Alternate blade for scrub plane
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I have attempted to get some use out of my Harbor Freight #4 plane by making it a scrub plane. It did not work at all so I’m thinking about a second blade for my Stanley that I can just swap out for scrubbing.
My question is what should I look for in a replacement blade? Does anyone make a pre-cambered blade that can be dropped in a #4 or do I just need to find a replacement blade and grind it down myself. In that case does anyone have an recommendations on what to get or should I just look for a standard Stanley #4 blade?
Thanks,
Matt NewmanI suppose another option would be to find another Stanley #4 and restore it and turn it into a dedicated scrub plane
I’ve done a scrub plane from a almost unuseful poorly made chinese #5 plane, using a standard two-inch blade from an old Stanley. I’ve followed the Paul’s process, but since I don’t have electric grinder, I’ve done the cambered blade using a electric drill on a portable stand and a electric band sander fixed upwards on a table. I’ve got a good and uniform curve working slowly and carefully. I’ve done the final sharpening with japanese stones (800, 1000 and 6000) and leather strop with aluminum oxide and polishing the unbeveled side to a mirror finish.
Another thing I have had to do is flattening the sole of the plane, since the flatness of the plane was absolutely horrible, unexistent, and assure that the frog was lying on the body of the plane, to avoid many vibrations as possible (this implied some corrections of the supporting points of the frog with file and sand paper).
The plane works very nicely now.
I leave you here some photos of the process.
I had good luck modifying a very inexpensive Buck Bros. #4 plane (from Home Depot in the US for about $35). I didn’t have an electric grinder but using a coarse diamond plate the process of shaping the blade went pretty quickly. My primary #4 plane is a 120 year old Stanley that belonged to my great grandfather and there was no way I was going to modify that into a scrub plane.
The Buck Bros one is pretty rough in build quality (not very precise angles, sloppy paint inside the frog so thing don’t sit flat, etc.) but with a little work it does make a decent scrub plane for taking off material faster than using a regular smoothing plane or jack plane. The throat area is a lot more open to begin with compared to a Stanley plane, so I found I didn’t have to enlarge it for scrub planing. I used it quite a bit while building my workbench and getting laminated top and apron round-over edges of 2×3’s and 2×4’s flat and it saved a lot of time.
I was looking around only auction sites looking for Stanley blades but couldn’t find any good looking blades for less than I spent on my Stanley #4 so I ended up buying another Stanley #4.
For what I mean by good looking I found some really worthless ones like one for $10 that was worn down all the way down to the cap iron screw slot.
I’m going to try a Stanley blade in my HF plane just to see if it improves it (not sure why I haven’t already) and if I can get decent results might just use it as a scrub and save modifying an otherwise nice Stanley. As Brian mentioned with the Buck Bros the HF is pretty wide open throat so it shouldn’t need much in that area and if that works I guess I’ll have to keep an eye out for a replacement blade for my new (old) #4 as a spare.
On the topic of dialing in inexpensive planes I’ve seen new Stanley 12-904 pop up at a fairly good price a few times and wonder how it’d stand up keeping in mind it might take more fettling to get right than a well used old Stanley.
-Matt
Matt,
Can you post a pic of the Harbor Freight Plane? I had an HF plane a while back that I converted to a scrub. It worked great, and I used it until I got my hands on the LV Scrub Plane. Even after that, I found it to be a great coarse/medium tool after the LV Scrub, before a jack plane (I think I had a 5″ radius on it, IIRC). I gave it to my dad a few years back, so I can’t offer a pic. The one I used had the adjustment more like a spokeshave; there were 2 adjustment screws, one on either side of the blade. I did purchase it 7 or 8 years back, so maybe their build quality declined. Even that particular plane would have been useless as a smoother.I agree with the post about following paul’s method. I just finished restoring a #4 that actually even has a crack at the mouth. I can’t tell it in use. It seems more stable than any plane I’ve ever used, after flattening the frog and cleaning up all it’s connection points. No hint of chatter.
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