How Necessary is a Specialised Scrub Plane?

[Jacob]

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?

 

[Adam W.]

The more I push, the brighter it gets.

 

[Adam W.]

After a days planing, it's positively incandescent.

 

[Adam W.]

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.

 

[Droogs]

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

 

[Adam W.]

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.

 

[D_W]

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.

 

[Droogs]

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

 

[Adam W.]

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

 

[Jacob]

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.

 

[Droogs]

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

 

[IainD]

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

 

[D_W]

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?

 

[D_W]

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]

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.

 

[Adam W.]

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]

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".

 

[Adam W.]

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.

 

[D_W]

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]

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!