No 2 as a scrub plane

[Sheffield Tony]

Secret Santa (aka SteveF !) brought me one of those planes I've been looking at for a while, marked only "Made in England" and "No 2", and looking to my eye at least a vaguely similar size as a Stanley #40.

My SS plane arrived with the clear instruction "Fettle me" me written on the sole, and it certainly needed it. Aside from the wobbly handle, the mouth was rough cast, and not perpendicular to the sides of the plane. Easy enough to file, but more bother was the pin against which the cutter clamps; this was skewed, with the holes in the casting misaligned by about 1.5mm. I thought about welding up and re-drilling one of the holes and quickly thought better of it. Instead I removed the pin, found a slightly thicker bit of rod, and enlarged the holes to suit with a needle file, adjusting one mostly fore and the other aft, so that the new pin sits square.

Before regrinding the blade to a camber, I thought I'd give it a go as is. When sharpened, it left a surprisingly good finish on some oak I had to hand. The main difficulty was setting it for a fine cut - the clamping screw tended to move the iron laterally when done up - a bit of work with a file to make the end of the screw more pointy helped a lot.

I ground the blade by eye to about a 6" radius, sharpened it using the natural oilstone that also came in the SS package (it appears to be a slate of sorts, and flattened/cleaned up quite nicely thanks !).

Gave it a go on a scrap of elm. Seems to work. The mouth is quite wide after tidying it up; offering up a piece of 1/8" O1 in place of the 2mm original iron,, it looks like it would fit nicely, when I get around to it.

Thanks again to SteveF - a bit of "Shed therapy" over christmas was just what was required !

 

[SteveF]

hi Tony

it looks like that could be a user
the gift was a bit of fun, after you had previously mentioned it
I was expecting that, as is of many xmas prezzies, it would be "put to one side"

that is quite a curve u put on that blade

the plane was a total rust bucket and already had many hours spent on it before dispatch

I am in total awe of members of this forum ....who strive to revive old equipment

pleased u had a "toy" to play with

Steve

 

[condeesteso]

Always nice to see an old plane back to life. I have an old woodie block that was converted to a scrub (before I got it) - amazingly useful. In fact I prefer smaller scrubs now. I don't see much benefit in long soles as the first removal is fast and rough - a decent eye, stick of chalk and maybe some wind sticks if you want to be posh gets you close enough. And the small ones are far easier to use. I use mine on drawer base undersideas as a matter of course now - C of L, sliced thin on bsaw. The scrub marks left behind say 'hand-made' Not many machines can do that kind of thing.
I bet you'll use that more than you expected.

 

[bugbear]

Alf (late of this Parish) did this:

http://cornishworkshop.blogspot.co.uk/2 ... scrap.html

I can tell you the (probable) brand of the donor:

post488294.html?hilit=whitmore#p488294

BugBear

 

[Paul Chapman]

Alf (late of this Parish) did this:

http://cornishworkshop.blogspot.co.uk/2 ... scrap.html

I bought that plane from Alf. Here it is alongside a #5 1/2 and a #7



I used to use it a lot until I bought a Veritas scrub. Works very well as a scrub plane, being just about the right size.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[Cheshirechappie]

I wonder if the thicker iron is really needed in this instance? The main reason for a thicker iron is more stiffness, contributing to a better finish by avoiding chatter and the like. When scrubbing, the last thing you're bothered about is finish, and since most scrubbing happens across the grain which puts less load on the iron anyway, there's no real benefit from a thicker iron. Also, by way of a bonus, the extra mouth width using the thinner iron allows better shaving clearance.

Provided the existing iron is performing OK, I'd be tempted to leave as is in this case, changing to a thicker iron only if edge life is ridiculously short.

 

[GazPal]

IMHO a thicker iron isn't vital for an improvised scrub plane, but I'd tend to err on the side of experimenting with varying degrees of radii before heading the beefier iron and more extensive plane fettling route. A 200-250mm radius tends to work well for me.