Scrub Plane

  

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those 

Norman Maclean

I watched (or rather rewatched) A River Runs Through It last nite. I am always reminded what a wonderful story that is. My people my ancestors came to Northern Maine because of rivers. They came to Allagash and settled at the confluence of the Allagash and St John rivers to log and drive logs to the paper mills and lumber mills. It was a hard life and the men my ancestors were as tough as their peavey handles. That movie reminds me of that. Even to this day you live upstream or downstream from someone else. Not north or south. Upstream or downstream.  

In the process of moving downstate from Presque Isle to Portland and then back to Presque Isle (another town formed by rivers) I misplaced my scrub plane. I decided to build a new one. Seemed a pretty forgiving plane to build as it is a small step above a hatchet for refinement of cut. 

      I found some plans on line to give a rough idea but didn't follow them too closely. I used the wrong woods (birch for the sole, white ash for the cheeks) from a couple old pieces of firewood and a piece of maple for the tote.  The handle I traced off the Lie-Nielsen jack plane seen here. The front tote I just guessed. Both handles are tenoned into the body which seems solid. 

     Here you can see the curve of the Lie-Nielsen blade and the different woods. 

    The wedge assembly was a little tricky but not ridiculous.  I turned the wedge post and fitted it loosely so it could rotate if need be.  I also planed a small flat on the post; thinking it would better engage the wedge but this was probably overthinking it. The wedge is ash, roughly cut on the bandsaw. I left the saw marks... this is a working tool.

Below you can see the result. I flatten my chair seats a couple different ways. One way involves flattening one face with a scrub plane and winding sticks then marking the correct thickness and planing to that line. 

     The other method involves running a face flat on my jointer which leaves a large step (my jointer is 8" and I typically use 2x10 pine). I then scrub plane off the step and use my surface planer to bring it to final thickness.  I don't think one method is better or worse just depends on my mood and time constraints. 

It is easy to romanticize handplaning over machines. It is equally easy to romanticize the past too. The river still flows but they don't drive logs on them anymore. I'm still glad though that people still use upstream and downstream to delineate our place on earth.