Old plane ID, advice (again)

[Stew Denton]

Steven

Historically planes were cambered in different ways, depending on what task they were put to.

Jim pointed out that your plane is now cambered to hog off a lot of wood and take think shavings. That task was given to a plane called a scrub plane. Stanley made scrub planes, like the #40, which was rather narrow and about the length of a #4 smoothing plane. It had a great deal of camber, like you put on your plane, and it was designed to take off a lot of wood quickly. It would be used for something like taking a rough cut board and getting the real bumps and divots off and getting it kind of flat. It would, however, leave major "waves" in the surface when it was done, due to the great amount of camber. It was also used to fit the backs of trim boards over rough or not flat surfaces, like base or casing so that they would fit smoothly over really rough surfaces of a poor plaster job when doing house finish carpentry.

The next plane used back in the day was the fore plane, so called because it was used "fore" any other plane was used. (We are talking 200+ years ago in Jolly old England.) It also had a lot of camber but not nearly as much as a scrub plane. It was used to get a piece of rough cut lumber roughly flat and to smooth it somewhat. The fore plane was always used because the lumber would have been rough cut, not the 4S lumber we can buy today. Hopefully the tradesman did not need to use the scrub plane as hopefully the lumber he bought would not be that wildy rough, but he always needed to use the fore plane. Today a jack plane (Stanley #5) or fore plane (Stanley #6) can be used for this task if it is needed. Which ever size plane is used, it needs to have a pretty significant amount of camber in the iron, but not as much as your iron is cambered to.

The next step was the jointer plane. These are the big boys, like todays Stanley #7 or #8 (22" & 24" respectfully.)
Back in the day of the wooden planes jointer planes might be up to 30" long in some cases. These had a moderate camber and were used to get the lumber dead flat and pretty smooth so it was ready for the smoothing plane.

The smoothing plane (Stanley #1 to #4) was used last. It had a tiny bit (a few thousanths of an inch) of camber and was used to take the dead flat lumber from the jointer plane (also called a Try Plane...used to "try" the surface and make it flat) and get it dead smooth and ready to finish.

Christopher Schwarz mentioned in one of his books that when he started out he had only one plane, a #5, and he used it for everything, and he did this by having irons of each of the three main cambers, the fore, jointer, and smoothing varities. When doing fore plane work he put the most heavlied cambered iron in his #5, when jointing work was needed he put in that iron, and finally when that was done he put in the smoothing cambered iron. Would the jack plane do all three jobs as easily and well as having a full set of the three, no, but by being careful and with a lot of practice it could do all three jobs fairly reasonably.

Paul Sellers has a video on Youtube on converting a Stanley #4 into a scrub plane. He also has one on using a scrub plane. However, he sees his current scrub plane as much more than for just hogging off a lot of wood, but also for just taking off moderate amounts to refine a surface just prior to using a smoothing plane, and for other uses as well. He used to view the scrub plane in the classic sense but now I think he views it more like a sort of hybrid, sort of an intermediate use plane, besides being a traditional scrub plane he also seems to use it how I veiw a fore plane.

In addition to to the above, I also use a dead flat iron in a Stanley #5, and use it for tasks like taking a door down the width, where needed to fit it in a jamb correctly, or other jobs where you are not going to go off of the edge of a piece of lumber you are working on and want the object to end up smooth and flat.

That said, to answer your question, you can use your heavily cambered iron in your #5 as a scrub plane, or by exposing a bit less iron, you can use it for a fore plane. Both tasks are very useful and desired.

Stew

[steven c newman]

Stanley had two secondary lines...1205 would have been the Defiance line, the 1105 would have been the Victor line.....colours were about the only differences...then, Stanley dropped both, and the 1205 became the Handyman line.....and things went downhill from there. Victor may have "morphed" into the Tu-Tone line.....

[Steven Mikes]

Thanks Stew! I have a scrub plane already so guess I'll take it back to the grinder and flatten the profile a little more to use as a fore plane.

[Stew Denton]

Steven,

One other thought. I like to follow Steven N's. projects, and he often uses a #5 1/4 as a jointer plane for smaller projects, where you don't need to flatten a real long surface. I may have one eventually for that exact some purpose, after reading about so many of his builds. Until such a time as I have a 5 1/4, I have more than one #5, and I am sure a #5 will also work fine as a jointer plane for small projects just like Steven uses the 5 1/4.

Stew