails, screws, grit etc.


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## TRITON (22 Dec 2020)

Bah HUMBUG .... Bit of broken clam shell is all you need.


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## D_W (22 Dec 2020)

jackal said:


> I quite like the texture from an adze and the scrub. I just made my own from an old Rapier N04.



Yessir, on anything that's not regular shaped too hard or too hard and dry. The adze or hatchet and draw knife are fairly essential for some things, at least to do them efficiently.


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## D_W (22 Dec 2020)

Jacob said:


> Yes but not "figuratively wash" more "literally scrub" off a defective surface. And as it happens also highly efficient in terms of material removed but not in quality of finishI've learned over time that you can't use a thickness planer on recycled wood as it contains nails, screws, grit etc.



I'm assuming that you may be talking around this on purpose. The bottom line is that there's nothing a scrub plane does better than a jack plane, but fit in a tool box. In game theory, there's a useful term that guides why things happened historically. Why did nicholson's era not have a scrub when they were working entirely by hand in most places? Because it does nothing better than a jack, and anything that it might (nothing that I've found), those other things would be the domain of a hatchet, a large gouge, an adze or a draw knife). 

Stanley marketed one to narrow doors, probably because the skilled group of individuals who could use a jack and drawknife or adze was gone. 

Game theory is easy to prove - run a simulation, the dominant strategy shows to be better. Since the point of playing a game is at least not to lose, something like this doesn't have legs like this discussion does. 

Except in the case where someone wants to play a game without being very good at it. 

It doesn't get through to too many people even on forums, I guess. I quite often talk about what I've figured out sharpening tools, observing what comes in where someone was using a various guru's method, but the only people I can get through to are the ones who are working seriously (and who don't have too much of an ego to learn something new). 

i'd be willing to bet that over time, anyone looking for results and following on after initial rough work will flatten the radius on their "scrub" plane to about what one would do with a jack. They'll use a plane that has less directional ability in every direction, takes more effort to use and leaves more work to follow it. I guess under the assumption that a jack plane shouldn't have so much camber because a similar sized stanley plane is called a jack and people assume that somehow means a "do all", or stranger yet, "those planes should be used as super smoothers" (it's odd that people working sunup to sundown would operate in such a suboptimal way.....of course, they didn't).


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## Jacob (22 Dec 2020)

D_W said:


> .......i'd be willing to bet that over time, anyone looking for results and following on after initial rough work will flatten the radius on their "scrub" plane to about what one would do with a jack. .....


No of course not. I'll carry on using my scrub as described and then if I need a flatter radius I'll pick up a different plane!
Scrub would be no use for door hanging. I've always used a 5 1/2 jack and a 220 block for doors, plus occasional use of a paring chisel.
Scrubs are for scrubbing. There's a clue in the name! It's much faster than a jack but very rough finish.
PS no Nicholson involved, or any other guru, this is what I found out for myself.


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## Nigel Burden (22 Dec 2020)

Paul Sellers said that they used to be called "Roughing Planes" before the term "Scrub,"

Nigel.


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## Jacob (22 Dec 2020)

Nigel Burden said:


> Paul Sellers said that they used to be called "Roughing Planes" before the term "Scrub,"
> 
> Nigel.


I'd never heard the word at all before LN introduced their version. And it doesn't feature in any of the old books I've got. "Roughing" plane does, and "Bismarck" plane looks like the same thing


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## samhay (22 Dec 2020)

I have an improvised scrub plane that I use in the same way as Jacob. I have tried the same work with a jack plane (5.1/2) and for me the scrub plane is quicker. I don't have a particularly radical camber on my jack plane though.

I found the following to be interesting while thinking about the historical aspects of the discussion:








The Origin of the Stanley #40 Scrub Plane: A Hypothesis


In 1896, Stanley Toolworks began manufacturing the #40 scrub plane. The origin of this plane has always been something of a mystery for hand-tool enthusiasts. Before the advent of machines for join…




literaryworkshop.wordpress.com


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## Jacob (22 Dec 2020)

samhay said:


> I have an improvised scrub plane that I use in the same way as Jacob. I have tried the same work with a jack plane (5.1/2) and for me the scrub plane is quicker. I don't have a particularly radical camber on my jack plane though.
> 
> I found the following to be interesting while thinking about the historical aspects of the discussion:
> 
> ...


Trimming the edge of thick boards figures. I used to scribe boards (skirtings, shelves, uneven walls/floors etc) with an axe first and then a block plane, before I'd heard of the scrub.


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## samhay (23 Dec 2020)

My scrub plane is a very crude thing and works much better across grain than with it. That said, I can see how a more refined scrub plane could make quite work of this sort of carpentry.


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## Jacob (23 Dec 2020)

samhay said:


> I have an improvised scrub plane that I use in the same way as Jacob. I have tried the same work with a jack plane (5.1/2) and for me the scrub plane is quicker. I don't have a particularly radical camber on my jack plane though.
> 
> I found the following to be interesting while thinking about the historical aspects of the discussion:
> 
> ...


That scrub theory figures. Schrupphobel - für die ersten Arbeitsgänge am sägerauhen Brett
Schrupp means much the same as scrub as in 
Schrupp das Deck = Swab the deck
So Stanley pinched the idea from European immigrants and gave it the name "scrub" ?
In the meantime we had "roughing" planes in various forms.


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## Exluthier (23 Dec 2020)

I have always imagined that the name ‘scrub plane’ was simply an English rendition of the German name for that kind of plane ‘Schrupphobel’, the ‘hobel’ part of the word meaning ’plane’. Though I never heard the word used in this context (or at all, in fact) converting the term to a verb, as in ‘Schruppen’ gives—rather oddly—a dictionary translation of ‘to roughen’.


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## Andy Kev. (24 Dec 2020)

"Schrubben" is "to scrub". My big dictionary has "to rough (down)" as the translation for "schruppen".

It's fairly clear that both verbs probably share the same root as our verb "to scrub". My instinct would be to drop the brackets off "down" and to translate the term and change the name to "roughing or roughing down plane" with the obvious meaning of taking an untreated i.e. rough sawn, board and giving it its initial planing to get it roughly in shape as a prelude for further work if desired. The roughed surface could of course be final if you are after a rustic look.


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## D_W (24 Dec 2020)

Interestingly, Stanley wasn't so clear as everyone is here regarding the use of a scrub plane. Page 102.









Stanley Tools Catalogue No. 34 : 1914 : Stanley Rule & Level Co. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive


149 p., illus., 18.7 cm, trade catalog



archive.org





Trimming boards that are too wide....


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## Jacob (24 Dec 2020)

D_W said:


> Interestingly, Stanley wasn't so clear as everyone is here regarding the use of a scrub plane. Page 102.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


It was a speculative venture - they could only guess how they would be used. 
Samhay's link casts more light on it The Origin of the Stanley #40 Scrub Plane: A Hypothesis


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## D_W (24 Dec 2020)

Jacob said:


> It was a speculative venture - they could only guess how they would be used.
> Samhay's link casts more light on it The Origin of the Stanley #40 Scrub Plane: A Hypothesis


That's a very internet jockey guess. As in, "here's what I wish were true, because the more productive idea of setting a Jack plane up properly is boring "

Doing actual work by hand to a standard usually makes nonsense supposing go away.


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## samhay (24 Dec 2020)

DW - I'm not sure I quite follow.
I think we can all agree that continental Europe managed to be quite productive in terms of pre-industrial woodwork.
It would appear that the wooden scrub plane was quite popular during this time, so there must be some utility in a scrub plane. I can see how a wooden version of a scrub plane could work better than Stanley's interpretation.
If a jack plane is more efficient than a scrub plane, why did this only catch on the UK and USA for rough prep work? It could be that European woodworkers aren't terribly innovative, they have different timbers to work (which doesn't hold as they have imported into the UK for centuries) or perhaps it's only the metal jack plane that is superior?


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## G S Haydon (24 Dec 2020)

Scrub Plane CLASSIC | Pinie







pinie.cz










Schrupphobel CLASSIC | Pinie







pinie.cz





One in English, one in German. Another possible theory would be Stanley catering to the very large migrant community. Europeans would of wanted to have their tools and I'm sure Stanley would of been all to happy to sell them a tool they wanted.

The only time I've used one is for removing rubbish from reclaimed wood. With only a single iron and a short sole damage to the tool is nothing to worry about. To have perspective on what these tools were used for and in what process I think we'd need the insight of a German, Eastern European or Russian woodworker.

If we're just talking about what became the "best" way of dealing things without power in the UK, take a look at the Seaton Chest's planes.

Note: Just read the link. Seems likely and I should of read it before posting. But it did fade away. With and industrialised world, what use for a scrub!

David, I'm likely wrong on this but Warren has hinted on this theory. I don't know the chap but he's no jockey and very skilled. Perhaps you could ask on our behalf?


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## Jacob (24 Dec 2020)

G S Haydon said:


> ... ....
> The only time I've used one is for removing rubbish from reclaimed wood. ....


Me too - and it is perfect for the job! Not sure what D_W is so worried about.
I might have a go with it on clean sawn timber at some point.
Reclaiming timber was a major feature back in the day, especially the big stuff from ship building, industry and architecture.


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## G S Haydon (24 Dec 2020)

I will say also that it's very easy to use. I was able to make the work experience lad get the hang of it. I would say it's the most easy plane to master but very limited in use for me.


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## Jacob (24 Dec 2020)

G S Haydon said:


> I will say also that it's very easy to use. I was able to make the work experience lad get the hang of it. I would say it's the most easy plane to master but very limited in use for me.


My ECE is a bit small so I need a rigger's glove on the right hand but apart from that it is the easiest plane to use, even for an absolute novice, and in spite of the small size removes material faster than anything else.


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## pe2dave (3 Jan 2021)

A video on making your own scrub plane.


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## Jacob (3 Jan 2021)

pe2dave said:


> A video on making your own scrub plane.


There's no fixed definition of a scrub but these modified 4s (Sellers does one too) are very different from the European scrub and the Stanley version. They are more like hollowing moulding planes. No doubt have their uses.
First thing is the cap iron. This isn't needed on a scrub and would prevent you getting the deep shaving which you need for speed. Pass the ECE scrub across the grain of as flat board and it will gouge out a shaving 5mm deep in one pass. 
Second is the blade width - 33mm on the ECE - and camber which is also about 33mm radius (might have to check that). Narrow means deeper - and more material removal.
Don't actually know how they'd compare in use but I'm fairly sure the ECE scrub will remove a lot of material faster and easier


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## pe2dave (3 Jan 2021)

I (and others?) am not capable of taking 5mm off a piece of hardwood with any hand plane?
33mm vs a Stanley? Rather a different beast altogether Jacob?
I wonder how long it would take a 33mm blade to flatten the piece he shows in the video, yet mention this (ECE?) plane
as being a time saver?

I'll stick with a converted #4 thanks.


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## D_W (3 Jan 2021)

Jacob, if you don't need the cap iron, what do you do with it? This is a fairly easy question to answer.


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## Jacob (3 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> Jacob, if you don't need the cap iron, what do you do with it? This is a fairly easy question to answer.


Yes 5mm too much, I was guessing! Just checked - can cut 3mm in softwood easily, ditto in hardwood but with difficulty (piece of sycamore)- 1.5mm blade projection better for hardwoods.
Cap iron on a modified 4 you could just set it back so that the bare blade is sticking through the slot? You'd also have to widen the slot more than as per video and reduce the radius of the camber to get a comparable deep and narrower cut. I widened the slot on my ECE scrub see 4th photo down ^^^^








How Necessary is a Specialised Scrub Plane?


The reason I ask the question in the title is that I use an old No 5 fitted with a heavily curved iron for scrub-type work. I read somewhere that an 8" radius is about right for this and so I cambered accordingly but as time has gone by, I find myself gradually making the curve milder because to...




www.ukworkshop.co.uk





Just had a look at Sellers modified 78. Good idea! Less camber than the ECE. Basically they'll all do something useful but suit certain tasks better than others.




__





The Stanley #78 Scrub Plane? What? - Paul Sellers' Blog







paulsellers.com


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## D_W (3 Jan 2021)

sellers has a lot of ideas for people to start with various metal planes, but it's obvious when he tries to demonstrate rough work that he's never done much of it. 

The answer with the jack plane is you move the cap back. It's no issue. That's how it's used most of the time.


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## D_W (3 Jan 2021)

samhay said:


> DW - I'm not sure I quite follow.
> I think we can all agree that continental Europe managed to be quite productive in terms of pre-industrial woodwork.
> It would appear that the wooden scrub plane was quite popular during this time, so there must be some utility in a scrub plane. I can see how a wooden version of a scrub plane could work better than Stanley's interpretation.
> If a jack plane is more efficient than a scrub plane, why did this only catch on the UK and USA for rough prep work? It could be that European woodworkers aren't terribly innovative, they have different timbers to work (which doesn't hold as they have imported into the UK for centuries) or perhaps it's only the metal jack plane that is superior?



What you're referring to as a jack and a scrub plane in continental europe are practically the same thing (in length). I haven't seen anything written about the need for a narrow plane when it didn't exist anywhere else (certainly don't see japanese "scrub" planes, or chinese versions of same, either). I don't know if they were working wet wood, etc. The only real use that I've seen for narrow planes is boat planes (which have a radiused sole). 

As far as the metal jack plane being superior? At what? They're worse at being a jack plane due to the friction, but they make a better smoother with an adjuster. 

I don't think the euro timbers are too much different than what was worked in the UK in terms of workability, etc, and not much different from the US. 

It's hard to make the case that the euros really had a purpose made scrub plane for dry wood when the jack plane was the same length. The trouble with the short length is that it pushes some of the flattening work to the next plane, which is generally slower at it (I like the concept of two hands and tried a pair of continental planes to do initial flattening - for things like cabinet sides, the loss of flatness is too significant). 

What most people don't do now is set a jack like a jack plane. Meaning that at depth, it's cutting somewhere around 2/3rds of its actual width and is nowhere close to having the corners of the iron in a cut.


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## D_W (3 Jan 2021)

G S Haydon said:


> I will say also that it's very easy to use. I was able to make the work experience lad get the hang of it. I would say it's the most easy plane to master but very limited in use for me.



I think that's the draw, that people perceive a scrub plane as simple, no cap iron, etc. All of the stuff that was explained away out of woodworking in the early 2000s because nobody was really doing much work by hand, but it seemed novel. It *seems* novel, but if it were useful, the narrow planes made for boat work would've transferred over to cabinet work. 

Seaton chest - two jacks as I recall (I have the book floating around here). Warren also doesn't use a scrub plane, but It isn't something I learned from warren for dimensioning, it's just something that I learned from dimensioning. I don't think there was anything remotely close to a scrub, but wouldn't be surprised if the two jacks had different radii (I have two jacks set to work, they have different radii - the one with a really drastic short radius is tough to find a use for as it cuts deeper but cuts less volume and isn't in a full cut as easily. It just planes less volume in the same amount of time, but in theory, I'll find something hard enough to use it. 

What most people should have when they think they want a scrub plane is a jack plane set up like a jack plane, and examine the plane while working - how easy is it to use, how easy is it to keep a significant amount of wood in the cut, how does it work with and across the grain, etc. What does it leave the next plane to do?. The jack is just better at all of that, and generally anything too much for a jack (which is probably more than what's too much for a scrub) is suitable for axe, saw or drawknife work. 

I'd guess that the reason for the narrow blade on a scrub plane is something to do with sizing doors (you need an iron that will take not the full width of the door, but half of it back and forth as you work a door down.)


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## D_W (3 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> Me too - and it is perfect for the job! Not sure what D_W is so worried about.



First, addressing the dirty wood, etc. There's nothing about such wood that an old wooden plane won't work on (and better). I'm not sure why there's some thought that filthy wood requires a special oddball plane that costs more than a jack plane by some factor. 

As far as "worried about"? I've been down this road. I do most of my work by hand, but to a standard. Not to a chippendale standard, but to accuracy that doesn't leave someone seeing the work as done by hand. I've been down this road, and had all of the planes mentioned here. The question at the beginning of the thread is how necessary is a scrub plane? The answer is, it's not necessary at all, and generally, it's a full step backwards to use vs. a jack properly set (not a jack length plane set up as a smoother or jointer). It is suddenly popular despite not much popularity in the past because of the market of beginners - in the stanley catalog, the scrub plane is not marketed with the bench plane, it's marketed with a bunch of goofy planes like furring planes, etc. It's a trinket. 

re: the narrow iron, there's some idea that it can just penetrate deeper and make up for things, but if the corners of the iron get into the work, you're tearing wood rather than cutting it and wasting even more energy. If you resign yourself to the width of the iron, you're stuck with a fraction of it in practice and working less efficiently than a jack. To understand how much work it is to dig the corners of an iron into work to remove heavy work, one can easily do the same trying to push a chisel through wood with the corners buried. It also causes prying and tearing. 

Is it something to get "worried about"? Well, only in as much as providing decent advice. Most of the folks who idealize hand woodworking will buy a few planes, try them, get a thrill and then rarely use them. If someone wants to play with two premium scrubs, and hunt down some old ones or convert rabbet planes or smoothers, that's play. Play is fine, this is a hobby. 

If there's some attempt to twist the answer into a scrub plane having a productive role in a shop where it works better than a jack plane, it's just incorrect. It's also more expensive. 

The answer to the original question is, the scrub plane isn't necessary. And unless the point is just to play, it's not even gainful unless you're a traveling carpenter with only enough room for a scrub plane and refusing to use a power planer attached to a vacuum (and that's a very unlikely thing these days).

I mentioned something about wooden jack planes being hard to find over here, and they are a little harder to find in good shape and of good quality, but the same day I said that, I found two english jack planes for $20 as a pair on etsy here. They were being sold to decorate, turn into lamps or use as door stops. Both were complete and would be fine to use. 

I can't imagine converting a stanley 78 or any of this other something for nothing gimmick nonsense that paul sellers provides. That's his job, though - suspension of disbelief gimmickry under the guise of making woodworking accessible when it's already accessible - especially in England. 

There are a couple of places here in the states that weren't settled by many and where not much wood grows - those places are referred to as "old tool hell" here. They may have a case about things having been hard to find before the days of ebay, but that's not the case now, either.


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## paulrbarnard (3 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> Yes 5mm too much, I was guessing! Just checked - can cut 3mm in softwood easily, ditto in hardwood but with difficulty (piece of sycamore)- 1.5mm blade projection better for hardwoods.
> Cap iron on a modified 4 you could just set it back so that the bare blade is sticking through the slot? You'd also have to widen the slot more than as per video and reduce the radius of the camber to get a comparable deep and narrower cut. I widened the slot on my ECE scrub see 4th photo down ^^^^
> 
> 
> ...



I just picked up a scrub plane shaving from the floor. This was from a peice of oak. It was from a LN 60 ½. Callipers say it is 1.2mm thick and 15mm wide. I dimensioned a large number of small planks using it before Christmas. I find it very easy to use with that much protrusion on oak.


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## Jacob (3 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> First, addressing the dirty wood, etc. There's nothing about such wood that an old wooden plane won't work on (and better). I'm not sure why there's some thought that filthy wood requires a special oddball plane that costs more than a jack plane by some factor.


My ECE was cheaper than a Jack plane and does the job as shown earlier, better than any other hand plane How Necessary is a Specialised Scrub Plane?


> ..... The question at the beginning of the thread is how necessary is a scrub plane? The answer is, it's not necessary at all,


Unless you are doing a job like the one I showed earlier


> ..... It's a trinket.


No it isn't


> re: the narrow iron, there's some idea that it can just penetrate deeper and make up for things, but if the corners of the iron get into the work, you're tearing wood rather than cutting it and wasting even more energy. If you resign yourself to the width of the iron, you're stuck with a fraction of it in practice and working less efficiently than a jack. To understand how much work it is to dig the corners of an iron into work to remove heavy work, one can easily do the same trying to push a chisel through wood with the corners buried. It also causes prying and tearing.


I agree. The scrub works like a gouge and the corners don't cut into the wood. n.b. I just checked the camber on mine and the radius is close to 25mm


> ... Most of the folks who idealize hand woodworking will buy a few planes, try them, get a thrill and then rarely use them


I sell the ones I don't use (except for a No6 which I keep meaning to dump). I've got a lot of old woodies though - I keep meaning to sort and ebay them


> If someone wants to play with two premium scrubs, and hunt down some old ones or convert rabbet planes or smoothers, that's play. Play is fine, this is a hobby.


MyECE is in fact very useful for the purposes described. I've got a lot of old building timber and the scrub is one easy way of getting it into condition such that I could put it through a PT


> If there's some attempt to twist the answer into a scrub plane having a productive role in a shop where it works better than a jack plane, it's just incorrect. It's also more expensive.


Wrong, see above, read the whole thread, and the ECE is cheap



> anything too much for a jack (which is probably more than what's too much for a scrub) is suitable for axe, saw or drawknife work.


Scrub nearest equivalent would be an adze or perhaps a deep gouge


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## Jacob (3 Jan 2021)

paulrbarnard said:


> I just picked up a scrub plane shaving from the floor. This was from a peice of oak. It was from a LN 60 ½. Callipers say it is 1.2mm thick and 15mm wide. I dimensioned a large number of small planks using it before Christmas. I find it very easy to use with that much protrusion on oak.


Sounds right! Desperate Dan could probably do 5mm deep and 30mm wide


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## D_W (3 Jan 2021)

jacob, you're still in the weeds. I get the sense that you've done roughing for site work and not a whole lot of cabinet work without power tools (dimensioning rough lumber to a specific size or fit rather than just scuffing bits off). You're still avoiding what I said earlier - work a length of time dimensioning wood with a rank set wood jack, and do it with a "scrub" plane. Weigh the results. 

When the scrub plane's efforts weigh less, the user is more tired (and if using a bismarck, with beat up wrists and elbows), and the wood is in worse shape for the next step, the novelty of "knocking corners off of a twisted board" is gone. 

Even "knocking corners off" is better done with a jack plane, and a jack is easy to use with either hand. 

It's bad advice out of inexperience (and I don't mean experience by showing a test piece or two with shavings scrubbed off or taking a gimmick shaving that you couldn't take off of wood for 20 minutes in a row). 

I see a lot of jack planes for sale on ebay.uk for UK only buyers for 7-10 pounds. I also see recommendations on forums to buy a "premium scrub" because they're better than the old ones (wood show plane factor - get a new heavier plane, use it for a short period of time and certainly it feels better. Use it for 10 minutes and notice the friction and weight and it's not such a great idea). 

I just checked US ebay - stanley scrub, about $100 on average (usually more). Few have an iron that's had much length taken off of it. Not a surprise why that is. 

Most of the jack planes that I see have irons that are getting close to or are at the height of the wedge.


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## Jacob (3 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> ...I get the sense that you've done roughing for site work and not a whole lot of cabinet work without power tools (dimensioning rough lumber to a specific size or fit rather than just scuffing bits off).


I did a large amount of joinery from about 1969, entirely by hand for several years, before I got set up. Small boxes at the beginning then mostly period panelled door, window, replicas for house conversions. I carried on using hand tools, as and when, even when mechanised. Bits of furniture in small runs, later. Very likely I've made more stuff and planed more timber than you have. Retired now.


> .......When the scrub plane's efforts weigh less, the user is more tired (and if using a bismarck, with beat up wrists and elbows), and the wood is in worse shape for the next step, the novelty of "knocking corners off of a twisted board" is gone.


I don't use it to knock corners off a twisted board - read what I wrote!


> ..It's bad advice out of inexperience (and I don't mean experience by showing a test piece or two with shavings scrubbed off or taking a gimmick shaving that you couldn't take off of wood for 20 minutes in a row).


Wrong again. Yes that was a demo piece but I've certainly worked a lot more than 20 minutes in a row with that ECE and it is the easiest plane I've ever used.


> ........ recommendations on forums to buy a "premium scrub" because they're better than the old ones (wood show plane factor - get a new heavier plane, use it for a short period of time and certainly it feels better. Use it for 10 minutes and notice the friction and weight and it's not such a great idea).


I agree. Just another Stanley speculative offering in the first place, then copied by our modern retro tool makers as heavy expensive things with brass knobs, not as useful as the little light ECE


> Most of the jack planes that I see have irons that are getting close to or are at the height of the wedge.


I've only had hands on with one other scrub (photo above) and that was very well used.
I used my ECE to scrub up this bit of old beam, taking nails out in the process, until it was clean enough to jack plane. My answer to the Utah obelisk! (Several more on the go, to be appearing in various deserts in due course)
I started the diagonal saw cuts with an old 16" back saw for a straight kerf, then dropped in my 28" rip saw (see earlier thread) to finish. Clean up with paring chisels and a Stanley 78 (one of the most under-rated but useful tools going).




PS and yes I agree a scrub plane isn't a jack plane and I didn't see any point in Sellers' demo - better with a well cambered jack


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## Jacob (3 Jan 2021)

Talking of hand planing experience - my last two big jobs were to plane up two sets of 4x4" newel posts from sawn redwood - about 20 pieces in all with the longest about 14'. The other stuff was shorter OK through the machine and the spindle.
Has to be hand planed on two sides because they are too difficult to handle over/through a planer thicknesser until you have two finished sides straight and square.
There's a cunning technique with long pieces - you don't start by flattening a face you start by creating a dead straight arris along one corner, especially if that corner is over 90º due to drying.
It's much easier to sight accurately along straight corner rather than a flat face. That straight line is then your reference and once you've got it you can start on the two faces - or rather, one face first then the other.
Worth touching in the reference arris with a felt tip to remind you not to touch it - work right up to it but stop!
Using 5 1/2 jack at first, then a 7, then a 22" woody, with boning rods.
Once you have them you can do the other two faces through a thicknesser.
I actually like hand planing and ended up doing the short pieces the same.
It's well worth hanging on to very long woodies as they are very light for the size. A Stanley 8 is relatively short and a heavy PITA and best ebayed, they are very collectable!


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## SamTheJarvis (4 Jan 2021)

I'm so confused as to how there's so much contention around this tool! They're bloody marvellous. The curved blade is a completely differently planing experience.

I usually scrub plane every inch of slabs I plan to break down for 3 reasons:

To get a good idea of what grain is where (plus inevitable tearout informs you of grain direction)
It's bloody good fun
It's bloody good exercise
So yes, absolutely necessary (for me anyway)


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## Exluthier (4 Jan 2021)

I can understand the speculation about scrub planes and door-frames, etc., though I have never seen scrub planes used thus myself, but we should not forget that the context in which any tool is used in another land might be very different from its use elsewhere, and the fact that it is still in use elsewhere might just be a function of that differing context. Though now almost a thing of the past, the wooden-framed house with exposed detail on both the outside and inside of the building is still far more common in some mainland European countries, and restoration and repair work on them still requires trained craftsmen to do it. Internally-visible load-bearing timbers are still finished by hand, using the scrub plane, the only tool (other than the huge gouges used in house-framing in, for instance, North America, which I have not seen in wide use in Germany or Switzerland) which will produce a convincingly hand-finished impression. I have owned and used Stanley, LN, and Ulmia (ECE) scrub planes, with the lighter (and narrower) Ulmia being the one I would choose for a job requiring more than a few minutes of planing. The element of Vorsprung in the particular Technik applying to the scrub plane might have happened centuries ago, I think.


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## D_W (4 Jan 2021)

There's no real controversy. The issue is that everyone is using a scrub and setting jacks up like something else. You can't really rely on demonstrations from people like Sellers or Schwarz, they generally give demos with planes set up to do work off of a thickness planer, or otherwise too shallow with some nonsense about making X's, etc as a rule or method. 

Jack planing is a simple matter of first removing spots that prevent a continuous overlapping cut and then moving on to the continuous overlapping cuts until you're near a mark, and then finalzing the surface while hitting the mark with a subsequent plane. 

I get the sense that people think there's some need or gain to a scrub plane because they've not set a jack plane up the way a jack plane would've been used. 

It leads us back to the question about a scrub being essential or needed, and the answer is a definitive no. It's not as good at anything as a purpose made jack plane, but if one is going to set jacks up as jointers,panel planes and smoothers, i guess then you can waste time with scrub planes. 

Jacob talks about being ready for the jack plane off of a scrub, which is a strange notion - they do the same job, or the jack isn't set up as a jack. If there is fear of setting a jack plane up with considerable camber to do rough work, I don't understand it. It works in greater volume than a scrub, is a better indicator of flatness when being used (so you can let the plane tell you when something is flat rather than stopping and checking), and can work almost to a mark once a user is skilled.


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## D_W (4 Jan 2021)

Exluthier said:


> I can understand the speculation about scrub planes and door-frames, etc., though I have never seen scrub planes used thus myself, but we should not forget that the context in which any tool is used in another land might be very different from its use elsewhere, and the fact that it is still in use elsewhere might just be a function of that differing context. Though now almost a thing of the past, the wooden-framed house with exposed detail on both the outside and inside of the building is still far more common in some mainland European countries, and restoration and repair work on them still requires trained craftsmen to do it. Internally-visible load-bearing timbers are still finished by hand, using the scrub plane, the only tool (other than the huge gouges used in house-framing in, for instance, North America, which I have not seen in wide use in Germany or Switzerland) which will produce a convincingly hand-finished impression. I have owned and used Stanley, LN, and Ulmia (ECE) scrub planes, with the lighter (and narrower) Ulmia being the one I would choose for a job requiring more than a few minutes of planing. The element of Vorsprung in the particular Technik applying to the scrub plane might have happened centuries ago, I think.



The problem with comparing the LN to a wooden scrub is the LN and stanley scrub planes aren't really suited to doing significant heavy work - the metal soles will wear out a user. 

There's another case where I can think of for the scrub as you're mentioning house work, though - that is planing wall surfaces or overhead, etc - it would be easier handling a small plane for awkward work like that. Jacob keeps showing us pieces of softwood reclaimed (house work type stuff), but I would guess that the vast majority on this thread are thinking of taking lumber and making something that looks like this:



All worked from rough on a flat bench. I can't imagine where a scrub would fit in for this kind of stuff - there's no room to hack off accidental bits, and it works more slowly, at the same time, leaving much more follow-up work.


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## Andy Kev. (4 Jan 2021)

@Jacob 
I had to grin at "... my answer to the Utah obelisk!"

Is this a subtle way of telling us that you are from the planet Squlibx?


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## Andy Kev. (4 Jan 2021)

@D_W 

Ref your "I can't imagine where a scrub would fit in for this kind of stuff..."

Supposing that the original rough boards showed a fair degree of cupping. Those are the circumstances where I would use my Nr 5 - configured-as-a-scrub. I'd chamfer the far edge and then get the worst of the cupping off while looking for the first practical opportunity to switch to the normal jack for conventional flattening.

I understand why you maintain that the first step is not strictly necessary but OTH I can't see that it is disadvantageous.


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## Jacob (4 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> ......
> 
> Jacob talks about being ready for the jack plane off of a scrub, which is a strange notion - they do the same job, ....


No they don't, as I keep patiently explaining. How could they possibly, with such different shapes and sizes of blade?
My narrow but *deep* cutting ECE scrub cuts _through_ the surface gunge on old timber, or paint, into the clean wood underneath.
_Deep_ is the operative word. *DEEP*
If you do the same with a jack it can't cut as *deep *because of the width of the blade and the effort requires and hence it cuts _*into*_ the surface gunge or paint, getting blunt very quickly.
The scrub also removes more material more quickly but very roughly. If the surface is already rough a jack can only skim the high points.
You can get a similar scrub effect with a power thicknesser - if you try to skim a painted surface you will blunt a blade very quickly. If you do a deeper cut into the cleaner wood it will last longer and you remove more material. Not advisable in either case as you don't know what pins and bits of grit are hidden beneath the paint.
Not sure if I can be bothered to explain it all over again, again!
Andy Kev and other people seem to use different "scrub" planes differently.
Good luck to them, and happy new year!


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## Jacob (4 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> The problem with comparing the LN to a wooden scrub is the LN and stanley scrub planes aren't really suited to doing significant heavy work - the metal soles will wear out a user.
> 
> There's another case where I can think of for the scrub as you're mentioning house work, though - that is planing wall surfaces or overhead, etc - it would be easier handling a small plane for awkward work like that. Jacob keeps showing us pieces of softwood reclaimed (house work type stuff), but I would guess that the vast majority on this thread are thinking of taking lumber and making something that looks like this:
> 
> ...



A scrub could fit in to this kind of stuff if you were reclaiming old or painted timbers, in the way I have described too many times already, to be re-sawn or planed into into thinner boards.
I haven't had hands on with a metal scrub and am not likely to as they are extremely expensive and for my purposes can't do anything better then the little ECE scrub


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## D_W (4 Jan 2021)

If I had a cupped board, I'd plane it hollow side down in the direction of the grain. Same with corners or high centers, etc. IT's faster on all but the widest work to run a jack right down the middle of them - it stays in the cut vs. small stabbing partial cuts, and all of the work is done in the direction of planing. 

I think it gives people a thrill to feel like it's easier to plane across the grain and shear wood off, but it usually ends up being more work on anything but a large glued up panel (where there's enough room literally to get a full plane stroke across the grain. 

On the cupped side with the high lips, the tendency is to knock the ears off diagonally or across the wood, but this is also a waste of time. They can be planed in the direction of their length until they're in reference to the rest of the board. It *feels* harder to do this because you may be planing off 10 times as much material with each stroke vs. running across a board. 

Once the "lips" or "ears" are nipped off of the edges of the cupped board, it should be ready to choose the face side. 

I went through all of this when I was trying to figure out how to dimension wood efficiently so that I could stop using power tools (not because there's something to gain except exercise, but the way dimensioning feels, I like it. The more efficiently you do it, the better it feels - it feels like taking a brisk walk or a moderate hike). 

The result is obviously a lot cleaner, also. 

The case that I showed was made with fairly poor quality wood. I ordered a #1 common load of cherry from a guy here as another lumberman advised me that it would have a little bit more waste but the price would make up the difference. That part is true, but it was full of cupping and runout and otherwise poor sawing orientation. It costs about a third as much to work with wood like that here vs. perfectly straight wood, so I end up working with a lot of it. Generally working entirely by hand would be more productive with perfectly straight wood or wood with symmetry in its issues, though.


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## Jacob (4 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> ...
> 
> I think it gives people a thrill to feel like it's easier to plane across the grain and shear wood off,


yes it is quite pleasing


> but it usually ends up being more work on anything


Not if you need to shear lots of wood off before you can use the timber


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## Andy Kev. (4 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> If I had a cupped board, I'd plane it hollow side down in the direction of the grain. Same with corners or high centers, etc. IT's faster on all but the widest work to run a jack right down the middle of them - it stays in the cut vs. small stabbing partial cuts, and all of the work is done in the direction of planing.
> 
> I think it gives people a thrill to feel like it's easier to plane across the grain and shear wood off, but it usually ends up being more work on anything but a large glued up panel (where there's enough room literally to get a full plane stroke across the grain.
> 
> ...


I think that at the next opportunity I will do two boards with each method so as to compare methods directly. I have in the past done it as you describe and got perfectly good results. I don't recall thinking that it was particularly easier though: much more a valid alternative.


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## D_W (4 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> No they don't, as I keep patiently explaining. How could they possibly, with such different shapes and sizes of blade?
> My narrow but *deep* cutting ECE scrub cuts _through_ the surface gunge on old timber, or paint, into the clean wood underneath.
> _Deep_ is the operative word. *DEEP*
> If you do the same with a jack it can't cut as *deep *because of the width of the blade and the effort requires and hence it cuts _*into*_ the surface gunge or paint, getting blunt very quickly.
> ...



Jacob, I have no idea why you think you can't put a significant radius on a jack plane. Most people seem to believe this is also the case, that the smoother is flat, the jointer has a tiny bit of camber and a fore or jack has just a little bit more taking near full width strokes. They don't do that - in wood that's suitable to be planed like that, there's no need to use even a jack. 

If you get obsessed with super narrow and deep, you end up suffering serious accuracy issues with flatness and taking a shaving that's not more volume than a jack shaving, but is harder to overlap. 

if you knew what you were talking about here, Nicholson would've written about it. I don't need you to keep explaining it, you're prescribing gentleman's modern woodworking and accusing other folks who are doing more accurate work just as fast as showing gentleman woodworking. If you're talking about just roughing up reclaimed fir and soft redwood beams, nobody here is likely to be doing anything of the sort. 

What's far more likely is facing and then perhaps thicknessing up to a quarter of an inch off of a rough board. Again, done more slowly with a scrub, with more damage, and needing subsequent assistance. The part which seems to be flying completely over your head is that at one point, with dry wood, this was something of a subsistence issue for a worker. If it was easy enough to just gimmick a narrow plane to save time and make more money, it would've been common. I haven't got a clue what the history of the euro bismarck is here and many probably don't, but I would suggest it's more likely that such a plane was used with wet lumber or for sizing small bits like shoe blanks. 

Not only did nicholson not write about a scrub, but he clearly said that the radius of the jack is to be set as needed for the material being worked. You set it at whatever works fastest rather than stopping at an arbitrary point and saying "more coarse would be a scrub". It turns out that something less drastic than the often quoted 3" scrub radius is the most productive in volume planed for a given level of effort, not to mention the improved follow up condition, but this is the case even for thicknessing, especially if you have to hit a mark and volume and accuracy count at the same time. 

You have yet to address how tens or hundreds of thousands of woodworkers did something different for a living working far harder than you, but somehow missed the gimmick that only became widespread for construction work after rough work was completed with power tools. 

Which leads back to the topic of the thread - a scrub plane is not essential, and you'll do faster and better work if you set up a jack plane properly and keep a scrub plane out of the shop. How do I know? I've used several patterns of scrub planes and now have none because I started to count time and effort so that I could work entirely by hand and not ruin stock or waste time stabbing around breaking wood out. The precise problem with a scrub plane is that it's narrow and short, and doesn't ensure very good flatness by itself, and even at its best possible setup, it may be equal to a rank set jack plane. 

Just how easy is this to see? set two jack planes, one intentionally rank as one of mine is, and another with something far more drastic in curvature than someone like schwarz or sellers would demonstrate, but that can be driven to within a 16th or so of a mark without concern. The former will end up collecting dust, just as mine does. 

If the generation of living tradesmen and their fathers hadn't come about in a period of time where hand tools were just spot work and play, we'd never be stuck with this kind of goofy talk. 

I do get that refitting an older wooden jack plane with a double iron can be a bit tricky, but I can't do anything about that for people in the UK other than make a video showing how to address feed and fit issues in a double iron plane. In the states, I just refit planes for anyone who asks and is willing to send their plane. 

When I do make jack planes for people here (which I don't do for pay, but I will if someone has something that's interesting to me), I know better than to set their planes up as a jack plane save one person (brian holcombe, a professional woodworker - I knew he'd use a jack plane like a jack plane), and instead send a jack plane set up like a smoother, but with the capability to work in either context (no tight mouth or any other such nonsense). 

There are generations of long gone workers who set the standard for this, and revisionist gentlemen tool catalogue advice or construction site advice isn't going to be useful unless someone is working on a construction site. 

(I checked with brian a month or so after I shipped him a plane, as he was using planes at that time for paying work dressing rough lumber, and he said something along the lines of "I haven't had to adjust the radius, and to be honest, I don't know If I've sharpened the plane". That's a separate issue, not noticing a jack getting dull, and I'm sure once he resharpened the first time, subsequent sharpenings were more often. brian was the last person I knew making an actual living doing work - furniture and cabinets - with only hand tools full time, but his order list has gotten larger and larger, and he's moved to power tools for the work. 

When I say he was working full time, that means self employed and at the time deriving no other income from teaching classes or having an hourly wage job. 

There are so many people giving advice about this stuff and so few who do it that this scrub nonsense lives on. Everyone I know who has done significant work by hand only to a standard uses two wooden planes (jack/try or long plane) and a metal smoother. 

back to what I mentioned earlier - if this is just being done for play, then people can leave their jack planes with little camber for fear of not being able to use them for smoothers. If they want to master this stuff and move on, they'll follow what nicholson prescribes or what's shown in the seaton chest as far as tools go. It may be boring at first, but the efficiency and quality of the work in combination of using the correct tools makes that go away.


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## D_W (4 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> yes it is quite pleasingNot if you need to shear lots of wood off before you can use the timber



OK, now we're addressing different questions at the same time. A good jack plane is clean enough (not ideal, but clean enough) to face lumber on one side and put it directly in a thickness planer. That means no matter how much the wood is cupped or bowed. 

it's also faster at removing more wood *if it's needed*. If one goes to make something like I showed vs. what you showed, there will be plenty of opportunity to remove an eight or a quarter from more than one piece of wood. This will not be done with a scrub plane except by people with frontal lobe issues. It likely will not be done with any single iron plane for long because the results negate it. 

Of course, the jack is also better at spot removing wood without leaving any low spots and doing as little as possible if someone just wants to use a thickness planer. My jack plane (the one set up for typical use in medium hardwoods) leaves a scalloped surface, but the scallops can be manipulated so that the overall surface is flat and without any significant issues. An uninitiated person might think it's close to a scrub plane in orientation, and not understand that the larger footprint of the plane doesn't slow the work but rather speeds it up and allows for accurate work right or left handed.


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## Jacob (4 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> Jacob, I have no idea why you think you can't put a significant radius on a jack plane. .....


You can put a 25mm radius camber on a blade which is 50mm wide but you wouldn't be able to use much more than the middle 15 - 20 mm of the blade. Waste of a good blade and using an unnecessarily large heavy plane.


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## D_W (4 Jan 2021)

Andy Kev. said:


> @D_W
> 
> Ref your "I can't imagine where a scrub would fit in for this kind of stuff..."
> 
> ...



It's necessary obviously to plane in the direction of the grain with a wood using a jack, etc. As you're chamfering the back side of the wood, if you're planing with a jack plane along the direction of the wood, you're already done at that point with one side of the board, with the near facing side to complete. the job as it's done leaves a flat board that can be near finished with a try plane in a couple of strokes. 

It feels like more work because you're removing a much greater volume of wood with each stroke, but the flip side of that is that you're spending a far higher percentage of energy removing wood, and less stabbing a small plane back and forth. If there's not much room for error on the thickness of a board, you don't need to lose width to create a large chamfer as there will be no blowout of wood. It works so well that it may be boring and seem to easy if you'd prefer to fight with the wood a little bit and separate the steps (removing the ears from any subsequent work that may need to be done). 

There's no need to have the plane going across the grain to ensure flatness (most people in a short stroke like that will plane a board convex instead of cupped, anyway, leaving more follow up). Any significant issue with flatness laterally, along the length or diagonally can be seen just by lifting one end of the board up and looking down the face toward the bench (or squatting down and looking if the board is large and lifting is more trouble). 

In dimensioning, efficiency is gained no matter how rough the work if the wood is planed cleanly and the balance of engaged full cut and pushing of the plane is skewed as far as possible in the direction of keeping the plane cutting through the full stroke vs. just keeping it moving. There's a step beyond this for efficiency in thicknessing, but not relevant here maybe and something one would only get into if looking at dressing 100 board feet of wood for a project - that is, trying to set most of the work up so that overlapping strokes are made and the length of the stroke is a full plane stroke without stepping anywhere or squatting or walking or anything else. strokes are made within reach, and then a step is taken to work another area with full strokes. if the strokes are short or we start walking around, things get slow. 

This kind of thing is what makes planing like a brisk walk, and not a series of sprints and stops. The predictability of the work also allows you to disengage from examining every stroke but rather set a rhythm for the work and then you can observe what's going on instead of concentrating on plane strokes. As in, the plane keeps moving and you adjust on the fly while working, never breaking rhythm or getting stuck working through work you created for yourself (you'll notice that if you do a significant amount of work planing a cup off of the convex side of a board with cross strokes, or doing the same with the edges on the concave side, you're likely to have to address flatness in length to a significant degree following that. when the work is done down the length wherever possible, the face is completed all at once. But it will feel at a given instant per stroke like it's more work because the plane is continuously engaged (that's just a matter of physical limitation then to pick the brisk walk pace). 

Just about everything in hand tool work is like this - including rip sawing or resawing, finding a pace that can be maintained and a feel that's optimal for tools removing material. There's no fighting, short strokes or stabbing anything, or getting surprise damage. It's nice that when everything is set properly that the predictability comes along with improving the volume of work done, and not at the cost of it.


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## D_W (4 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> You can put a 25mm radius camber on a blade which is 50mm wide but you wouldn't be able to use much more than the middle 15 - 20 mm of the blade. Waste of a good blade and using an unnecessarily large heavy plane.



Now, we're worried about wasting blades on $10 planes? If you have 2 inches of usable steel on a jack plane and a little more on a scrub plane, what's the difference? The sharpening process is more easily kept accurate freehand on a jack plane, too - and it's capable of controlling tearout with the cap if needed. 

The wasting blade nonsense (which also comes up when people ask if they should use the left and right of a jointer to "save" the blade) is another modern theory - the idea that something hard to get (an iron that fits, when another plane would just be 10 dollars more) could create a problem later, and instead, we should create dozens or hundreds of hours of little problems to deal with to save, in theory, a few dollars. 

The reality is that few on here will ever work a new plane blade to the slot. If someone works enough to do that, they're entitled to buy a new one. I went through all of these fallacies early on, everyone does. You have to grow out of it. 

The average sharpening probably removes about one thousandth of an inch unless there is edge damage (which we generally avoid on planes that get sharpened a lot). On a jack plane, you need to put in a solid half hour of high heart rate work to even think about needing to resharpen. If we allow for some chipping, we're then suggesting that an average plane iron would last around 800 hours of high heart rate work with no pause. This would probably be enough for a professional woodworker for a decade. 

The real reason we don't put a more drastic camber on an iron to match a 3" radius is that it's not productive. The shaving is only thick right at the center and then tapers off quickly. the volume is poor, and if you get more than the width of cut, you're wasting energy tearing wood at the sides of the cut, which is like walking in sand. 

Jack planes are generally 4-5 pounds wooden, sometimes a little less. They have nearly no friction compared to any metal plane and the length and width give control. The weight allows you to take a heavier cut than something like a bismarck without momentum issues or issues beating up hands, elbows and shoulders. 

Next myth......


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## D_W (4 Jan 2021)

I measured my oft-used jack plane ( a plane set to work well on things like soft maple, cherry and beech. It's fine for pine, but the more drastically set plane may be of use if I built a lot with pine ). 

the iron is 2 1/8" wide. As it's set (which is just off of using it last, not theoretical or a contest to make the thickest shaving), it goes below the sole of the plane by about 44 thousandths, and 1.45" of the iron is peeing out of the sole of the plane. 

Shavings come out thicker than the depth of cut, so some factor above that would be the maximum thickness of the shavings - perhaps just under a 16th of an inch (which corresponds to my guess of being able to work within about a 16th of an inch of a marked line. 

It would not be possible to push the plane if the iron was projected out far enough to get the corners into the cut, but this is what's wanted. 

the lateral part of the plane sole provides accuracy across the width of planing, it's not "wasted" width not used. 

We're not comparing shavings here, of course, as I'm working cherry generally with some figure or grain issues in it and not pine or fir. I can plane enough in a shop session to sharpen this jack plane three times without any issue (an hour or two of continuous planing), generally working boards with the jack plane and try plane (anything left to do after the try plane is better left done later after ensuring the dressed wood doesn't get bumped or scratched handling it around the shop, but the try plane usually leaves a near finished surface except around knots or birdseyes or such stuff. 

I've only ever set the cap iron on the jack plane for quartered curly cherry (which is a bear to rough plane - far far worse if the curl is strong than figured maple). 

Not sure I've ever measured the jack before - you sharpen by hand and make tiny incremental changes when efficiency seems to suffer due to poor function. 

This is boring for a beginner and nondescript because it depends on the material being worked, but it's where efficiency comes from. 

One other issue not being addressed here is interrupted cuts. I know from test planing irons to gauge wear that there is a huge step up in effort and iron dulling when you start planing interrupted cuts or dealing with significant tearout. The better a plane is able to keep in a continuous cut, the longer the iron will last and the longer the person pushing the plane will last.


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## samhay (4 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> What you're referring to as a jack and a scrub plane in continental europe are practically the same thing (in length).



Not being familiar with the European wooden planes, I had missed the fact that length is essentially the same for these.
What length do you recommend for a wooden jack plane? I expect this may be somewhat shorter than I had imagined and the distinction I had made between a jack and scrub plane may be somewhat blurred.


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## Droogs (4 Jan 2021)

If you are a bench joiner working dry wood, you do not need a scrub plane. Your fore or jack is all you need. If you are working cloved or wet wood the a scrub is excellent to get stock to where you need it to be while working it when wet (which for some hard woods they are more like butter than stone) before leaving it to dry and then working on it for timber framing or even architectural work.

My opinion anyway


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## D_W (4 Jan 2021)

historically, I think most were between 14 and 17 inches. I like a 16 or 17 inch jack plane, but am a planemaker, so I can be picky. One that's 14 or 15 inches long works fine, too. 







mine is in the front here compared to ECE's jack (I refitted this plane for someone - the one in the back - it's also around 17", and made an XHP iron for it. I'm guessing that the one in the back gets used mostly for finished work, it's not my plane. It's surprisingly comfortable to use given how crude it is, though, but that's owed to the proportions being appropriate). 






its' uncommon for my bench to be this clean, but usually when you're working on planes, you have to get some stuff off of the bench or they get beaten up or dropped while making them. I've dropped three, including the one in the front of the first picture - the handle flew right off of the plane across the shop. 

As far as shorter goes with these kinds of things, there's a practical limit as the plane itself needs to have a certain length for the handle, the toe, and the territory used by the bed. The second plane is 15" (the person who traded me something for it wanted 14, but they have big hands - I think it's a bit odd feeling without much heel, but their plane and not mine). 

I believe most of the mathieson jack planes that I've found (which is what mine is a copy of) are 16-17", and if you're going to do flat work that needs to be accurate, it's a very good size. They're never that heavy (just checked the mathieson that I copied - it's 4 pounds, 6 ounces at 17" with almost no friction. Any lighter, and a western pattern plane becomes a bruiser (try using a coffin smoother to do rough work for an hour - your hands, elbows, and shoulders will hate you) with problems maintaining direction.

As far as the euro planes go, I just don't know enough about what was commonly made and where they used their short planes vs. long planes (and have a sneaking suspicion that they did a lot more early work by hand with wet wood as some of their roughing planes are punishing to use on dry wood - the horned type without any wood for the web of your hand and fairly square rears - ouch. I've gotten several planes like that with a lot of use on them - they're being used by someone with no nerves, or more likely, someone doing initial rough work on wet wood that doesn't have as much hand clanging stuff in it. 

It's really hard to know why planes were the way they were without knowing what they're making and how they're used. People were never as stupid as modern folks like to make them out to be, and finding out the context of the work usually solves the issues. 

What we do with seasoned wood and generally making cabinets and furniture from medium to large size - generally fits well with English pattern planes. If we start doing things like trying to use japanese planes in that context from rough to finish, it's not a great experience. If we use single iron planes pitched at 50 to try to work #1 common lumber now that's not very good, it's also absolute torture. BTDT, and have kept a set of planes of that type to faff with if I ever come across a mythical perfect first growth clear straight pine tree.


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## billw (4 Jan 2021)

Taking 3mm off hardwood in one pass sounds like something pretty bloody hard to me!


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## G S Haydon (4 Jan 2021)

" If you're talking about just roughing up reclaimed fir and soft redwood beams, nobody here is likely to be doing anything of the sort."

David, that is the only time I've used a scrub. I think Jacob is mainly saying the same.

I do fully agree that Jack and Try are the best combination and in the method you describe.

I always find the amount of planes here Pictures of English joiners workshops very interesting. Was it staged? Perhaps the amount of planes on the bench is staged but there are loads on the wall. I have theorised that perhaps they were set a bit more fine or rank as required.


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## D_W (4 Jan 2021)

I could see having 5 or so bench planes per serious worker. I'd have to get out the seaton chest book to see if seaton had a jointer, but after building one at 28" long, I have to admit I almost never use it. OK, I never use it (my try plane is 24", which is on the long side, and the one "made" plane that I still use, which is probably a griffiths, that one is 22. 

A full sized jointer is nose heavy and tiring.

I probably dumped out a bunch of thoughts above that someone would only go through if they were hand dimensioning a few hundred board feet a year - I've hand dimensioned somewhere around 300-500 board feet a year the last couple of years. 

I have nothing against playing in the shop. I just made an iron out of stainless and several others just to test them against O1, but I wouldn't advise that my playing with steel had anything to do with what creates productivity working (and productivity creates flow/rhythm, which creates less thinking and more enjoyment),


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## Jacob (5 Jan 2021)

G S Haydon said:


> " If you're talking about just roughing up reclaimed fir and soft redwood beams, nobody here is likely to be doing anything of the sort."
> 
> David, that is the only time I've used a scrub. I think Jacob is mainly saying the same.
> ........


Thank you Graham yes that is what I have been saying - over and over again!
And I guess that is why it is called a scrub - it's for scrubbing up bits of old timber.
What Lie Nelson or Veritas say their extravagantly expensive offerings are for, is of no interest to me at all. In fact LV don't what they are talking about (or are just over selling) Veritas Scrub Plane with HCS Blade.
and LN don't even know how to sharpen one! This deadly serious vid always makes me laugh;


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## raffo (5 Jan 2021)

G S Haydon said:


> I always find the amount of planes here Pictures of English joiners workshops very interesting. Was it staged? Perhaps the amount of planes on the bench is staged but there are loads on the wall. I have theorized that perhaps they were set a bit more fine or rank as required.



I was taught how to make those hats out of newspaper when I was a kid. I'm not 300 years old, but it was a while ago.


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## D_W (5 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> Thank you Graham yes that is what I have been saying - over and over again!
> And I guess that is why it is called a scrub - it's for scrubbing up bits of old timber.
> What Lie Nelson or Veritas say their extravagantly expensive offerings are for, is of no interest to me at all. In fact LV don't what they are talking about (or are just over selling) Veritas Scrub Plane with HCS Blade.
> and LN don't even know how to sharpen one! This deadly serious vid always makes me laugh;




I guess we're down to scrubbing being something gainful on house/beam work. I have done very little of that and couldn't comment. 

If that's the only place that it's gainful, it would be pretty useful to note in this thread as I doubt the average person approaching the topic is thinking of restoring a barn with hand tools, but they may be thinking of building some stools or cabinets out of rough wood. 

I get the appeal of the scrub to people - it's about as simple as it could be. That doesn't translate into it being better for anything on a flat bench with dry lumber, though, but it can create an early instant thrill for someone. 

as far as LN's sharpening videos, I've got a friend who does just as they say - he grinds a primary bevel on a king stone, which takes about 30 minutes. LN says not to use a power grinder and he doesn't like oilstones. That doesn't drive him nuts somehow, but who am I to interfere. I think LN has a lot of customers like that, and prescribing slow safe methods probably prevents them from receiving blue irons back from buyers who insist that the iron never got hot and they don't know how the blue got there. 

The market of users is one of the reasons that I don't make and sell tools. I make tools, and would probably make almost entirely tools if there was a serious user market for them, but there isn't.


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## Jacob (5 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> I guess we're down to scrubbing being something gainful on house/beam work. I have done very little of that and couldn't comment.


It's simpler than you think. Scrubbing is useful on anything which needs a good scrub. 
And the end use of some reclaimed timber could be fine furniture, if it fits. In fact very often reclaimed timber can only be used either as is, or reduced to much smaller pieces which fall between the knots, splits, mortice holes etc


> If that's the only place that it's gainful,....


it isn't


> ....
> 
> I get the appeal of the scrub to people - it's about as simple as it could be.


No you haven't quite got it - the appeal of the scrub is that it does the job it's designed for, and anyway, being simple is generally regarded as quite a good idea


> ....
> as far as LN's sharpening videos, I've got a friend who does just as they say - he grinds a primary bevel on a king stone, which takes about 30 minutes. .....


Takes about 2 minutes if you do it the normal way


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## G S Haydon (5 Jan 2021)

raffo said:


> I was taught how to make those hats out of newspaper when I was a kid. I'm not 300 years old, but it was a while ago.


Demo needed please


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## D_W (5 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> It's simpler than you think. Scrubbing is useful on anything which needs a good scrub.
> And the end use of some reclaimed timber could be fine furniture, if it fits. In fact very often reclaimed timber can only be used either as is, or reduced to much smaller pieces which fall between the knots, splits, mortice holes etcit isn'tNo you haven't quite got it - the appeal of the scrub is that it does the job it's designed for, and anyway, being simple is generally regarded as quite a good idea
> Takes about 2 minutes if you do it the normal way



Jacob - I've probably used more types of scrub planes than you have. But I also have learned how to use a jack plane properly. 

Nothing needs "a good scrubbing" if a proper jack plane is available, but something worked with a scrub may still need a jack. 

I have my doubts about practical usefulness of the scrub in most contexts of carpentry as they've been around for something like 125 years and most of them have near full length irons on them. 

My point is, Graham also mentioned something that was more like house timbers. The type was completely missing from work done when it was done entirely by hand, and so far, we haven't heard the context of the "bismarck" (likely green wood, another thing that it's fun to talk about but almost nobody uses). 

the definitive answer to the question at the beginning of this thread is, a scrub is not necessary. If it gets someone off track about what a jack should do (by assuming that's the territory of a scrub) then it's potentially detrimental. Does it matter if hand tool woodworking is escapism instead? Only if someone cares what they're making. My point in proper use of the jack plane to dress rough lumber, even when it's far out of flat, is that it's partially escapism for me, too, but expect a little bit more out of my escapist mind vacations than hacking up work like a barn. 

I can tell you the number of times I've seen someone set up a jack for coarse work and use it - two. I can count a far larger number of folks who have scrub planes and a jack plane that will more or less cut a heavy smoother shaving - many. If they had their planes set up properly, would they work with them more? I don't really know.


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## ivan (5 Jan 2021)

In the US it's generally thought that the Stanley scrub (and of course the copies of this) was designed as an alternative to hand ripping a small adjustment to the width of a board. It's narrow, and much quicker than a hand saw. The fore plane was used for the flat surface of the stuff, with an ~200mm radius on the cutting edge. Big bites could be taken as the plane was used diagonally at ~45 deg or normal to the grain. Illustrations from a couple of hundred years ago or more show the fore plane about No5 or No6 in size - to straddle the board. An old house where I once lodged had all 6 panel doors in a mahogony-like hardwood. Doors into utility spaces - cupboards, kitchen, wash house, loo, etc had panels finish planed on only one (the outer) side. The inside showed the diagonal pattern of the fore plane used to thickness the panel. My grandfather, a joiner in the early Edwardian period, said that big try planes like the No8 and even longer woodies, were only used for shooting edges to be glued, two board edges being planed at the same time. If you want a scrub plane - handy to stabilise an unruly board on the planer - get a second hand 5 or 6, open up the mouth, and grind a radius on the blade. It's rough work, the sole does not need to be ultra flat, and a bit of rust can be ignored. If the thin blade chatters too much for you, fit a thicker one.


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## G S Haydon (5 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> Thank you Graham yes that is what I have been saying - over and over again!
> And I guess that is why it is called a scrub - it's for scrubbing up bits of old timber.
> What Lie Nelson or Veritas say their extravagantly expensive offerings are for, is of no interest to me at all. In fact LV don't what they are talking about (or are just over selling) Veritas Scrub Plane with HCS Blade.
> and LN don't even know how to sharpen one! This deadly serious vid always makes me laugh;



To be fair, these videos are aimed at absolute beginners. If I were in their position I would do videos like that. I would guess that many customers have never done any woodworking. Trying to show them how to use grinders and free hand methods would be very problematic. Any professional user wouldn't watch the videos and learn much.


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## Jacob (5 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> Jacob - I've probably used more types of scrub planes than you have.


You obviously haven't used an ECE scrub like mine


> ..... we haven't heard the context of the "bismarck" .......


Hardly gets a mention anywhere except in Ernest Joyce. As far as I can see it is similar to the wooden scrub with a narrow blade but with less radius on the camber. Logic says it could be the next plane you'd use after a scrub.


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## D_W (5 Jan 2021)

ivan said:


> In the US it's generally thought that the Stanley scrub (and of course the copies of this) was designed as an alternative to hand ripping a small adjustment to the width of a board. It's narrow, and much quicker than a hand saw. The fore plane was used for the flat surface of the stuff, with an ~200mm radius on the cutting edge. Big bites could be taken as the plane was used diagonally at ~45 deg or normal to the grain. Illustrations from a couple of hundred years ago or more show the fore plane about No5 or No6 in size - to straddle the board. An old house where I once lodged had all 6 panel doors in a mahogony-like hardwood. Doors into utility spaces - cupboards, kitchen, wash house, loo, etc had panels finish planed on only one (the outer) side. The inside showed the diagonal pattern of the fore plane used to thickness the panel. My grandfather, a joiner in the early Edwardian period, said that big try planes like the No8 and even longer woodies, were only used for shooting edges to be glued, two board edges being planed at the same time. If you want a scrub plane - handy to stabilise an unruly board on the planer - get a second hand 5 or 6, open up the mouth, and grind a radius on the blade. It's rough work, the sole does not need to be ultra flat, and a bit of rust can be ignored. If the thin blade chatters too much for you, fit a thicker one.



Your account of the kind of singular finish on the non-show surfaces ends up matching what I and others have fallen into out of laziness over here (OK, all three of us). You do almost everything you can do with the jack, because it's easy to move through wood and it removes material efficiently (but without absolutely wrecking the work). 

I haven't been able to bring myself to leaving rearward surfaces with jack plane marks, but don't finish plane them usually (they're peeled off with the try plane). 

Using the term laziness, is smart laziness, though, not sloppy laziness. That is, if you can do all of the prep work and thicknessing and working nearly to the mark with one plane that removes material efficiently without busting wrists, arms and hands or needing to be waxed, you can just get things done faster. I used to leave a fairly large amount of work behind the jack for the try plane for fear of blowing past the marks, but over time, it's come down to pretty much what's left on the board is enough for the try plane to remove the marks of the jack and then leave a couple of passes for a smoother.


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## D_W (5 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> You obviously haven't used an ECE scrub like mineHardly gets a mention anywhere except in Ernest Joyce. As far as I can see it is similar to the wooden scrub with a narrow blade but with less radius on the camber. Logic says it could be the next plane you'd use after a scrub.


 
I've used single iron narrow older european planes, made better than your ece plane. I haven't used one of the "ECE brand". They don't have much use if someone is working by hand on furniture type work. 

You could use one as my friend does to kind of hack and slash wood before he puts it in a power jointer and planer. 

The only ECE/ulmia plane that's ever stuck here (this isn't quite true, I have an old ulmia continental smoother that came in a group, but haven't used) is the double iron rabbet plane that they make. 

You've still provided no instance in furniture or workshop type work where a scrub is an advantage. If the work is too coarse for a jack, the scrub is worse than a hatchet or drawknife or saw. If it's too fine for a scrub, the jack can probably do it, but it may be the territory of a trying plane. There's just nowhere that it fits practically or I wouldn't have unloaded every scrub that I've ever bought. It seemed a useful plane (potentially) before I learned to set a jack the right way, but too often in dry hardwoods, it pulled something unexpected out and made the need for a repair. When the jack is dialed in, you just use it until you're almost at the mark, no problem. No checking surfaces, no nothing, just plane.


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## Jacob (5 Jan 2021)

Ernest Joyce page 27 "Figure 14:3 shows the wooden _scrub-, rougher-_ or _Bismark_-plane which is still manufactured, and is invaluable for knocking off the rough preparatory to either hand- or machine-surfacing. "
Not many other references about.


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## custard (5 Jan 2021)

I regularly make pieces with large, waney edged slabs. These can be sizeable pieces of furniture, large desks or dining tables for example. But my planer thicknesser can only take a 410mm wide board. One other thing, these slabs will often be hard, tough tropical timbers.

I guess I could use a router sled to flatten the tops, but personally I think the set-up of a router sled is too much faff. I'd rather just get stuck in with a bench plane.

You might argue it's a job that's tailor made for a scrub plane, personally I've never found the need. I prefer to use a simple wooden jack plane with an aggressive camber, at least to break the back of the job before finishing with a regular bench plane. It's how I made this dramatically figured Bubinga desk,







Here's the wooden jack in action on this particular slab, taking out most of the wind, knocking off the worst of the high spots.






I've done dozens of these, it's a bit of a work out, but it's still eminently do-able.

I trained at a workshop that used to make quite a few Hayrake Tables. These tended to be mighty Oak boards where the dimensions again precluded machine processing. Same story, the craftsmen invariably did the job with a wooden jack, or occasionally with their normal number seven Bailey style bench plane.

I don't know why, but scrub planes seem to be the subject of endless fascination amongst hobbyists. Fair enough, as far as I'm concerned everyone's free to use whatever tools they want. But real world furniture makers, at least in my experience, never seem to own a scrub plane, and they just crack on with either a wooden jack or whatever regular bench plane comes to hand that has a decent camber.


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## D_W (5 Jan 2021)

Let me guess, this man worked professionally during a period of time where machines were used to do most of the rough work.

He probably also worked during an era when marples blue chips, fat plated soft backsaws and other such things were the norm. I know there was an era when ECE planes were popular because there really weren't any other decent planes around, and because they heavily pushed the idea that:
1) their finer cutting planes solved a bunch of problems with stanley planes (They're worse planes than stanley, but you can market anything you want that's subjective)
2) their irons were some kind of long wearing high quality pieces of gear (their irons are about the poorest quality one can find now, but in the 70s, stanley's round top irons were bad, too. ECE just never got any better).

The reason I've had the type in older planes is because when I started woodworking, you could often get three or four planes like that in a lot for the same price as one plane. Same with #7s and such, but those days are long gone. For a while, I would try anything (thus trying both premium scrub planes, as well as a gaggle of wooden planes. English wooden planes were the first I wrote off as being confusing to use because none of mine had an iron fitted properly when I got them, and more than once, the wedge was very unlikely to go with the plane in the first place).

I'd hate to give up an english jack plane to rough wood with a bismarck type, but it would matter a lot less if I was really a power tooler just looking for hand tools to play with. Scrub planes probably sell pretty well now, because a machine cleans up their damage most of the time and most folks will never get the chance to take 3/8ths of an inch of thickness off of a panel.

This is the destiny of the jack plane I made above. I know that these planes don't get used for jack work so I make sure they will take smoother shavings corner to corner without clogging, but they would just die to makes shavings that would hurt to walk on with bare feet.

jack plane linky


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## Jacob (5 Jan 2021)

custard said:


> .....
> 
> You might argue it's a job that's tailor made for a scrub plane, .......


Nobody is arguing that you should be using a "scrub" plane but they have their uses.
I've been describing what I have found one useful for - and I will continue to use it!
Joyce's description of their use sounds perfectly reasonable.


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## D_W (5 Jan 2021)

Thanks for checking in custard. Of course, I'm glad your point of view matches mine, but not surprised! If it didn't, I'd still be glad to hear it. There'd be less fascination with endpoint tools (super heavy smoothers, super rank scrubs, saws with giant teeth or tiny teeth, super long jointers, etc) if people actually used their tools for a few hours a week in earnest. 

The jack plane work on a slab like that isn't physically easy, but it's engaging and I think the reason most people don't tackle a job like that more often is because they don't bother to learn good plane setup and function and then build some neurons to do the "brisk walk" work that dimensioning is. It's a shame, as it may not have the circus value of a scrub plane, but it's an absolute tactile draw to the shop that a router sled never is (and once the novelty of the scrub wore off for me, I struggled to find wood perfect enough that I didn't think it made more work to address later).


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## D_W (5 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> Nobody is arguing that you should be using"scrub" plane but they have their uses.



in a thread that ask the question "how necessary is it", that's not a ringing endorsement. 

I do know one use for a scrub, and that would be in offering classes to beginners. I'd probably bust out a scrub and then bust out a plane set up to take a 3 ten thousandth shaving. Beginners love that stuff - ooh and ahh. 

if someone were to ask about a jack plane in an all hand tool process with rough lumber, the endorsement is easier - it's absolutely essential, and having two isn't a bad idea. After one busts through the idiotic advice from guru bloggers and past writers that "Jack" plane means a plane that can do everything (inevitably after power tools are used in those descriptions).


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## Jacob (5 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> ....
> 
> if someone were to ask about a jack plane in an all hand tool process with rough lumber, the endorsement is easier - it's absolutely essential, and having two isn't a bad idea.


I agree. Who wouldn't?


> After one busts through the idiotic advice from guru bloggers and past writers that "Jack" plane means a plane that can do everything (inevitably after power tools are used in those descriptions).


Says the would-be guru blogger! 
What is the origin of the term "Jack" plane in your humble opinion?


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## D_W (5 Jan 2021)

Who is a guru blogger? I don't have a blog. 

No clue where the term jack plane came from as I don't read historical texts, but the idea that it was intended to be a plane that could be set up as a smoother, scrub plane or short jointer is nonsense.


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## Jacob (5 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> .... the idea that it was intended to be a plane that could be set up as a smoother, scrub plane or short jointer is nonsense.


Nobody has ever said that as far as I know, are you hearing voices? Except you yourself said earlier that the function of the jack is the same as the scrub, to quote: _"..being ready for the jack plane off of a scrub, which is a strange notion - they do the same job" _Make your mind up!

Getting a bit boring this thread I'll try to keep out of it!

PS correction - where I said earlier about using a 22" woody on long work I meant 26". I just checked when I saw in Joyce that a 7 is 22" long


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## D_W (6 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> Getting a bit boring this thread I'll try to keep out of it!



You're getting "Jacobed" here. Except you're addressing hand tool questions referring to people who got their ideas about hand tools from using them mostly minimally with power tools. 

But it's interesting that you're holding on to something that's a modern patch over idea (custard put it well -

_*endless fascination among hobbyists - But real world furniture makers, at least in my experience, never seem to own a scrub plane*_

re: your mention that I'm just setting a jack plane to scrub - no, I'm not. Neither should anyone else - the iron profile is pretty close to useless (it is useless if a jack plane is around) - I'm setting up a jack plane like a jack plane. What I said is that if you set up a jack properly, it will remove material just as fast as a scrub, more accurately, and with less follow up - I've said this over and over. It will do it with a profile that's more suitable to accurate work, but at the same time, not at the cost of efficiency.


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## Jacob (6 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> You're getting "Jacobed" here. Except you're addressing hand tool questions referring to people who got their ideas about hand tools from using them mostly minimally with power tools.
> 
> But it's interesting that you're holding on to something that's a modern patch over idea (custard put it well -
> 
> ...


That's better you are getting it down to less than 500 words.
I don't recall anybody saying that *real world furniture makers own scrub planes* .
But nevertheless I expect some of them do!
Joyce thought so too. His work was the result of extensive research amongst *real world furniture makers* though he wasn't one himself.
Maybe they were pulling his leg about scrub/roughing/bismark planes? Seems an odd thing to simply make up.
You point out (from one of the historical texts you don't read  ) that Nicholson doesn't mention the scrub plane. I wouldn't take that as proof that they are just a figment of an amateur woodworker's imagination; very many writers don't mention scrub planes but a few do - particularly Salman.


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## Cheshirechappie (6 Jan 2021)

Wells and Hooper (Modern Cabinet Work, first published 1908, third edition 1922) give a suggested tool list for a cabinetmaker. It includes a 'Bismarck, or Roughing plane, single iron' (priced at 1/9d by Tyzack and Son, Old Street, E.C. (which is a London address). They also illustrate one on page 8, looking very much like the continental short plane with horn at the front. They describe it on page 9, saying, "a single iron plane for taking off the dirt and first rough surface of boards".

Such planes do crop up on the vintage market from time to time, but are nowhere near as common as jack planes. They also appear in some contemporaneous catalogues (e.g. Preston 1909, page 82, referred to as 'German jack or roughing plane' - two types illustrated, one very much of continental pattern, the other simplified with a simple peg front 'handle').

Conclusion - they were about in Britain and some people owned them, but they weren't as commonly used as jack planes, or as on the continent. North American practice may well have been different.

In answer to the question 'How necessary is a specialist scrub plane?', it's a matter of personal preference. If the sawn timber you use is pretty clean and fairly flat, a jack plane will do all the cleaning off needed, but if you have some warped boards with ingrained dirt, or reclaimed stuff with paint, dirt and nails, the scrub has it's uses. I own one and have used it occasionally, but not often.

Nice to have, but not essential. Wooden jacks are fairly cheap and plentiful, so another solution is to have two jacks, one set up with a wider mouth and more aggressive camber than the other, for rough work on dirt-ingrained stock.


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## Jacob (6 Jan 2021)

Cheshirechappie said:


> Wells and Hooper (Modern Cabinet Work, first published 1908, third edition 1922) give a suggested tool list for a cabinetmaker. It includes a 'Bismarck, or Roughing plane, single iron' (priced at 1/9d by Tyzack and Son, Old Street, E.C. (which is a London address). They also illustrate one on page 8, looking very much like the continental short plane with horn at the front. They describe it on page 9, saying, "a single iron plane for taking off the dirt and first rough surface of boards".
> 
> Such planes do crop up on the vintage market from time to time, but are nowhere near as common as jack planes. They also appear in some contemporaneous catalogues (e.g. Preston 1909, page 82, referred to as 'German jack or roughing plane' - two types illustrated, one very much of continental pattern, the other simplified with a simple peg front 'handle').
> 
> ...


Agree, except the narrow blade of the purpose made scrub is much narrower than any jack, which makes it very different from a modified jack.
I just had a look in Salman where there is a picture of a "Bismark" plane, with the Marples mark on it ; W.M.&S. and 3 shamrock leaves, so others were making it too. Perhaps Marples or Tyzack gave it the name?
Salman lists dozens of scrubby varieties going under different names, from different periods and places. Obviously widely used in the past.
P.S. Checked out Nicholson. No scrub. He describes "Carpentry" as quite distinct from "joinery", with different tools including adze and axe. 'Joinery' back then would include fine furniture as well as architectural stuff; Chippendale made almost anything, including (shock, horror!) painted furniture and coffins!
PPS checked "Woodworking in Estonia" (a beautiful book which I keep meaning to spend more time with) - some very interesting looking planes there! Also some very clever low tech ways of doing things, planing on a pig bench etc etc.


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## Sgian Dubh (6 Jan 2021)

It's been interesting to watch this discussion to see how the points have been advanced. It's always fun to watch master Jacob relentlessly pursuing a point of view.

I don't own a scrub plane, and mostly flatten boards and straighten edges on a planer. But every now and then I've had to resort to hand planes to do the job, e.g., a board too wide for the surface planer (jointer for David) that has to be used in that width. For the most part, as described by David, I just went at it with either my no 5 jack plane or with my no 7 try plane, both Records. It took some work, but I got there.

Then, many years ago I was inspired to modify a not very satisfactory Record no 4 smoothing plane - I had plenty of alternative smoothing planes kicking around, five including this one. I opened up the mouth with a file, and put a fairly hefty arc on the blade's cutting edge, and set the cap iron back so that its corners only just touched the limits of the arc at either side of the blade. In use, when the centre of the blade protruded by about 1 - 1.5 mm below the sole, only about 1/2 - 2/3 of the blade was exposed. It works reasonably well and in the past I've hauled it out sparingly to knock off the worst of the high spots in a board, or some particularly skanky bits of board face or edge prior to reverting back to the no 5 or no 7.

Then, one day many years ago (maybe twenty, I faced the task of flattening something long, wide, cupped and twisted again, and thought, "Screw this for a game of soldiers." So, out came my DeWalt hand held power planer, which took about ten minutes to do pretty much the same thing my home made no 4 'scrub' plane would have achieved in maybe half to three quarters of an hour.

I don't think I've used my modified no 4 'scrub' plane since, and it sits rather forlornly and perhaps a bit unloved in my toolbox. So, in conclusion, I'd say a proper scrub plane, much like my home made version, would probably end up mostly sitting in my toolbox primarily as some sort of decorative and slightly interesting artefact, especially as a hand held power planer is also to hand. Maybe I should offer up my lovingly modified hack of a no 4 scrub plane to the denizens of eBay. You never know, I might get £100 or more for it, it being a one-off and quite rare, ha, ha. Slainte.


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## D_W (6 Jan 2021)

The instructions given often to modify stanley 4s and now a stanley 78 are somewhat maddening (they would work if you were living in a vacuum and had a job to complete, but are just the same fodder that sellers or someone would do as a "something for nothing" gimmick when something better is widely available). 

But, that bloggery sells - usually done by folks whose hand dimensioning is limited to showing other people how to do it (the standard for performance is pretty low when the group being taught is beginners and most will drop out before being able to sharpen anything). 

If someone had the means to extract dust, I'd also suggest a power planer or a large belt sander with a 24 grit belt or something of the sort. I have a hand held power planer, but for whatever reason, it clogs within 30 seconds on a fein vac. (I bought it in case there was a fast request to make something that I wouldn't work by hand, or a giant slab that would be a pain to sharpen to the middle of - neither has occurred). 

Forums have diluted the discussion of this kind of stuff to "anything works fine - 'your mileage may vary'", and poor choices lead to people saying things like "you can't actually make anything entirely by hand" or "nobody could rip lumber by hand and make anything". Well, I guess if the hand methods are taught on sample pine boards by people who never actually make anything by hand, then it could be pretty difficult to get anything done. 

I never read much of anything to come to my conclusions above, and only was introduced to nicholson by Warren, who mentioned that the way I was using a jack plane wasn't suggested by Nicholson (I like to set the plane fairly heavy on anything less than about 5 feet and walk with it, but have changed that to do what nicholson says as it requires less energy - working an area as long as a stroke, and then backing up that length until done). Jacob complains about the length of my posts, but someone who has come to something through trial and error and experience rather than reading and referring to the author will generally have more reasons about why they made their choices. This is something far better learned by experience (which does take some patience buying and trying things) and completing work without falling back to power tools when the novelty wears off.

On the bright side, I did just see a completed sale of an LN 40 1/2 scrub plane (used) on ebay for $345. When LN has them in stock again, they'll be $175....
...not surprisingly, it was used, but unused.


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## Jacob (6 Jan 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> It's been interesting to watch this discussion to see how the points have been advanced. It's always fun to watch master Jacob relentlessly pursuing a point of view.
> 
> I don't own a scrub plane, and mostly flatten boards and straighten edges on a planer. But every now and then I've had to resort to hand planes to do the job, e.g., a board too wide for the surface planer (jointer for David) that has to be used in that width. For the most part, as described by David, I just went at it with either my no 5 jack plane or with my no 7 try plane, both Records. It took some work, but I got there.
> 
> ...


Well - a modified 4 will do it but doesn't make as good a scrub as the scrub does with a much narrower blade and tighter radius.
Power planer not always a good alternative of dirty surfaces as you very quickly end up with blunt blades.
Which brings me to the whole point of the deep/narrow bladed scrub - *it cuts mostly into the clean wood below* rather than skimming along through the grit/paint in the surface. The crarp gets lifted off with the shavings. That's all there is to it, plus being easy to use and very easy to sharpen
Sometimes it's just what you need, which for most people will be not often, if ever.


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## Jacob (6 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> ......
> 
> On the bright side, I did just see a completed sale of an LN 40 1/2 scrub plane (used) on ebay for $345. When LN has them in stock again, they'll be $175....
> ...not surprisingly, it was used, but unused.


That's generally the case with most of the LN/LV planes on ebay, and often still in the box.  Mint condition and if you are lucky you will get a pristine "plane sock" thrown in!
They get bought by aspirational beginners on the promise of instant results outa the box, but fail to deliver.
n.b. the ECE scrub is only e73 : Scrub Planes with single Iron | FINE TOOLS and as far as I know works as well if not better than the heavy brass knobby versions
I'd also recommend for D_W Dictionary of Woodworking Tools as he needs to learn a bit more about planes. More planes described here than in any other publication ever!
PS too long a post D_W I'd aim at 200 words max. Hope that helps.
PPS just waded through a few more words - what are these 5' or more long things you are making? Surely you are not making the elementary novice mistake of planing your stock before you've cut it to length according to your cutting list? PAR stock is what DIYers buy from timber merchants but not what craftsman make in small workshops.


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## D_W (6 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> I'd also recommend for D_W Dictionary of Woodworking Tools as he needs to learn a bit more about planes.



That's funny. 

As far as long things, I've made a bed - the rails and striking mouldings for regular cabinetry are the longest things that I've made. In terms of regular making of anything with, let's say, 6 or 8 foot boards in furniture? I haven't seen it - most case pieces that are of significant size and height are made in separate parts. Striking the mouldings so that they can be cut and applied with no discontinuous profiles is the only large work. Otherwise, all of the parts are cut from rough, glued and then dimensioned. This is where the suggestions like "you can only do it if the grain runs the same direction" go away as it's generally not the best way to do things, and competence with planes eliminates need to worry about it - and without resorting to things like plaining directly across the grain. 

Nicholson's texts about planes are about the only thing that I've found that matches my experience. I don't read other peoples' texts about planes ahead of time because confirmation bias makes people (like you with scrubs) think that something they read is legitimized as best. I'm happy that most of nicholson's discussion matches what I found out of laziness, and happy after the fact to have picked up a tip on jack planing to save another small amount of effort, but if I'd have read and applied 9 out of 10 books written in the last 100 years about hand tool woodwork, I'd be far behind my current ability to wield a plane to do accurate work efficiently, or to do rough through fine sawing - or even sharpening method. 

I'll work over your sharpening pictures another day - the irons that you've mid-sharpened are biased against efficiency if finished further, but they're probably fine for housewright work.


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## TRITON (6 Jan 2021)

My thruppence worth is beware 

Beware woody hipsters who laud old specialist planes, which no longer have a use in the real world.


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## Jacob (6 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> ......
> 
> Nicholson's texts about planes are about the only thing that I've found that matches my experience. I don't read other peoples' texts about planes .....


Time you widened your horizons.
Just rereading Nicholson and was pleased to find my long 26" woody is technically called a "long plane".
I posted earlier about planing 14' long stuff.


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## Spectric (6 Jan 2021)

This is one long topic, but what is a scrub plane? All I have gathered is they do not require electricity.


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## Andy Kev. (6 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> That's generally the case with most of the LN/LV planes on ebay ...
> They get bought by aspirational beginners on the promise of instant results outa the box, but fail to deliver.


Am I right in thinking that with “fail to deliver” you mean that beginners can’t use L-N planes properly? I have experience of only one L-N plane but it is excellently made and most certainly delivers.


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## Jacob (6 Jan 2021)

Andy Kev. said:


> Am I right in thinking that with “fail to deliver” you mean that beginners can’t use L-N planes properly? I have experience of only one L-N plane but it is excellently made and most certainly delivers.


Some can't - or never get around to it perhaps. Certainly plenty of mint condition ones on ebay. 
Glad you like it - I hope you don't give up and feel that you need to ebay it!


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## D_W (6 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> Time you widened your horizons.
> Just rereading Nicholson and was pleased to find my long 26" woody is technically called a "long plane".
> I posted earlier about planing 14' long stuff.



I work by hand, jacob. I have read small parts of the nicholson text because someone referred me to it and told me that I was using the term try plane incorrectly (24", they deemed it a long plane - it's in between). 

The bulk of what I mentioned here has nothing to do with reading anything, it has to do with buying, trying and comparing things side by side to find a sustainable way to build by hand efficiently and accurately enough that accuracy is never part of the discussion. Even in routine work. 

Talking about planing things 14' long is irrelevant until you start matching things people are actually doing here. There used to be a member on SMC when I posted over there where every time I talked about wooden planes and making them, she would try to correct what I was saying because I wasn't including japanese planes. Nobody over there was using japanese planes for serious work, and she was using them, but not for serious work - she was playing. 

However relevant her experience with japanese planes may have been, she had no good advice for someone who wanted to work entirely by hand making cabinetry. 

If someone came on here and said "what should I do if I want to build 14' long stuff for a house, I would tell them to build a longer bench and do the bulk work with a power planer - nobody is doing it. I've jointed stuff similar to that in length to strike mouldings, but that's a small amount of work compared to stuff like this for cases. 

I'd give the same advice to anyone coming here with a big chub for japanese tools wanting to use them all the time - make things with the wood the japanese use and in their style, because if you want to make case work in boston, philadelphia, english style, etc, with hardwoods, you're peeing into a breeze. 

I can say for sure I've never worked wood more than 7' long unless it was being prepped to make mouldings (and in that case, for my kitchens). Moulding length needed to wrap around a case plus 6" or so would be the max elsewhere. 

You're grasping at straws when it comes to most of the things people will want to attempt with hand tools. If they play with beams, they'll only do it once. Even at that, there is a lot of exposed structure work where I grew up, and I've never seen any that was planed. It was all finished with axe or adze. If the work had been finer and still exposed, I'm sure some was planed (i'm sure some of what remains in williamsburg was hand planed, including the hand rails, etc). 

But what does it have to do with woodworking at a bench to make furniture?

My only point about nicholson in regard to texts is that I saw a lot of woodwork suggestions made for fairly ugly mid 1900s work and with people who claim to have mastered hand tools. It didn't add up in working from rough, and I was smart enough (and perceptive enough) to know that they were either starting with the assumption that new limited tools were the only real option (perhaps due to teaching classes) or that they just weren't doing very much of what they talked about. Some of them do very fine work, but when they write books, I think they do more book writing and class teaching than they do work. 

Nicholson's text was written at a time when the workmen were doing work, not writing books. The advice in it is better. It proves out. Much of it seems to be architectural, so I've never bothered to read anything from it other than coloring wood, french polishing and bench planes. For that, it's awfully good if one is working by hand. studio furniture era and arts and crafts stuff, not so much.


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## D_W (6 Jan 2021)

Andy Kev. said:


> Am I right in thinking that with “fail to deliver” you mean that beginners can’t use L-N planes properly? I have experience of only one L-N plane but it is excellently made and most certainly delivers.



From the point of view of someone who can make a tool that's within or better than LN's specs, they are spectacularly good for their price. All one has to do is sharpen them and perhaps round over the tip of a cap iron. 

Their fitness for use isn't the reason they're not used. The companies (both of them) are stellar. What they teach in video is for their markets, and they are more than courteous. 

I can make a plane that's within their spec (I used their bronze 4 as the mark to beat for feel with infills), but to be able to do it at their wholesale cost? Not a chance. Not even in most parts of the USA - LN is an anomaly of craft and modernity mixed due to where they exist (maine), which is a separate culture.

They are almost singly responsible for the sudden notion that clifton's standards and customer service from afar aren't suitable for premium tools. 

I won't lie and say I use their planes at this point (just sold off my last two at covid anomalous auction results), but I do recall as a beginner that I didn't get a refinished stanley that came close to them ...really, ever. Those standards aren't necessary for someone who can make a plane work to their standard, but for a beginner who just wants a tool that works, they're unmatched.


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## Blackswanwood (6 Jan 2021)

@Jacob and @D_W 

I admire your stamina but why not just agree that you have different perspectives? One of the things I like about woodwork is there are different ways to get the same outcome and the Best method is a matter of personal choice!


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## Jacob (6 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> ....
> If someone came on here and said "what should I do if I want to build 14' long stuff for a house, I would tell them to build a longer bench and do the bulk work with a power planer ....


I did it the easy way; hand planed two sides and machined planed the other two. You would probably hit on the same solution if you had the same job - hand planing isn't that difficult, don't talk yourself out of it!


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## D_W (6 Jan 2021)

TRITON said:


> My thruppence worth is beware
> Beware woody hipsters who laud old specialist planes, which no longer have a use in the real world.



To my knowledge, except for a small group of reproducers and repairers, there's not much of a need for *any* planes in the real world. 

Which makes getting advice on working by hand to standard pretty weak these days. 

Working by hand to standard and selling the product without writing books or teaching classes is a pretty big hill to climb. I'm aware of a single person who did it for a while, and no longer does because he couldn't keep up with his order list. 

This kind of reminds me of something I read early on when I thought my direction was to a sliding table saw vs. going to hand tools (that just happened by chance). A bunch of bubbly folks looking to spend four to five figures asked what was really tested and useful in industry, and the response was that except for odd one off work, sliding table saws are outdated and not used. 

There's one group to beware of though, and that is folks who write more than they woodwork who do a project and write a book, do a project, write a book. Pace and efficiency aren't a very big deal if 85% of your time is spent editing and promoting media.


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## D_W (6 Jan 2021)

Blackswanwood said:


> @Jacob and @D_W
> 
> I admire your stamina but why not just agree that you have different perspectives? One of the things I like about woodwork is there are different ways to get the same outcome and the Best method is a matter of personal choice!



Jacob doesn't like being jacobed - I don't think we're talking about "best", we're talking about "necessary". If you're going to work by hand, it's necessary to do the things the way they were done or you'll quit quickly. a scrub plane isn't necessary - maybe richard's advice was the best given here (in my opinion, a scrub plane followed by a large power planer tends to erase the trouble that the scrub can cause - but even that could be avoided for the folks looking to "knock ears off" by getting a decent power planer and dust remover. I'd have solved that for myself (not instantly clogging a fein vac) if I had customers and enjoyed it (it makes economic sense and the person pushing the power planer around instead of any manual plane won't be tired and could work a full day).


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## Jacob (6 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> To my knowledge, except for a small group of reproducers and repairers, there's not much of a need for *any* planes in the real world.


I've used them consistently for more than 50 years, earning a living, as and when needed, which is often. No big deal. Couldn't manage without them.
Talking of long stuff I also had 10no 14' chapel windows to replicate, which entailed 20 3x3" 12' long stiles. Easier to straighten on one or two sides by hand and the other sides through the machine.


> ..... sliding table saw vs. going to hand tools .....


I use both. A long sliding table (on a combi machine) was one of the most useful things I ever bought.
It's a waste of time telling me I'm doing it all wrong - I really do know what I'm doing and another 1000 words wouldn't make the slightest difference!


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## D_W (6 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> Scrub plane much more useful than a jack for rough work and remove stuff much faster!



For swan above, this is where things went sideways. It's bad advice - we've narrowed it down to potentially wet wood or 14 foot beams.

I'm a little bit reactive to the comment because it comes up almost instantly any time someone uses a scrub plane on a test piece for the first time. 

"hand toolers.... PSA - you "MUST" get a scrub plane...just tried one on a test piece!!!"

Jacob later confirmed (unintentionally) that he's removing less wood per stroke with a scrub plane than someone would typically remove with a jack plane (at least someone of my physical size - about 200 pounds). 

_can you get a scrub plane?_

of course.


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## Jacob (6 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> For swan above, this is where things went sideways. It's bad advice - we've narrowed it down to potentially wet wood or 14 foot beams.
> ....


I have never used a scrub plane on wet wood or 14' beams. That's it I'm outa here, is there an ignore function? Yes there is! Button pressed!


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## D_W (6 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> 0no 14' chapel windows to replicate,





Jacob said:


> I've used them consistently for more than 50 years, as and when needed, which is often. No big deal. Couldn't manage without them.
> Talking of long stuff I also had 10no 14' chapel windows to replicate, which entailed 20 3x3" 12' long stiles. Easier to straighten on one or two sides by hand and the other sides through the machine. I use both. A long sliding table (on a combi machine) was one of the most useful things I ever bought



Getting into such a business here is a good way to go broke. I don't know what woodworking business is really palatable here other than repair work supplemented by pension, or woodworker supplemented by attorney or physician spouse - I've seen the last two done


----------



## Sgian Dubh (6 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> The instructions given often to modify stanley 4s and now a stanley 78 are somewhat maddening (they would work if you were living in a vacuum and had a job to complete, but are just the same fodder that sellers or someone would do as a "something for nothing" gimmick when something better is widely available).
> 
> But, that bloggery sells -


I'm sure you're aware that I don't do bloggery, as you call it. I'm not the least bit interested in selling a method for modifying a smoothing plane to work as a scrubber. I just happened to have a smoother that was a bit of a dog, and a job where a scrubber might be useful, so roughly half an hour's tinkering modified the dog into something that worked passably well to scrub up wood quickly before I got at it with either my jack or try plane, or it might have been both - can't recall.

My electric hand held plane, by the way, doesn't clog up the extraction hose at all - I just let the chips fly, usually outdoors, which does result in quite a bit of sweeping up I suppose, ha, ha. Slainte.


----------



## paulrbarnard (6 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> I have never used a scrub plane on wet wood or 14' beams. That's it I'm outa here, is there an ignore function? Yes there is! Button pressed!


took you a lot longer than me. I hit it days ago.


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## Sgian Dubh (6 Jan 2021)

Jacob said:


> Well - a modified 4 will do it but doesn't make as good a scrub as the scrub does with a much narrower blade and tighter radius.
> Power planer not always a good alternative of dirty surfaces as you very quickly end up with blunt blades.


Jacob, I don't claim that my modified smoother is better than a genuine scrubber, but it does a reasonable job.

As to blunting the blades of my electric hand plane on all the rubbish and hard stuff found on the surface of some rough wood that's perhaps been lying on gravel, concrete, or whatever, that doesn't worry me in the slightest because I just turn the existing blades over or stick in some new blades, which might take all of five minutes if I'm goofing about a bit, and the blades are not overly expensive at about £2 per pair of usable edges. Slainte.


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## billw (6 Jan 2021)

So now I've reached this point in the thread and lost the will to live, the conclusion is that a scrub plane is useless.


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## D_W (6 Jan 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> I'm sure you're aware that I don't do bloggery, as you call it. I'm not the least bit interested in selling a method for modifying a smoothing plane to work as a scrubber. I just happened to have a smoother that was a bit of a dog, and a job where a scrubber might be useful, so roughly half an hour's tinkering modified the dog into something that worked passably well to scrub up wood quickly before I got at it with either my jack or try plane, or it might have been both - can't recall.
> 
> My electric hand held plane, by the way, doesn't clog up the extraction hose at all - I just let the chips fly, usually outdoors, which does result in quite a bit of sweeping up I suppose, ha, ha. Slainte.



Richard, not aimed at you at all. I'm aware that you've done quite a bit of woodworking for a living, and that this is a one-off kind of thing for you, not a typical method of removing material. 

You hit the nail on the head for me and my small planer. I suspect because I have a cheap chinese copy of a good planer, maybe it's just me (as ron white says). It'll work fine if I let it blast chips everywhere, but factoring in changing clothes and cleaning things up messes up the time balance. There must've been something I was planning to work on quickly to initiate the purchase of the thing, and it was a real bummer to find that even a fein wouldn't have the gones to pull the chips through. 

My dad never did fine woodwork, but my mother profitably made kitsch for 40 years, and my dad's job was material prep. He wore out two bandsaws and three belt/disc combo sanders. I can still remember seeing him standing outside on a nice day with a breeze, just living up the excellent conditions to work without a mask and without cleaning anything up. He would dutifully work for a gigantic stash of backed up material for 5 or 6 hours like this, leaving the garden looking like it had snowed over a wide area (most of the kitsch was white pine). A couple of dew cycles or a rain and it was either brown or gone. 

If I were planning to work 8 or 10 hours today, and tomorrow, and the next day, I'd still use the power planer and make the mess. One of the benefits of this being a hobby is if I have to dimension 100 or 150 board feet of wood over a couple of weeks, I can tell doing the same thing for too long would lead to injury. Doing the same thing with an electric planer would just lead to mind wandering and maybe a minor backache. 

I don't want to name all of the bloggers and book writers I'm thinking of, but someone who has primarily made their living doing woodworking off of the internet and DVD scene is out - you're too qualified!!


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## D_W (6 Jan 2021)

billw said:


> So now I've reached this point in the thread and lost the will to live, the conclusion is that a scrub plane is useless.



productivity when used by the deceased or those near it is fairly poor!


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## Andy Kev. (7 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> From the point of view of someone who can make a tool that's within or better than LN's specs, they are spectacularly good for their price. All one has to do is sharpen them and perhaps round over the tip of a cap iron.
> 
> Their fitness for use isn't the reason they're not used. The companies (both of them) are stellar. What they teach in video is for their markets, and they are more than courteous.
> 
> ...


I ought to have pointed out that my one and only LN is the 507 Rebating Block Plane. It is wonderfully well made and its performance is only limited by the skills of whoever is wielding it. I've no doubt that if I had e.g. an LN No 5, I would be as happy with it as I am with my Veritas LAJ.


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## Benchwayze (7 Jan 2021)

TRITON said:


> My thruppence worth is beware
> 
> Beware woody hipsters who laud old specialist planes, which no longer have a use in the real world.


Are you saying that operations that required special ols are no longer


TRITON said:


> My thruppence worth is beware
> 
> Beware woody hipsters who laud old specialist planes, which no longer have a use in the real world.


Maybe substitute MODERN for REAL? There comes a time when only the old fashioned way can do. That's why I keep spare blades for my Number 4.5 and 5.5. Not that I am likely to buy timber that rough these days.

John


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## Benchwayze (7 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> productivity when used by the deceased or those near it is fairly poor!


Shall I hang up my apron then D W? Just concentrate on contemplating my old wrinkled navel?


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## D_W (7 Jan 2021)

Benchwayze said:


> Shall I hang up my apron then D W? Just concentrate on contemplating my old wrinkled navel?



hah...my spouse contends that in my state of pudgery and lethargy, I'm at death's door. If we can still move, it's probably good for us!! Probably not a great hobby to introduce first at a hospice, though.


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## Sgian Dubh (7 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> Richard, not aimed at you at all.


To be honest, I didn't think you'd aimed your comments specifically at me. I agree that there does seem to be a fair amount of what might be perceived as somewhat dubious sales orientated bloggery out there, or bloggery that's just generally not very good. I'm probably not the ideal person to judge because I rarely bother to read blogs and, similarly, YouTube offerings on woodworking topics are pretty much be ignored by me. Slainte.


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## TRITON (8 Jan 2021)

Benchwayze said:


> Are you saying that operations that required special ols are no longer
> 
> Maybe substitute MODERN for REAL? There comes a time when only the old fashioned way can do. That's why I keep spare blades for my Number 4.5 and 5.5. Not that I am likely to buy timber that rough these days.
> 
> John


I was just making humour of it all, as is my way, but as you want to argue the point,then no there is little to no place for a scrub plane, in this modern world.
We no longer have saw pits and two handed saws to cut boards with. Sure you can set one up and live the historical dream, but again its only something to do to live a dream, its not financially viable.

A scrub plane is for bringing a flattish surface of hewed or rough sawn timber before utilizing other planes like the no5 or 6 to flatten it more accurately.
If people want to do that and make it all entirely handmade than thats fine and dandy, but not a requirement and it can only really happen in a hobby setting.
I have taken a log, split it, quartered boards out of it and flattened them using planes(No4+5,6) and chisels and rasps and everything else i had to bring the boards to an approximately flat surface to work on from, and let me tell you that was A REAL CHORE, I was glad to have finished the project and swore I'd not be doing that again.
This is why I own a planer/thicknesser 

My joke point was in many things we get Hipsters' who are only there to argue the point, and in reality they have no point, but insist that these old planes must be used and if you dont or cant then it makes you a lesser carpenter.

As ive said, its fine if you want to play the historical game, or live out in the boonies without electricity, but these techniques and tools have no place as using them to prepare your stock will make the cost of your furniture unimaginable prices.


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## Benchwayze (8 Jan 2021)

Triton.
Please don't jump to conclusions and if you must, look before you leap.

I do not wish to argue any point. I was merely making an observation. I don't consider the present woodworking age as 'real' by comparison. That implies old methods are unreal. I consider today's ways as modern; which by comparison they can be. That was my point, and I am quite content working with my own modern labour saving machines when my doddery hands shake too much for my old tools. Also no pun intended, but I was was using a Triton almost thirty years ago!

John


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## TRITON (8 Jan 2021)

OK, argue is too strong a point, i didnt actually mean that, i mean more 'debate' the point.

But with everything humour is the key 

My router table/router are Triton, and you know what its like trying to figure an appropriate username.
Actually the Triton router table is a piece of Pish, to give it its Glaswegian parlance. Im thinking of putting it on gumtree for some mug....er budding new woodworker to snap up, and opting for something with a cast iron top. Their(triton) stuff is ok, but in reality its just ok bordering on rubbish  well their static stuff is, although i do admit its got plenty of interesting features, their routers on the other hand are seriously good kit.


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## Jacob (8 Jan 2021)

TRITON said:


> .....
> 
> My joke point was in many things we get Hipsters' who are only there to argue the point, and in reality they have no point, but insist that these old planes must be used and if you dont or cant then it makes you a lesser carpenter.
> ...


I wasn't insisting that they _must_ be used I was just pointing out a particular use i.e. if you happen to want to recycle some very scruffy old timbers.
Thanks to the long rambling discussion above and the delving into old books, it seems I was right and that's exactly what they were intended for in the first place!
A very limited role and, other than that, not much use at all, which is why there were not many of them about - virtually unknown in the UK


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## D_W (8 Jan 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> To be honest, I didn't think you'd aimed your comments specifically at me. I agree that there does seem to be a fair amount of what might be perceived as somewhat dubious sales orientated bloggery out there, or bloggery that's just generally not very good. I'm probably not the ideal person to judge because I rarely bother to read blogs and, similarly, YouTube offerings on woodworking topics are pretty much be ignored by me. Slainte.



Ditto on those - I've read a few blogs for a little bit, but the personal branding in each is too much for me. working the wood and then solving actual problems is pretty efficient for learning, but it takes knowing what you want to make and then trying to meet a high standard. Reading blogs or books and getting too much woo from them leads to making things that aren't very interesting to the maker. The woo wears off, and so does the urge to make anything. 

As a hobby, this is a fairly expensive one, and I guess the turn toward the "something for nothing" blogs is predictable, along with the product placement blogs and a sprinkle of mysticism. 

Having self-taught more or less heat treatment, I figured that I could pick up a couple of new steels and see what's regarded as the best way to work them. There are two texts at this point that do a good job of covering them, but they are about 1% of the information out there. When I went to youtube and checked various "gurus", they were all behind what I have learned in terms of control and manipulation of steel for heat treatment. I learned only a single thing over a lot of ours (to use a metal plug to heat oil if that's desirable), and the rest was just a waste of time. The texts aren't, and they cost a tiny fraction of any of the guru club/patreon/pay to read sites. But the books don't contain the woo or any personal branding.


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## D_W (8 Jan 2021)

TRITON said:


> As ive said, its fine if you want to play the historical game, or live out in the boonies without electricity, but these techniques and tools have no place as using them to prepare your stock will make the cost of your furniture unimaginable prices.



This is the false part of the information - that if you're working by hand, you're doing it for historical value or re-enacting. I caught derek even at one point calling me a re-enactor. I walk to the shop in slippers and sweat pants and often use a cordless drill. The part of the work that you didn't like, I do like. It's that simple. 

It doesn't have a lot of commercial value, but that's generally not the point of a hobby. Someone using a $10k power tool shop is generally also going to have zero commercial value, and probably not enough tool accuracy to build and fit things any faster than someone with hand tools aside from the use of the thickness planer or table saw for gobs of feet of thin sticking. 

Economically feasible commercial work here involves things like CNC machines and wide belt sanders, and a loan.


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## Sgian Dubh (8 Jan 2021)

D_W said:


> Reading blogs or books and getting too much woo from them leads to making things that aren't very interesting to the maker. The woo wears off, and so does the urge to make anything.


David, I'm pretty sure that if you were ever to stoop to buying, and actually reading my tome on the boring old topic of woody subjects (yawn, and extended overexaggerated yawn), you really wouldn't be overwhelmed by "_too much woo_", ha, ha. Slainte.


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## IainD (30 Apr 2021)

David 

When you're following on from the Jack what's the width and camber of the blade on the Try plane, and how tight do you have the mouth?

Cheers, Iain


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## Jameshow (30 Apr 2021)

Oh the scrub plane thread.... Where have you been my old freind!!!

Cheers James


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## Jacob (30 Apr 2021)

Jameshow said:


> Oh the scrub plane thread.... Where have you been my old freind!!!
> 
> Cheers James


I've scrubbed a few more bits of old beam lately but don't tell D_W he'll only get over excited!  

I'll chip in on Iain's question. Adjusting mouth openings is fashionable with the toolies but basically best avoided.
On the common Stanley/Bailey pattern it's best to have zero adjustment - the frog dead in line with the back of the mouth to give max support for the blade - the back will rest on the mouth opening by a mm or so. Then never adjust it again for the rest of your life!


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## IainD (30 Apr 2021)

Jacob said:


> I've scrubbed a few more bits of old beam lately but don't tell D_W he'll only get over excited!
> 
> I'll chip in on Iain's question. Adjusting mouth openings is fashionable with the toolies but basically best avoided.
> On the common Stanley/Bailey pattern it's best to have zero adjustment - the frog dead in line with the back of the mouth to give max support for the blade - the back will rest on the mouth opening by a mm or so. Then never adjust it again for the rest of your life!



Jacob, to put it into context, I'm purchasing an old wooden plane and don't want to buy one with the mouth to large.

Cheers, Iain


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## Jacob (30 Apr 2021)

IainD said:


> Jacob, to put it into context, I'm purchasing an old wooden plane and don't want to buy one with the mouth to large.
> 
> Cheers, Iain


I doubt it'd matter within reason, but you see a lot of old woodies with a plate of fresh wood set into the front of the mouth. They tend to be oldish well worn planes. I guess this is because as the sole wears the mouth gets even wider and possibly battered by use, rather than doing it to reduce a normal average mouth width.
Just checked a few usable woodies, edge of blade to back of mouth varies from about 3/32 to 1/4".These are planes which work well.


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## IainD (30 Apr 2021)

"Just checked a few usable woodies, edge of blade to back of mouth varies from about 3/32 to 1/4".These are planes which work well."

Do you mean to the front of the mouth Jacob?


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

IainD said:


> David
> 
> When you're following on from the Jack what's the width and camber of the blade on the Try plane, and how tight do you have the mouth?
> 
> Cheers, Iain



I'll measure these things, but all of my try planes are 2.5 inch irons. None has a particularly large mouth and the camber is some more than a smoother, but not too much more. The try plane is taking the tops off of the jack scallops first and doesn't need to have a huge amount of camber.


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

A dedicated scrub plane is a very powerful tool and indispensable for the work I do.

Mine's made of treewood and has a lignum base.

I don't know how wide the mouth is, nor do I know what pitch, thickness or radius the iron has


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## Jacob (30 Apr 2021)

IainD said:


> "Just checked a few usable woodies, edge of blade to back of mouth varies from about 3/32 to 1/4".These are planes which work well."
> 
> Do you mean to the front of the mouth Jacob?


Yes!


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## Jacob (30 Apr 2021)

Adam W. said:


> A dedicated scrub plane is a very powerful tool and indispensable for the work I do.
> 
> Mine's made of treewood and has a lignum base.


Be interested to see a photo. I guess "scrub" is generic and they come in different shapes and sizes according to the use/user.
Oops wasn't paying attention is treewood any different from ordinary wood?


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

The more I push, the brighter it gets.


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

After a days planing, it's positively incandescent.


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

Quite why anyone would do that to a plane, I don't know but they crop up on ebay and I save the pictures in my folder of sin.

Here's the scrubber, I think it's made by Ulmia.


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## Droogs (30 Apr 2021)

that is aindeed an Ulmia hornbeam and lignum vitae plane rather than an E.C.E. The side rivet gives it away


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

I have a Lie Nielsen one too, but I'm too scared to show a photo of it incase I get flamed.

So don't tell anyone.


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

IainD said:


> David
> 
> When you're following on from the Jack what's the width and camber of the blade on the Try plane, and how tight do you have the mouth?
> 
> Cheers, Iain



A picture of my favourite English try planes mouth. 2 1/2 inch iron. Like I stated previously, the camber is not much, just a bit more than the smoother. It would be tempting to grade camber linearly from one plane to the next, but it's not practical for use.

If you have a rank set Jack plane, it may be worth having a second set slightly more gradual.


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## Droogs (30 Apr 2021)

Adam W. said:


> I have a Lie Nielsen one too, but I'm too scared to show a photo of it incase I get flamed.
> 
> So don't tell anyone.


from one extreme to the other


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

Damn! I thought my secret was safe with you Bubbleboy.


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## Jacob (30 Apr 2021)

Adam W. said:


> I have a Lie Nielsen one too, but I'm too scared to show a photo of it incase I get flamed.
> 
> So don't tell anyone.


Smart move! They become collectors' pieces within minutes of being bought.
Some more wooden ones here scrub plane – Peter Follansbee, joiner's notes with dubious picture of one being pulled instead of pushed. I'll have a go next time I scrub my beam.


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## Droogs (30 Apr 2021)

Jacob said:


> Smart move! They become collectors pieces within minutes of being bought.
> Some more wooden ones here scrub plane – Peter Follansbee, joiner's notes with dubious picture of one being pulled instead of pushed. I'll have a go next time I scrub my beam.



snigger


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## IainD (30 Apr 2021)

Thanks all for the information guys, and I apologise for poking a sleeping bear!


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

Adam W. said:


> A dedicated scrub plane is a very powerful tool and indispensable for the work I do.
> 
> Mine's made of treewood and has a lignum base.
> 
> I don't know how wide the mouth is, nor do I know what pitch, thickness or radius the iron has



Is this site/house work with softwoods?


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

Adam W. said:


> Damn! I thought my secret was safe with you Bubbleboy.



well, i had the same plane for a while! You wouldn't likely prefer it over the ulmia in an hour use session. Your "scrub" is only slightly more rank set than my jack plane (and there's little difference between the two types in the continentals - maybe no cap iron and half an inch in length). The ulmia is far more likely to be useful in the long term than the LN, but would still be second behind a true jack if you're working at a bench.

For anyone who can read dutch and german, I'd be curious to find out if the tradition of the bismarck is from old growth timber days, or for wet wood (a small wooden sole in wet wood is kind of a blessing - the wood is soft, but can be a bit sticky working compared to waxed sole on dry wood). 

I kept a metal scrub for several years after I started working mostly (and on some projects, entirely) by hand, but could never really find a use for it. It didn't work faster than a wooden jack, but it did leave more of a mess.

(the blessing of the LN types is that even if one is almost impossible to find regular use for, like the carriage rabbet, you can sell all of them very easily for nearly what you paid).


----------



## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

Jacob's musing about peter pulling a plane is funny. Anyone who had done any significant work dimensioning wood (and peter does actually do quite a lot of working wood), would turn a plane for a small section before moving a board around in a vise to plane it in the other direction. It's less work. But Jacob more or less said above that he chunked wood around decades ago by hand and relies mostly on power tools at this point - it's evident. 

More discussion of working wood, but no pictures of much of anything fine that's been planed. Or even halfway there.


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

D_W said:


> well, i had the same plane for a while! You wouldn't likely prefer it over the ulmia in an hour use session. Your "scrub" is only slightly more rank set than my jack plane (and there's little difference between the two types in the continentals - maybe no cap iron and half an inch in length). The ulmia is far more likely to be useful in the long term than the LN, but would still be second behind a true jack if you're working at a bench.



My scrub plane is tiny compared to a jack plane and I process cubic meters of timber at the bench with it.

The jack comes later, as I use it for final flattening and finish. The jointer is used on stuff which is longer than twice the length of a jack.


----------



## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> David, I'm pretty sure that if you were ever to stoop to buying, and actually reading my tome on the boring old topic of woody subjects (yawn, and extended overexaggerated yawn), you really wouldn't be overwhelmed by "_too much woo_", ha, ha. Slainte.



I totally missed this. I would consider you to be at the bottom of the likelihood scale for woo. The array of taunton writers who write a book for every project, and then teach 20 classes in between, not so much (excluding david charlesworth here as he states flatly what he's aiming for and he does it well).

But I'm sort of past the point that I'd gain much from more literature about wood - i'm sure there's plenty on things that I wouldn't use, but I tend to "mine ore" in specific veins when reading (things that I'll use), and not read too much of the rest. 

My comment above about taunton book writers reminds me of something I heard about T CW. One of the more popular writers (again, not David, I want to make sure he doesn't think this is aimed at him) who has quite an ego spent some time at CW a decade or two ago. He put on a show of arrogance and declined to demonstrate much in front of the makers there - perhaps CW being one of the few western places that hand tool, blacksmithing, etc, masters continue to do the highest level work in classical design. He'd have been well outclassed. The act and then failure to prove out was sort of a variation on "Everybody's a gangster until real gangsters show up".


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

D_W said:


> Is this site/house work with softwoods?



I only work in oak, elm and scots pine, as I live in the 16th century most of the time and Follansbee is far too modern for me.

Other bijou types of woods are for carving.


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

Adam W. said:


> My scrub plane is tiny compared to a jack plane and I process cubic meters of timber at the bench with it.
> 
> The jack comes later.



softwood or hardwood? I suspect your jack is set less rank than it would be used alone if you're going ahead of it with this. I have had two continental single iron planes like yours (and still have another berg iron that someone gave me hoping that I'd build another - but I have no use for such a plane) - they're hard on hands and not great in terms of flatness vs. a jack when the wood is dry medium hardwoods. 

I don't work a lot of pine or other softwoods. A rank jack generally works within about a 16th of a marked line, so the idea of having two cambered planes is kind of out if you start keeping time and comparing two steps rough vs. 1 (aside from a possible desire to remove a layer of contaminated dirty stuff from rough lumber, but I've never noticed even that filthy stuff to do anything to my jack plane, even when there's a metal dust issue.


----------



## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

Adam W. said:


> I only work in oak, elm and scots pine, as I live in the 16th century most of the time and Follansbee is far too modern for me.
> 
> Other bijou types of woods are for carving.



ahh, correct to say you're working wet wood, then?

>>Follansbee is far too modern for me.<<

that should be your signature line!


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

_"ahh, correct to say you're working wet wood, then?"_

No, not always.


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

jeez - I'm just looking for a straight answer. I've worked wet wood a few times. It's not common for me. I would respond "generally rough lumber and generally dried", or if I did half and half, I'd say half. 

i'm not looking to wedge you into some position, just gathering why someone who does "cubic yards" of wood doesn't match typical practice 200 years ago for cabinet work. One very good reason would be wet wood - the whole issue of troubles with dry wood is kind of moot if you do a large percentage of work with wet wood, especially if it's riven. It planes entirely differently vs. flatsawn dry lumber, even when it's hardwood. 

I did the shift with the scrub planes first - they lost out to a single jack. I kind of resented the whole US blog expert thing as they described plane setups in a way that didn't end up being accurate (as if each would have graduated camber, when generally with dry wood, only one plane with significant camber is needed. If we're planing sawn lumber, we don't do the initial work taking off the roughness and most of the thickness on wet riven lumber. 

If you do a significant amount of wet lumber dimensioning, then I'd expect what I observed to be N/A for what you're doing, just as I'd expect the mention of riven lumber for planes to make more sense now (it does - riven is often better than commercial sawing, but not *good* commercial sawing, which is what's in planes. The quality of the sawing done with planes is generally unseen at this point - only Horizon lumber in the US actually does it, despite lots of folks selling beech here and there on ebay - it's not a great idea to make a nice plane from most of that stuff. I've thought about trying to get permission to get some of the beech that falls on township land here, and I'd rive it for a simple reason - just to see how straight it is). 

Context is important, it's the answer to "why does nicholson say this and not that?", and nicholson answers a question for me as I'd changed from having the scrubs to only using a single cambered plane nearly all the time before ever reading it. The lack of information about using a scrub plane (but rather one jack or one set more rank) makes sense because nicholson is talking about cabinetmaking, and this is what 95% of people reading this forum are probably doing. I know of only two people who ever worked entirely by hand professionally, and both also had no use for a scrub, but lots for a jack - both were also using dry lumber and doing cabinetmaking.


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

OMG!

You're trying to jam me into a corner and trying prove me wrong.

I've been studying this shiz for 25 years to MSc level and I practice what I preach, daily. I can fling around a small scrub plane all day long and it's a superbly powerful tool for removing rough uneven surfaces. That's how it was done and historic tool marks will confirm that.

It goes; axe, saw, scrub, jack, jointer / smoother and it has always been like that in England. Your modern North American ways may differ, but that's history like it or not.

The small scrub/fore plane has been around for yonks, ask Follansbee, even though he's so 17th. century.


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

And your comment that sawn timber is better than riven timber for planes is rubbish, as a sawyer will never take as much care as a bodger would over the selection of a stem.

Never.

Ever.


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

I have no idea what a degree has to do with planing. Planing has to do with planing. counting time and results has to do with planing (if it matters - time may not matter to some). 

My point was I asked if you work wet timber, and your response was an answer that just created another question. If you do 99% of your work in dry hardwoods, then you're wasting your time. You may not know it. 

But if you've worked the volume you have, I seriously doubt you'd make that error - that was the point. Something instructive in response would've been "X% is wet wood, riven" or sawn or whatever. Axes don't get much use when lumber preparation is commercial (including commercial 200 years ago), except for oddball items like shoes, or for carvers. The reason being that it's cheaper to pay an experienced sawyer to do the sawing close to size and do the air drying so that you can make things with it rather than processing timber. 

Even in the very early 1800s, Chapin settled (large commercial planemaker) in an area where processors had already sawn and dried (more than a year) an adequate supply of beech. 

If you're operating "before peter's time", then the average person on here taking your advice and applying it to rough K/D hardwoods is going to waste their time on certain things. 

Believe me, I'm looking for context only. It took a long time to get Jacob to drop the info that he only worked mostly by hand many decades ago, but I suspected that was the case. It only takes a couple of hundred board feet to find out what's easiest in the context of what you're doing, especially if you do it sometimes for several hours in a day.


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

Adam W. said:


> And your comment that sawn timber is better than riven timber for planes is rubbish, as a sawyer will never take as much care as a bodger would over the selection of a stem.
> 
> Never.
> 
> Ever.



you see what you want to see. I said horizon's sawn timber is better than most riven timber would be. Horizon's beech billets are also $14 a board foot - what you get is the product of huge amounts of waste sawn to get true QS lumber. Most of the wood you'd find wouldn't be good enough to make their stock (most was felled by a sawyer in southern ohio who specialized in it, but he wasn't able to saw and dry 16/4). We aren't talking about commercial lumber, we're talking about a custom sawyer who gets double open market rate for their specialty sawing - for a reason. 

Again, context is important. When you buy lumber from horizon, they send you pictures of each piece of wood. I've been further down this road than you have (finding wood for planes). Their sawn lumber is at least as anything you'd rive because even the faller has been supplying a professional planemaker here for decades. You'd struggle to find timber good enough to rive to match it. I would, too, and I live where beech trees grow.


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

Who on earth is Horizon ?

You may struggle to find good riven timber and that's about it. If you know where to find it, it's easy to get.

Really, you talk about hand planing, but you're mixing up historic and modern woodworking. If you do modern, then get a planer thicknesser or a festool 4" electric planer and a belt sander and have done with it.

And please don't try to patronise me, I don't like it.


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

I'm not a re-enactor. I make planes. I use planes. I make planes generally with early 1800s aspects because they are the best planes ever made for dried hardwoods (FAS grade in the US) that we get now. 

I also made a mistake after you talked about how much woodworking that you do that you'd flatly give answers that weren't angling for something. 

Horizon is a large custom sawyer here that doesn't just run market grade logs through, they do specialty sawing for higher paying customers. If you're making planes, you would go to someone who starts at the faller, not just a guy riving. You could get good billets riving, but you'd have to be willing to throw away the stuff that starts straight but move seasonally (this isn't furniture, twisting half a hundredth on a try plane with seasonal moisture changes would be a problem). 

If you popped your head up, you'd have some exposure to specialty retailers who sell to luthiers. They generally only sell wood that's both sawn pin straight and that doesn't move in drying. You wouldn't know who Horizon was from England, and all that matters is they'll saw anything as well as you can rive it if you're willing to pay, but they'll do better on timber selection because instead of just getting what was riven, the sawn wood like I pictured in another thread will be a small subset of the stock. Anything less than perfect will be sold for close to market to other customers - they cater to a couple of professional planemakers and their stock that's sold for planemaking reflects that. The faller they used has retired, and unless something changes, there won't be more (they import ideally sawn billets from europe now - not interested - and remove anything that's not pin straight in both directions and sell it for FAS price). 

Could you cull a portion of your riven wood and match it? probably. Would you? no. The fact that the saw is doing most of the work for them allows them to go through far more footage to pull the most ideal stuff. It's not a matter of riving or sawing making better results, it's that they have the efficiency to do it with a saw. You assumed something about commercial lumber without knowing what I was talking about. You asserted rather than checking why it didn't make sense to you. Maybe because I don't have a masters in wood college, you thought I wouldn't know what I was talking about (after all, I just judge the quality on results rather than 16th century ideals). 



There's a little more you might learn from in this picture. In the front is a plane that I made - horizon sawed the billet. On the right in the back is beech that I bought from someone who split and then rough planed the split lumber. It's straight, of course. Fine. The wood isn't that great. The color is poor, the density is less and it just looks kind of common. I guess he saw what people were paying for horizon's sawn lumber and figured it looked like a good opportunity. Thankfully, I didn't buy much from him. It's OK, but once the wood is straight from both sources, other judgement that starts at the log is more important and the person doing the sawing needs to know what planemakers want, not just how to make it straight. 

In this case, the sawn lumber is better. Not because it's sawn, but because it's better.


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

You've obviously not chosen or riven timber to use yourself. Once you have, we'll talk about it.

And, let's face it, telling me to "pop my head up" is a Sh1£ty thing to do, as it make's you look like a fool.


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

I'll end it there, as we're getting too far off the topic of scrub planes.


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

why, did they cover lumber buying when you got your masters? I'll wait for you to show me better beech than I showed you. And, yes, I've riven lumber. It's the only practical way to process a log for someone without a sawmill. I mostly build tools and guitars now and then, but a couple of furniture bits each year. The wood for the two former are in a different dimension, the latter is just common FAS, but from a local sawyer (who has access to bigger trees than I do). Riving more than just a little for play is a waste of time unless you're re-enacting it or making something specific like chairs or baskets.


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

Adam W. said:


> I'll end it there, as we're getting too far off the topic of scrub planes.



interestingly enough, the plane that I showed a picture of is far better for processing rough hardwoods than a scrub plane, and my whole point in the first place was just to get a flat answer out of you as to why that isn't the case. I've stated flatly and accurately what I do - I show pictures of stuff I make. It seems difficult to extract from people what they're doing and why - what is there to be afraid of?

I pointed out your comment on the other plane thread was off the mark because riven or sawn has nothing to do with why the plane shrinks to the iron - grain orientation does. You're lacking familiarity with making planes, I'm lacking familiarity with doing large volumes of working with wet wood. I'm not lacking with experience buying lumber as good as any riven lumber, but I can say for sure I can't find it for FAS market price.


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

You assume too much, and that's your problem.


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

I guess if you can show me the riven fagus grandofolia, rosewood and honduran mahogany that you've got, we'd be on the same page. 

But let's start over - this is fruitless, and I"m hoping to learn things from people. I'd love to know what # of your initial rough work is with wet wood, not for a "HA!" but because someone may actually learn something from it.

I don't much care for large footprint planes on wet wood roughing = wood sole and small plane is nice.


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## Sgian Dubh (30 Apr 2021)

D_W said:


> I totally missed this. I would consider you to be at the bottom of the likelihood scale for woo.
> But I'm sort of past the point that I'd gain much from more literature about wood - i'm sure there's plenty on things that I wouldn't use, but I tend to "mine ore" in specific veins when reading (things that I'll use), and not read too much of the rest.
> My comment above about taunton book writers reminds me of something I heard about T CW.


No biggie on missing my comment. I like to think I don't do much 'woo' when it comes to timber tech, and no doubt there is plenty of information you may not want, need or use.

CW I assume refers to Colonial Williamsburg.

I'm not going to get between you and Adam on the subject of scrub planes, billet selection, or whatever this thread has morphed into. As I said earlier in this thread, if I need to hog a bunch off some rough lumpy stuff, the chances are I'll dig out my hand held power plane rather than my modified old dog of a smoothing plane that's now a sort of half-baked scrub plane: I suspect I have nothing else relevant to say in this thread, ha, ha. Slainte.


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

Sgian Dubh said:


> No biggie on missing my comment. I like to think I don't do much 'woo' when it comes to timber tech, and no doubt there is plenty of information you may not want, need or use.
> 
> CW I assume refers to Colonial Williamsburg.
> 
> I'm not going to get between you and Adam on the subject of scrub planes, billet selection, or whatever this thread has morphed into. As I said earlier in this thread, if I need to hog a bunch off some rough lumpy stuff, the chances are I'll dig out my hand held power plane rather than my modified old dog of a smoothing plane that's now a sort of half-baked scrub plane: I suspect I have nothing else relevant to say in this thread, ha, ha. Slainte.



Richard, you're on good company. You know I think highly of George Wilson - he would say the same. First stationary tools, then power planer and with a nod toward the fact that he did plenty of hand work earlier in life. Like you, his bread and butter work (for him, it's absurd restoration work of 18th century goods, including aging bits of stuff like ivory and gold, or fixing metal bits on period telescopes for the well to do) has nothing to do with hand planing, but also like you, evidence of his work is easy to find.

If I were newer to things with less specificity, I"d buy your wood book in a second. I may still at some point for leisure reading. Sometimes you learn things when you're not expecting to.

(yes, CW is colonial williamsburg - one of the few places subsidizing period work at a high level and keeping their workers in the loop of what's legitimate and what's not).


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

D_W said:


> snip/
> I guess if you can show me the riven fagus grandofolia, rosewood and honduran mahogany that you've got, we'd be on the same page.
> /snip




I can't help but laugh, do you not have any idea of which trees grow where ?


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## paulrbarnard (30 Apr 2021)

Adam W. said:


> You assume too much, and that's your problem.


It would be nice to know who you were replying too to get some context...


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

See the post above that one.


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## paulrbarnard (30 Apr 2021)

Adam W. said:


> See the post above that one.


What post above it? All I see is a string of posts from You.
Oh hang on it must be DW. He is on my ignore list, the only person in fact.


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## Adam W. (30 Apr 2021)

paulrbarnard said:


> What post above it? All I see is a string of posts from You.
> Oh hang on it must be DW. He is on my ignore list, the only person in fact.



Oh!

That must look like I'm shouting at the wind, that's not a good look is it ?


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## paulrbarnard (30 Apr 2021)

Adam W. said:


> Oh!
> 
> That must look like I'm shouting at the wind, that's not a good look is it ?


It did make it look like you were raving


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

Adam W. said:


> I can't help but laugh, do you not have any idea of which trees grow where ?



You do realize that I mentioned that on purpose, right? If you're riving your wood, you may not be particularly familiar with what's on the specialty market. I don't buy much local wood because the stock itself isn't good enough from the start for planes or musical instruments. I don't care for the look of euro beech vs. american, but there's certainly nothing wrong with it (the oft repeated comments about american beech being softer or less dense aren't accurate for the billets I showed - they make a heavier plane than those that I've imported from England).


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## D_W (30 Apr 2021)

paulrbarnard said:


> It did make it look like you were raving



He sure wasn't posting pictures of his work or giving anything other than evasive answers. I see a lot of posturing, but asking for someone to answer questions accurately because it may be helpful to anyone following (not just me) is a bridge too far. 

I don't critique other peoples' work unless someone goes off like Jacob does calling other poeples' work plain or simple or something derogatory and had to follow back through Adam's history to see anything that he's done. None of the riven wood is remotely close to the quality of the sawn wood that I showed, but it's not essential, that's not the question and everything doesn't have to be done with top 1% wood. I'd have tapped at immediately with honest comments answering a genuine question out of curiosity.


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