Scrub Plane Setup

[Brendon_t]

43 minutes ago, C Shaffer said:

All he is saying is you are calling a scrub what is typically written of as an aggressive jack and used more like a foreplane.

 

C, I'm sure you're right on all points and the fact that I can't tell you the difference between a jack and foreplane makes me realize I'm severely unqualified for this discussion. 

To me, a scrub was a plane with wide mouth and cambered blade used for aggressive stock removal. 

That is what I would call the 5c. Ignorance at its best. 

 

[Tom King]

Here are some pictures of my Scrub Plane.  It's been used for scrubbing dirty old boards, and beams, before putting a good iron in the wood.  In spite of new uses stated for a scrub plane, I'm pretty sure this is what one is intended for.  With a Jack plane on clean wood, there really is not a good need for a Scrub plane.  Otherwise, why would anyone have ever started calling it a "scrub" plane.  It's an ECE that I bought new something like 40 years ago.  Weathering is from sweat, and that's not a shadow in front of the iron.  It'll throw shavings three feet straight up even after the iron dulls.  They are still sold, and I believe even LV sells them.  If this one split down the middle, or had some other catastrophic failure, I'd buy another one jus like it.

[Tpt life]

13 minutes ago, Brendon_t said:

C, I'm sure you're right on all points and the fact that I can't tell you the difference between a jack and foreplane makes me realize I'm severely unqualified for this discussion. 

To me, a scrub was a plane with wide mouth and cambered blade used for aggressive stock removal. 

That is what I would call the 5c. Ignorance at its best. 

 

I don't think you are wrong. I think I am as guilty as the next guy of turning a smoother into a "scrub" when that is like calling an El Camino a truck. 

[Brendon_t]

Just now, C Shaffer said:

I don't think you are wrong. I think I Ana's guilty as the next guy of turning a smoother into a "scrub" when that is like calling an El Camino a truck. 

But but but... it has a bed. ..

[Tpt life]

Tom, I grew up with that thought in mind but don't read it that way as I read. I grew up with scrub being a plane with a wide open mouth so you could run down a grain ridge on a split chunk or board. As I read, the jack or fore get plenty aggressive just by working across grain rather than with it. This makes the edge trimming with a scrub make more sense. In a blended flow, I think we use a jack like a scrub before power jointing and planing. It's simply a different work flow leading to a change in the usage of terms. Does this make sense or am I way off?

[Marcel.F]

For $149.00 cnd here's what Lee Valey has to say. http://www.leevalley.com/en/Wood/page.aspx?p=51871&cat=1,41182

Quote: "The scrub plane is the tool of choice for major stock removal, the first step when flattening rough stock by hand. Much like a low-angle smooth plane, a scrub is not usually used parallel to the grain, but at an angle of 30° or more. The blade edge is ground with a 3" radius, so that it takes an aggressive cut. This is the tool you use to get stock into a condition where you then can use a smooth plane. The curved cutting edge of the 1-1/2" wide by 3/16" thick blade gives a distinctive, hand-worked texture to the workpiece. It is sometimes used by timber framers to replicate gouge marks

This is a single-iron tool, meaning there is no cap iron or chip breaker. Set screws along the side prevent the blade from shifting sideways when knots are encountered" end quote

Marcel---

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Tom King]

I think that must be a joke about getting wood ready for a smoothing plane.

I have a good story about an El Camino.  When I was 9 or 10, my Dad showed up one day with a new red and white 1959 El Camino.  In the back was a go-kart he'd bought for me.  I had been wanting a go-kart, and had decided on one with a Briggs&Stratton engine.  The one he brought home was a racing one with two West Bend 2-strokes.  I have many good stories about that go-kart.  It would fly!!

[Marcel.F]

Tom, if I recall, it's also explained in the same manner in Lost Art Presses "The Art of Joinery" by Joseph Moxen.

Marcel---

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Immortan D]

According to Schwarz, the original use of the scrub plane was for “planing down to a rough dimension any board that is too wide to conveniently rip with a hand saw….” That means it was originally a ripping plane. And he also says it's pretty good at that task, faster than a saw (when removing 1/4" or so). Interesting, isn't it?

Full article: http://www.wkfinetools.com/contrib/cSchwarz/scrubPlanes/scrubPlanes1.asp

[Brendon_t]

9 minutes ago, Immortan D said:

According to Schwarz, the original use of the scrub plane was for “planing down to a rough dimension any board that is too wide to conveniently rip with a hand saw….” That means it was originally a ripping plane. And he also says it's pretty good at that task, faster than a saw. Interesting, isn't it?

Full article: http://www.wkfinetools.com/contrib/cSchwarz/scrubPlanes/scrubPlanes1.asp

What the hell does he know anyway? 

 

Haha a ripping plane

[Tom King]

It makes sense when I think about it.  I remember reading about Joiner's shops buying "clapboards" for particular projects.  I expect others pit sawed their own boards out of beams, but in either case, clean boards would have been what they were working on to start with.

I used a lot of recycled beams in houses I built.  I remember buying 12x12x24's of Heart Pine for $15 each out of a railroad station. We have a number of 6x8 ceiling beams in our house that came out of some of those beams.  They would have old paint on them, and even dirt from laying in the salvage yard.  I had a Powermatic planer with a knife grinding attachment.  To start with, I tried running them through the planer thinking I would just trash a set of knives and keep regrinding them.  Of course, that didn't work, so that's when I bought the Scrub plane.

I've never used it on anything other than to clean something up with it, and never really thought about what use one would have other than that.  It works like a charm for that.  I'd use it if an edge of a board needed cleaning, but after that, if it needs a little bit off one edge, it'll get run over a jointer, or through the table saw.

A no.5 removes wood faster for knocking down a high corner, so I've never used the Scrub for coarse flattening.

A tip of the hat to hobbyists who buy one to take a little off an edge when it's faster than using a rip handsaw.  I would have at least two other planes on a piece between the Scrub and a Smoothing plane.

edited to add:  I also bought a nice 6' cast iron claw foot bathtub for $15 from the same guy, and all the Heart Pine roof sheathing off that railroad station for $200.  The sheathing is flooring in our house, and another one I built and sold back then.  I think it was 1978 when I bought that stuff, and built our house in '79 into '80.  That bathtub is still in our house too.

[Tpt life]

So Tom, this is is right up your alley. I used the scrub last summer to even the bottom of cedar fascia that some other guy had improperly installed. No way I was sawing that length of run when about 3/8" needed to be taken off 50'. The other place I have used it was to even deck joists before laying the deck. I would have used a power plane, but that was on the contractors job trailer at another site. The scrub was in my car. Hardly traditional usage, but light weight and easy cutting.