Wood Scrub Plane - How do I tune?

[Cliff Polubinsky]

Picked up an antique French Scrub plane from ebay for about $17.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a313/cpolubin/French_Scrub_side.jpg
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a313/cpolubin/French_Scrub_bottom.jpg

My question is how do I go about tuning this one up besides sharpening the blade? The bottom is slightly convex side-to-side. Should I flatten it or leave it alone?

Cliff

[Mark Stutz]

Cliff,
In my limited experience, a scrub requires very little tuning. I sharpened the blade on a Tormek, because I couldn't figure out how to do it on a waterstone.:o It doesn't have to be finely honed in my limited experience, though Derek Cohen did in his excellent review.

I doubt the sole needs to be that flat, since you are hogging off material rapidly and rather crudely.

Mark

[Cliff Polubinsky]

Mark,

Do you have a link to Derek's review?

Cliff

[Mark Stutz]

Cliff,
This is a review of the LV scrub, but he talks about the #40 as well as a woodie.

http://www.wkfinetools.com/contrib/dCohen/index.asp

Mark

[Pam Niedermayer]

A scrub should be more convex to hog off more wood in one pass, less convex to take off less. You don't usually need to tune a scrub, exactly, just sharpen the blade.

Pam