Scrub Plane - Too specialist?

[Scrit]

Biggest waste of time n money was the hand held electric plane... within 10 mins of using it the air in the shop's so thick with dust that ya canna see what you're doing... abandoning the shop for an hour to let the stuff settle followed by a 2 hour decontamination of the entire shop is hardly an effective use of your time; wearing a mask for that kinda time gets long in a hurry.!! Once that's done, then you need to deal with the tear out the damn things leave behind which can be just as deep as the few passes they've made... frustration happens...

So you hadn't considered attaching the planer to an extractor? Or working outside? That solves the dust problem. Wearing a mask for hours at a time is only necessary if you have rubbish extraction, Mike, so it's something worth sorting out for anyone who uses any sort of machinery. And sorting out extraction gets rid of a lot of the "decontamination" issues. What I don't understand is the tear out problems you had. I just can't see how you got them. I sometimes use a power planer to take-out high spots on warped boards and 3 one millimetre passes is much better than one three millimetre one any day. You also have to change the technique and plane a bit nearer to the direction of the grain - that way with sharp cutters you have minimal tear out, and what there is taken care of on the planer/thicknesser. And in some cases wetting the surface can help with wayward grain, too. Despite what you may think there are techniques to deal with this.

Different strokes for different folks

I suspect its all to easy to be taken advantage of a tad.

My 1 experience buying stick from a yard would keep the likes of Scrit chuckling for a week... you don't have monopoly on being a rookie.. trust me..

If it makes any difference timber buying is the one area even for use trade types where caveat emptor is the watchword (watch term?). Some of the rubbish that some yards try to palm off on you is amazing, and if they don't know you or think that you're an amateur then they regard it as open season....... But there are good yards, too. For example I've never had a bad board off John Boddy, not the cheapest, but their stuff generally has less waste on it so in the long term can work out cheaper for me

Scrit

 

[Alf]

short answer is that if you're serious about using hand planes to do your stock prep then the first essential tool on your list should be a proper scrub plane; trying to get by with a reworked bench plane is just kidding yourself...

Heck, Mike, that'd come as an awful surprise to an awful lot of our woodworking ancestors judging by the number of scrub planes I don't see. :wink: A scrub plane's good fun, but I think Chris Schwarz makes a good case for it really not being the ideal stock prep tool.

Cheers, Alf

 

[GEPPETTO]

Hi guys,
experience is mostly the thing which serve to express any statements 8) hence..
... until few days ago I didn't know what it wanted to say to work with a scrub plane..
I bought an used scrub plane (stanley #40) which is still in the original condition when I bought it - dirty and with the blade with a very slight camber- it's almost straight :shock:
Because I had to end a project quickly I chosen to honing lightly the blade and to use the plane in that way.
Guys, it has been very, very easy to flatten a bowed slab and after flattened the first surface to remove the 10mm of waste on the other side.
Remember the plane wasn't properly tuned.. Over almost two hours I taken a rought slab of beech (100x20x4 cm) I had a squared shelve..
I don't know if that time is few or too much but for me, at the first arms, it is awfully
Surely to have a planner would do to save time but it's so fun and gratifying to work with hand tools (no noise, no dust everywhere, no cyclone with its noise, ecc ecc). Condition which can only be around an amateur who doesn't do business with woodworking. The amateur can't compete vs great industry .

Cheers
Gabriele

 

[MikeW]

short answer is that if you're serious about using hand planes to do your stock prep then the first essential tool on your list should be a proper scrub plane; trying to get by with a reworked bench plane is just kidding yourself...

Heck, Mike, that'd come as an awful surprise to an awful lot of our woodworking ancestors judging by the number of scrub planes I don't see. :wink: A scrub plane's good fun, but I think Chris Schwarz makes a good case for it really not being the ideal stock prep tool.

Cheers, Alf

Heck, I remember catching a little flak over my experiment with converting the junior jack of mine to function as my scrub by a few people

Nomenclature invented and applied to a specific plane made by Stanley aside, scrubbing is a function, not a designated tool. It is in the nature of man to refine and define. This is especially helpful when one is in the business of making and selling things like planes. The fact is, removing excess waste in an efficient manner is what I call scrubbing for communication purposes.

Some people thought my opening the mouth and placing a heavy camber on a plane they thought was too heavy and too long [and for some, too "rare" a plane] near sacrilege. What didn't matter at the time to few but me was the fact it functioned efficiently for the removal of excess wood--for me.

What plane is used is only consequential for the person using it. By its very nature of function, this removal of waste dictates a cambered iron. How cambered directly relates to the amount of waste one can remove with each pass. Too, the mouth needs to be open enough for the waste to efficiently pass through.

To get hung up on an invented term as applied to a particular plane made by Stanley is, well, silly. Just wait until some people find out I have a Sargent made #3 with an opened mouth and a heavily cambered blade I use to remove excess waste in a hurry on smaller boards, in particular, small boards I have been riving from some nice wood previously known by the term, firewood... :wink:

Take care, Mike
who will now leave this thread...

 

[Midnight]

So you hadn't considered attaching the planer to an extractor? Or working outside? That solves the dust problem. Wearing a mask for hours at a time is only necessary if you have rubbish extraction, Mike, so it's something worth sorting out for anyone who uses any sort of machinery. And sorting out extraction gets rid of a lot of the "decontamination" issues.

Been there too Scrit.. HVAC, proper hi flow ducting, shop vac on the portable tools (when the tool's been designed with that in mind)... I've found the hard way that for me (low volume production) the best remed is not to generate any dust in the first place.. best clean up tool after the scrub plane is yer Mk1 hand brush n dust pan.
I've said before that there's multiple levels of benefits for me... dust tends to aggrivate SWMBO's asthema, working with handraulics gives me the cardio vascular workout that the doc is always preaching at me since my heart attack.. it also tickles my warped sense of humour that in an age where Tim Taylor's "MORE POWER" rules supreme, somewhere in deepest dampest Scotlandshire there's a trainee auld fart still clinging onto the old school methods..

I reckon the tear out I encountered is down to poor technique (as you say), figured wood and a cheap n nasty planer.. it's not a tool I like to use so it seldom sees light of day... the port for its dawgie bag has the weirdest shape I've ever seen (parallelogram..??); about as far removed from being compatable with the shop vac as I've seen... whoever designed this puppy was wayyyy more warped than I am..

 

[Midnight]

Heck, Mike, that'd come as an awful surprise to an awful lot of our woodworking ancestors judging by the number of scrub planes I don't see.

With all due ancestoral respect, your arguement makes as much sense as putting the transportation of bulk goods back into the hands of ox drawn wagons.. Times change, tools evolve..progress happens...

but I think Chris Schwarz makes a good case for it really not being the ideal stock prep tool.

I dare say Mr Black is right (who is he anyway??).. but until such times as the tecnhotweakers come up with a stock prep tool that will pass over a rough sawn board, transmographying it into a finish smoothed stick in one pass, can be bought without selling your soul to the devil and will run on recycled kitchen waste, I reckon I'll stick with my #40 1/2.. far from ideal it may be, but it kicks enough azz to suit my needs and does it pretty efficiently too..

 

[mr]

Chris Schwarz concept of a scrub as a ripping plane is certainly interesting. He may weigh in at some point with more info (?) But it does seem odd that as far as I can tell the european way is wooden and over't pond not. Hmm thats an unfocused thought If I ever saw one.

 

[MikeW]

But it does seem odd that as far as I can tell the european way is wooden and over't pond not. Hmm thats an unfocused thought If I ever saw one.

Different and changing/divergent traditions is all. Well, not all.

Stanley began a marketing campaign which changed the way tools such as planes were distributed. The word "Pervasive" comes to mind when looking through catalogs of retailers from hardware stores: Stanley tools were available everywhere. As well, Stanley was successful in communicating the idea that cast iron was better than wood for planes.

Take care, Mike

 

[Alf]

Heck, I remember catching a little flak over my experiment with converting the junior jack of mine to function as my scrub by a few people

Some people thought my opening the mouth and placing a heavy camber on a plane they thought was too heavy and too long [and for some, too "rare" a plane] near sacrilege.

And there's why. Mike, you gotta remember what's not so rare in the US is like hen's teeth over here.

Mike (ye of Midnightness) I'm not advocating powered means - I'm suggesting using a longer plane with slightly less camber might potentially cut down the scrub time. It also seems that ye olde craftsmen of yore here in Blighty thought so too, and used their wooden jacks for the task long after the 'Murricans had embraced more powered means.

Ach, I can't really get into this properly - my connection's been dropping off every 5 seconds in the last few days, so I'm just trying to catch a window of opportunity here! ](*,)

Cheers, Alf

 

[Midnight]

I'm suggesting using a longer plane with slightly less camber might potentially cut down the scrub time.

OK... not to be argumentative here, but you're gonna need to explain that one back to me because it runs totally contrary to my prior experience with every alternative I could get my hands on... Prior to buying the #40 1/2 my prep time for shaping the board was measured in double digit hours... with the scrub and despite the dicky ticker that time's reduced by an order of magnitude... I can kid myself into believeing some things, but thinking that adding days to a project is some benefit isn't one of em..

alternatives tried were #5 with a straight blade, curved blade, heavily curved blade and similarly with the #62... tried the #62's toothing blade too... lets not go there shall we...?

 

[Alf]

Sorry, Mike, I knew I shouldn't have posted with one eye on the little green light. #-o

I think what I was trying to say was a longer plane with slightly less camber might cut down on the flattening time. This is the longer jack would start on the flattening task while also creating hollows needing less work to level off. But that presupposes one is using a scrub as a scrub, and not doing a Cosman of lightening up the scrub's cut and using it as a sort of short-ar, erm, "posterior" jack. I suppose the question I ask myself is exactly how often do we need the extreme stock removal of a scrub on the face of sawn boards and are we potentially making more work for ourselves than we need?

As for the jack issue being no good to you, did you try a wooden jack? This kinda goes back to t'other Mike's point too - is it not unreasonable to say there's some difference between pushing round 15" of cast or ductile arn and 15" of best Beech? 'Course this is all strictly theory as far as I'm concerned; I don't hand prep boards as a matter of course like wot you do, but despite that it might have some merit. Of course if you did try a wooden jack too then the point is virtually blown out of the water... 8-[

Cheers, Alf

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

I suppose the question I ask myself is exactly how often do we need the extreme stock removal of a scrub on the face of sawn boards and are we potentially making more work for ourselves than we need?

Hi Alf

One of the reasons I have a few scrub planes is that they perform different tasks. One of these is indeed the removal of large amounts of wood since the boards I often use are rough sawn and/or seriously hard wood. It is just too hard to use a blade with a moderate camber in this situation. On the other hand, there are as many times that I am removing just a little - perhaps flattening a cupped board - and I want less blade projection. One of the features I would really like to see in a scrub plane is screwed blade adjustment.

is it not unreasonable to say there's some difference between pushing round 15" of cast or ductile arn and 15" of best Beech?

It is not just the length of the scrub plane that is important for me. It is the weight of the plane. For hard woods I much prefer a heavy plane, one that gains momentum as you plough furrows. I often turn to a Stanley #5 1/2 with a seriously cambered blade (still the thin Stanley iron - I am planning to replace one with an old Mathieson tapered iron. This should still allow me to use the blade adjustment). So 15" of light plane is not going to mean as much to me as 15" of cast iron in this context. For moderate lengths and moderate density of wood, the LV Scrub is ideal. For soft woods the situation is different and I am happy to use a lighter scrub plane, such as the Stanley #40 or even a retreaded #3.

I am sure all of the above is a broken record to most.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[Midnight]

I suppose the question I ask myself is exactly how often do we need the extreme stock removal of a scrub on the face of sawn boards and are we potentially making more work for ourselves than we need?

OK.. had just about enough coffee inside me to see what you're getting at.. seems to be a degree of kerfuffledness going on here; I'll try to clarify...

Right now I've a slab (first of 3 for this project) of rippled sycamore on the bench, roughly 23" wide, bark on both outer edges, beautiful grain (that's as 'ard as iron btw) but being in the rough, has some serious lumps n bumps to it, not to mention some rather crusty muck embedded in the surface thanks to a years worth of air drying.

Reaching for the scrub to tackle this is a no brainer; best tool for what I'm trying to do i.e. flatten the worst of the lumpy bits, cut through the crusty bits and get some shape into the board. The last thing on my mind at this stage is trying to flatten the thing; it's far too early for that, I'm simply removing the worst of the high spots to get to the stage where a jack has a fighting chance of taking a full width (working across the board) shaving.

When I reach that point, the work of the scrub is done, the board's reasonably flat, out of twist and free of surface muck that could chip the blades of subsequent planes. Then, and only then will I reach for my #5 1/2 (after a lay down inside an oxygen tent), set to take as agressive a cut as my wrists can handle, furrows for the removal of. Technique from there on in has already been discussed elsewhere...

My point about the scrub wiping the floor with jack planes is that it's simply far more capable of taking those initial heavy cuts.. it's what it's been designed to do and does it with awesome efficiency... like I said earlier, it's use has taken hours out of my board prep time...

 

[Philly]

I think you got it covered there, Mike. I recently watched Chris Schwarz DVD "Coarse, Medium, Fine" and he put accross the point that you should work with the coarse tool as long as possible before moving to a finer tool. That way the job moves along quicker and you don't waste time taking swipes with your smoother on a board that still needs plenty of stock removing.
Hope this helps
Philly

 

[Alf]

Right now I've a slab (first of 3 for this project) of rippled sycamore on the bench, roughly 23" wide

Lucky barsteward... :evil: :lol:

Without seeing the board in question, it's a not really forwarding the argument much. But I take it you haven't use a wooden jack at any rate? So my theory can still fly - Australia doesn't count, Derek, 'cos you blokes appear to go round planing steel and concrete trees as far as I can make out... :lol:

Cheers, Alf

 

[Midnight]

But I take it you haven't use a wooden jack at any rate? So my theory can still fly

when I've tried the same body length, same blade profiles and played around with all kinds of depth of cut, the only difference I haven't tried is the material the body's made from... Experience tells me I've hit the right combination of tools, sequencing and technique to have pretty much cracked it... what I have works well, reliably and repeatedly irrespective of the board on the bench...

As for your wooddy flying... sure.. I guess it could... bolt on wings big enough and strap on enough engine and it'd fly.. pity help the poor sod that's downrange of it tho... it's flight characteristics may well prove to be lesss than ideal...

 

[Anonymous]

Backing up Midnight here. Everyone seems to have found their ideal way of removing wood. Like Mike, I have found the quickest way for me is with a metal scrub when I need to do some serious wood removal (and 10mm is no real challenge at all to a good scrub). A coarse jack is an excellent tool as well and I use one even more often than a scrub but they are distinctly different tools.

 

[Mirboo]

Australia doesn't count, Derek, 'cos you blokes appear to go round planing steel and concrete trees as far as I can make out...

No, they're called eucalypts. :wink:

And now perhaps I should introduce myself. Hi, my name is Ian and I am from Sydney Australia. I have been lurking on this forum for a little while and finally decided to sign up. Hopefully any future posts I make will be a little more constructive than this one. It's just that I couldn't resist commenting on Alf's post relating to Australian trees.

 

[bugbear]

A coarse jack is an excellent tool as well and I use one even more often than a scrub but they are distinctly different tools.

Different, yes, but I'd argue they're 2 points on a spectrum.

More points on the spectrum;

Alf has a particularly coarse jack, and I have a modified jack that I'd probably feel justified in calling a scrub.

It's more scrub than jack, certainly.

I have a Record #5 whose sole is flat to 0.5 thou, and who's blade is sharpened straight across, and normally set for 2 thou shavings. Apparently that's a jack too

BugBear

 

[Philly]

Welcome to the forum, Ian!
Philly