Scrub plane suggestions

[Dale Cruea]

I am planing soft curly maple.
I have quite a bit of stock to remove. Around 3/8".

I have a #5 Stanley Bailey with a chambered iron I have been using for a scrub plane.
This plane gives me some really deep tear out on this maple.

Any suggestions on how to set it up so it will not tear out so bad.

[Chris Griggs]

This may be lousy advice but I tend not to worry about tearout at that level of roughness. If its really bad I'll just leave a little more than I normally before switching to try/jointer plane to bring it down to final thickness with less tearout. I'm also going to beat David Weaver to the punch here :) and say that if your still getting bad tear out at the jointer plane level it may pay to set the cap iron very close. That way you can still take reasonably thick shaving with your jointer and reduce your tearout. YMMV

[Chris Griggs]

Also, this may be pretty obvious but make sure you pay attention to grain direction. Even when traversing the grain at an angle I find it helps to be planing in the correct direction. For some reason when I plane maple I always start off planing it the wrong way. Its always running in the opposite direction that it looks to me when I read the grain, and its not until I actually try planing it in both directions that I determine the which way I should plane.

[Chris Griggs]

Okay 1 more thing. 3/8ths is A LOT of material to remove. Really what I would do in that situation is get the lumber yard to thickness the wood for me before I bring it home. Seriously... unless I'm working a really small piece, I try to avoid having to remove that much material by hand at all costs!

I once bought a bunch of 5/4 cherry for a set of small boxes I was making (the only commission I've ever had) with the thought that I would get a bigger profit if I re sawed the wood and then planed it down to its final 3/8 thickness. That was a huge mistake, it was not at all fun and what I lost in time far exceed what the extra material expenditure would have been.

[David Posey]

Are you going with the grain or across it? If you're trying to go directly across it, chamfer the far edge of the board. I usually don't use that approach myself, but go at about a 45 degree angle to the grain. As Chris mentioned, it still helps to be going in the right direction when traversing the grain.

How heavy is the camber on the iron? I have a slight camber on my regular jack, but one that's probably about a 4-5 inch radius on my woodie jack that I use when I have to take off a lot of material. The regular jack is a pain to use on harder woods when going diagonally, but the woodie will just plow through it. Part of the reason for this is I don't have it set up so that the full width of the iron is sticking out of the bottom of the plane.

Also, this is obvious, but is your iron sharp? I know I don't pay nearly as much attention to the sharpness of the iron in my jack as I do the ones in my jointer and smoother. I pulled it out the other day after plaining some really hard oak and could see that it needed sharpening even in dim light.

You might try working with moving the chipbreaker closer on your jack. I would try putting it about as far from the edge as the thickness of the shaving I was trying to take, and see if that helped any with tearout. I know this works on smoothers, so in theory it might help here. I've never had a reason to try this though. Usually going diagonally across the grain gets me close enough with light enough tearout that the other planes will clean it up.

[David Weaver]

This may be lousy advice but I tend not to worry about tearout at that level of roughness. If its really bad I'll just leave a little more than I normally before switching to try/jointer plane to bring it down to final thickness with less tearout. I'm also going to beat David Weaver to the punch here :) and say that if your still getting bad tear out at the jointer plane level it may pay to set the cap iron very close. That way you can still take reasonably thick shaving with your jointer and reduce your tearout. YMMV

Sounds good to me!

For scrubbing where you're not going to have a cap iron, I do like has been said here - try to avoid going directly against the grain, either go with it or across it.

(I don't actually use a scrub plane, it's unusual that I would have a board that out of flat that I'd need one. I start with a jack, or a step finer than that if I have a really nice flat board).

The cap iron on the jack is probably helpful, but you'll still get some tearout if you're trying to uniformly remove thickness, it usually looks worse than it is.

It's at the fore and jointer level that it really pays off with letting you take a heavy shaving without worrying about overshooting thickness mark.

But to the original question, go with or directly across the grain (protect the other side of the board from blowout first if you're taking a really heavy cut), and maybe lighten up the cut and let the cap iron in closer to the edge if you have to take a lighter cut (thinking of curly maple, which will sometimes have some bizarre tearout depending on which way the grain goes).

[steven c newman]

My little Scrub Plane;241108241109 It has a 3" radius for the cambered iron, no chip breaker, but a thicker than usual iron, and a wide mouth. Harbour Freight's little #33, turned into a Stanley #40 clone, for $9 + tax. First pictures shows the way I was using it to scrub down some nasty looking Beech. I went just about straight across. I then followed up with the "long irons" to get things flat and smooth. 241110241111Waiting on a smoother or two...

[Chris Griggs]

Sounds good to me!


Well of course it sounds good to you... most the advice I give I probably got from you at some point in time.....(I say only half jokingly)

Actually, I said it might be lousy because when I first started writing I was just going to say "it doesn't matter at that level" which while that may be true doesn't actually give the OP any concrete actions.

I ended up thinking of some concrete actions so I take back what I said... my advice is not lousy... it's fantastic :D.... or well its something to try anyway....

Dave or whoever else.... I'm curious if anyone has seen any benefit to setting the cap iron closeish on heavy jack plane cuts. It's not something I've really bothered with at that level, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone has found it to be objectively useful for rough work. For the most part I only use a closely setcap iron on my smoother, and only sometimes on my jointer if I'm having problems - again, haven't bothered with my jacks....

[Don Jarvie]

I did the same thing converting a Fulton Jack into a scrub. I put the blade on a grinder and then flattened the back. It's sharp enough off the grinder. I then set the blade about 1/8 to 3/16 and go 45 across one way the other way. It does a great job of taking off a lot of wood. Don't worry about tearout since you will hit it with a jack or smoother to get it flat. If you dabble with power you can run it through the planer and size it.

[David Weaver]

I'm sure setting the cap iron closer on a jack would be of some benefit, but I don't know if it matters that much since you'll always gravitate toward planing something that heavy down the grain or across the grain. I also don't know if it was actually busting a chip if there wouldn't be so much resistance such that it would outweigh the benefit.

Even if someone intentionally tried to do woodworking without thinking, they'd probably jack with a single iron pretty well just because it's easier to plane that way.

I like the cap iron on a jointer or panel plane on panels because you can just run an X pattern (from one side of the bench) with a heavy shaving, then a couple of through strokes and not have to check for wind or flatness, and only follow it up with a couple of smoother passes.