I did this and the plane works great. I did have some trouble that added a lot of extra time to get it to work. The lever cap on the Harbour Freight plane I bought did not set flat on the blade and its forward edge was very blunt. I had to do a lot of grinding to get it so the chips didn't get jammed under it. That was just luck of the draw though. If I had paid attention to the lever cap when I was looking at the plane in the store, I would have selected a different plane. Thanks, Stumpy, that was a great suggestion. I really didn't want to mess up a decent smoothing plane to make a scrub. Also, this worked out just right for my budget.
@@E-BikingAdventuresthis plane doesn’t have a moveable frog. The whole plane is one piece cast. It also doesn’t have a chip breaker. It’s like a spokeshave with the blade, lever cap, and two knobs to square the blade and sole. It would be atrocious as a normal plane. This person is saying that the chips are getting jammed under the lever cap because it didn’t fit flat against the blade. The fix can only be to grind the lever cap bottom flat (it comes roughly cast out of the box). Or the blade could be warped too I suppose but that would warrant a return. I don’t have this problem with mine.
I wasn't just skeptical of this, I was pretty much a Satanist about it. I've seen and held HF planes before and they mad me sad, then I laughed, then I was sad again. It went on for a while like that. Anyway, after spending over an hour a few nights ago trying to initially flatten some well-cupped spalted maple with a 4C and a 6C I realized I was running out of superglue to reattach my arms as they kept falling off. I needed to do something different. A friend suggested this video. I stopped by HF on the way home and did the usual cry-laugh-cry-laugh bit. Finally found the least objectionable plane they had and bought it. Rounded the blade on an upside down belt sander, liberally dipping it (the blade, not the sander) in water. Since I was convinced this was going to suck and I'd just wasted $15 I didn't bother with a lot of time sharpening and only went with a rough and then fine diamond plates. I sanded the bottom of the plane not so much to flatten it as to smooth it out the grind was so rough. Threw it all back together, tossed a new board on the sawhorses and... The heavenly host descended and sang arias whilst dancing around my head in ecstasy, the effect being only mildly compromised by their needing to dodge the storm of wood chips the plane was producing. I actually had to call my wife out to the garage to take a video of how well this worked. In fewer than 10 minutes I removed more stock with this than I had in 90 minutes with my other planes, and neither of my arms even got wiggly much less fell off. Color me shocked, impressed, converted. I signed up for your newsletter and eagerly wear the sacrament while waiting to take communion at your service. Now, can you do a video about getting rid of the mosquitoes that are already starting to hatch?
Fun to read your reply.....I recently re-worked a spare blade for one of my Stanley's and went after a slab I was getting close to hauling to the planner mill....if I could find one, that is. One session with the scrub plane and I am close to having a reference face....it is certainly one of those 'Revelation' kinda things
Yeah, this is an interesting "redemption" of Harbor Freight - maybe it's a crap smoothing plane, but it finds greatness as a scrub plane. It's a weird kind of symmetry that I rather like. :-)
I am very happy I found you, another notch in my U-Tube University Belt! Great ideas in this video that I will be replicating. Thank you Renaissance Man.
When I first bought it, it did work at all, the blade was too close to the front edge of the mouth, so I filed it to make the mouth a little bit bigger. Then I sharpened the blade with $1.99 sharpening stone from harbor freight, adjust the position, it worked beautifully. The major downside of this plane is that it takes some time to adjust the blade position. But once you get to the right position and angle, lock it and it will work very very well. Most time I just lock the blade at the right position and don't touch it unless it's off. It works perfectly as a scrub plane. I later bought wood river and Lie Nielson planes but I still use this plane a lot. It has the right weight and fit in your hand. Although it might need some work to adjust it at the beginning, but most other planes also need some tuning. To my options, this is a good plane to buy. As long as the sole is flat, the blade can be adjusted to the right position, it will work very very well.
those were some beautiful Plains you were showing their from the 18 hundreds and 19 hundreds I bought one of those Harbor Freight planes and I don't own a scrub of plane maybe I will give this a try what's 10$ right
@Stumpy Nubs Can you elaborate on the "tool stick-out" from your pattern to get the chosen bevel angle on the blade/iron? Did you use a particular guide, or jig (or Tormek table?), or did you use (gasp) trigonometry?
I just did this as I have a lot of rough sawn cherry to plane 3/16ths off of and I don’t have a planer. I have to say the modern version of the Windsor 33 is a piece of crap in just about every way imaginable. It’s exactly what you’d think a $13 plane would be. But once you prep the blade and sharpen it up it works fantastically as a scrub plane. I have 18 small boards (6x10") to plane and I did two with my jack until I realized this isn’t gonna fly then I got this and did a board so quick I was shocked. 15 more to go. The blade is not good material it’s thin at just over 1/16th or 2mm. It’s soft. I work in a machine shop and have been used to lie Nielsen and wood river blades that are a pain to prep and they need to be really flat out of the box or you’ll go crazy polishing them. Not the case with HF. This thing ground and polished so quick I would assume its edge retention is gonna be garbage. But it works great (I prepped it up to 8000). The handle and knob on mine were loose even when fully tightened to I had to put a rubber washer under the front knob and a piece of carpet tape under the handle to fix that. As a hand plane they pretty much got everything that you could possibly get wrong. But as a $13 scrub plane it’s super effective. Even if it exploded after this one project it would be worth it. Of course, you have to have a way to prep the blade. But then I’ve seen videos of people using sand paper on concrete to make thier scrub blades so maybe it doesn’t even have to be that well done. Just be careful if you use a grinder as the blade is thin so will heat up very quickly. I have a 10" bench grinder with a soft aggressive stone on it and proper cooling fluid (because it’s a machine shop) so it wasn’t an issue. But definitely be careful if you’re doing it at home. If you blue that blade you’re gonna have to go buy another plane and try again. This is gonna save me so much time so thanks for posting this.
Hey - did this with my 33 special and just got tear out on the pine and fur I used. 31deg and shiny sharp. Stropped too. Please give me some tips on whats happening there. Tx!
It’s a scrub plane. You’re probably gonna get tear out who cares. You’re gonna go over it with proper planes afterwords to get it down to exact thickness and those planes will get rid of the torn out material.
Been working out to sell the wife on the FACT that I need a new scrub plane. Given used prices was going to go for a new Lie Nielsen scrub plane. Then saw this. Going to give it a shot first and hope to not have that conversation with her. Thank you!
hiya have been watching your videos for over a year now and as someone new to woodworking really appreciate your channel. With regards to scrub planes.... someone gave me a really long plane (17 inches) which has a curved blade and a curved base. I have been using it as a scrub plane is it? the only thing i have foudn online is saying sthg about this is how scrub planes used to look in the 17th century? Some help with this would be really appreciated .
Before Stanley made their #40 scrub plane, people used their old wood body smoothing planes for scrubs once the soles were worn and the mouths were too wide to effective use for smoothing. These planes were short, 8-10 inches. I have never heard of a 17 inch scrub plane. But that doesn't mean someone couldn't have used it as that. Generally speaking, Americans didn't use scrub planes (they were more common in Europe, especially Germany). Americans used their jack planes with a cambered (curved) iron. Jack planes are longer. So what you likely have is a jack plane that has been used much like a scrub plane to remove a lot of material quickly.
@@StumpyNubs , thanks for the information, its working really well as a scrub plane although it took some getting used to having a curved base, the closest i have seen to it is the Moulson Brothers 15.75" Wood Block Body Round Curved Bottom Base Hand Plane when i googled it.
If the base is curved (convex along the length like a log) then it is meant for planing inside a cove. It was likely a specialty plane made for a specific purpose.
@@StumpyNubs yeah exactly like that, and makes sense came with some straight edges that could be screwed along one length I guess to adjust the cove? Poor thing ending up in my hands and being used to hog out the bow of a board! Thanks so much for the info .
I believe I filed the front edge of the mouth (right in front of the blade's cutting edge) to open it up a bit more so that really thick chips could slip through. That's it.
This video is made up from two short portions of old videos. The first half (where I'm wearing the hat) was part of a longer workbench building video made a couple of years ago. The second part is from one of the very first videos we made, back before HD cameras and microphones. :) Some of the old videos had a lot of information that was missed because they were pretty long, and people rarely watch all of a long video. So about once a month we take a piece of one of those old videos and re-release it as a short, covering only one subject.
I did this. I DON'T recommend it. The HF plane's lever cap and adjustment knobs are so flimsy and wobbly that the iron can come flying out of the plane when you're scrubbing hard. Your thumb knuckle is like a half inch from that iron's edge. Bad idea.
I saw that. In fact, I was going to put up an affiliate link to it on Amazon (if someone uses that link, I get a small fee for sending Amazon the business) But it's $20 on there, and I didn't want people to spend more for it. So I linked to Harbor Freight website instead. Still, at $15 it's a good buy!
I just got a set of the new Bench Dogs planes (a #4 smoother and a block plane for $200). I didn't know what to expect since they aren't a plane company. But these things are REALLY nice. They're more on the level of Wood River from Woodcraft, but less expensive. Not as nice as Veritas or LN, but a lot nicer than Stanley. I'll do a review about them when I can get it on the schedule.
Not sure what this even means but if it’s true you got a defect. Just open the box in store and see if it fits. Or maybe you don’t know how the plane works and didn’t listen the right screws or something.
It’s not a great lifetime solution but for $13 it works great as a scrub for beginners or people who don’t want to spend several hundred on a better plane just to scrub.
I did this and the plane works great. I did have some trouble that added a lot of extra time to get it to work. The lever cap on the Harbour Freight plane I bought did not set flat on the blade and its forward edge was very blunt. I had to do a lot of grinding to get it so the chips didn't get jammed under it. That was just luck of the draw though. If I had paid attention to the lever cap when I was looking at the plane in the store, I would have selected a different plane. Thanks, Stumpy, that was a great suggestion. I really didn't want to mess up a decent smoothing plane to make a scrub. Also, this worked out just right for my budget.
You need to move the frog back a bit and set the chip breaker(if it has one), back more also.
@@E-BikingAdventuresthis plane doesn’t have a moveable frog. The whole plane is one piece cast. It also doesn’t have a chip breaker. It’s like a spokeshave with the blade, lever cap, and two knobs to square the blade and sole. It would be atrocious as a normal plane.
This person is saying that the chips are getting jammed under the lever cap because it didn’t fit flat against the blade. The fix can only be to grind the lever cap bottom flat (it comes roughly cast out of the box). Or the blade could be warped too I suppose but that would warrant a return. I don’t have this problem with mine.
I wasn't just skeptical of this, I was pretty much a Satanist about it. I've seen and held HF planes before and they mad me sad, then I laughed, then I was sad again. It went on for a while like that. Anyway, after spending over an hour a few nights ago trying to initially flatten some well-cupped spalted maple with a 4C and a 6C I realized I was running out of superglue to reattach my arms as they kept falling off. I needed to do something different. A friend suggested this video. I stopped by HF on the way home and did the usual cry-laugh-cry-laugh bit. Finally found the least objectionable plane they had and bought it. Rounded the blade on an upside down belt sander, liberally dipping it (the blade, not the sander) in water. Since I was convinced this was going to suck and I'd just wasted $15 I didn't bother with a lot of time sharpening and only went with a rough and then fine diamond plates. I sanded the bottom of the plane not so much to flatten it as to smooth it out the grind was so rough. Threw it all back together, tossed a new board on the sawhorses and...
The heavenly host descended and sang arias whilst dancing around my head in ecstasy, the effect being only mildly compromised by their needing to dodge the storm of wood chips the plane was producing. I actually had to call my wife out to the garage to take a video of how well this worked. In fewer than 10 minutes I removed more stock with this than I had in 90 minutes with my other planes, and neither of my arms even got wiggly much less fell off.
Color me shocked, impressed, converted. I signed up for your newsletter and eagerly wear the sacrament while waiting to take communion at your service.
Now, can you do a video about getting rid of the mosquitoes that are already starting to hatch?
Fun to read your reply.....I recently re-worked a spare blade for one of my Stanley's and went after a slab I was getting close to hauling to the planner mill....if I could find one, that is. One session with the scrub plane and I am close to having a reference face....it is certainly one of those 'Revelation' kinda things
Yeah, this is an interesting "redemption" of Harbor Freight - maybe it's a crap smoothing plane, but it finds greatness as a scrub plane. It's a weird kind of symmetry that I rather like. :-)
Thank you James. I am not even looking for a scrub plane, but had to watch your stuff. Love it. Thanks again. Do like your flat cap.
It's actually a very useful plane. This is the first plane I have bought.
I am very happy I found you, another notch in my U-Tube University Belt! Great ideas in this video that I will be replicating. Thank you Renaissance Man.
When I first bought it, it did work at all, the blade was too close to the front edge of the mouth, so I filed it to make the mouth a little bit bigger. Then I sharpened the blade with $1.99 sharpening stone from harbor freight, adjust the position, it worked beautifully. The major downside of this plane is that it takes some time to adjust the blade position. But once you get to the right position and angle, lock it and it will work very very well. Most time I just lock the blade at the right position and don't touch it unless it's off. It works perfectly as a scrub plane. I later bought wood river and Lie Nielson planes but I still use this plane a lot. It has the right weight and fit in your hand. Although it might need some work to adjust it at the beginning, but most other planes also need some tuning. To my options, this is a good plane to buy. As long as the sole is flat, the blade can be adjusted to the right position, it will work very very well.
Now I know what to do with the HF planes! They were worthless before.
those were some beautiful Plains you were showing their from the 18 hundreds and 19 hundreds I bought one of those Harbor Freight planes and I don't own a scrub of plane maybe I will give this a try what's 10$ right
I like the sharpening jig. Tormek style ;-)
HF tools are useful for sure
That's an awesome idea. Don't forget that Harbor Freight has an awesome tool replacement policy on almost every tool they carry.
That's great - I'm making one. I used your link - I hope that gets you a little credit of some kind. Thanks for the video!
that sharpening system is amazing!!!
I totally forgot about this video, been a long time since this one aired.
Thanks James. and again a very informative video.
Always great content. Thanks for posting.
@Stumpy Nubs Can you elaborate on the "tool stick-out" from your pattern to get the chosen bevel angle on the blade/iron? Did you use a particular guide, or jig (or Tormek table?), or did you use (gasp) trigonometry?
I just did this as I have a lot of rough sawn cherry to plane 3/16ths off of and I don’t have a planer.
I have to say the modern version of the Windsor 33 is a piece of crap in just about every way imaginable. It’s exactly what you’d think a $13 plane would be. But once you prep the blade and sharpen it up it works fantastically as a scrub plane. I have 18 small boards (6x10") to plane and I did two with my jack until I realized this isn’t gonna fly then I got this and did a board so quick I was shocked. 15 more to go.
The blade is not good material it’s thin at just over 1/16th or 2mm. It’s soft. I work in a machine shop and have been used to lie Nielsen and wood river blades that are a pain to prep and they need to be really flat out of the box or you’ll go crazy polishing them. Not the case with HF. This thing ground and polished so quick I would assume its edge retention is gonna be garbage.
But it works great (I prepped it up to 8000). The handle and knob on mine were loose even when fully tightened to I had to put a rubber washer under the front knob and a piece of carpet tape under the handle to fix that.
As a hand plane they pretty much got everything that you could possibly get wrong. But as a $13 scrub plane it’s super effective. Even if it exploded after this one project it would be worth it.
Of course, you have to have a way to prep the blade. But then I’ve seen videos of people using sand paper on concrete to make thier scrub blades so maybe it doesn’t even have to be that well done. Just be careful if you use a grinder as the blade is thin so will heat up very quickly. I have a 10" bench grinder with a soft aggressive stone on it and proper cooling fluid (because it’s a machine shop) so it wasn’t an issue. But definitely be careful if you’re doing it at home. If you blue that blade you’re gonna have to go buy another plane and try again.
This is gonna save me so much time so thanks for posting this.
This is one of my favorites!
Stumpy can you put the link of the full video of making a scrub plane plz! Ty!!
Great video great content great understanding just just great
Hey - did this with my 33 special and just got tear out on the pine and fur I used. 31deg and shiny sharp. Stropped too. Please give me some tips on whats happening there. Tx!
It’s a scrub plane. You’re probably gonna get tear out who cares. You’re gonna go over it with proper planes afterwords to get it down to exact thickness and those planes will get rid of the torn out material.
hey now, i remember this, best thing i did to my hf plain.
Been working out to sell the wife on the FACT that I need a new scrub plane. Given used prices was going to go for a new Lie Nielsen scrub plane. Then saw this. Going to give it a shot first and hope to not have that conversation with her. Thank you!
You can do this with an old Stanley #4 or #5 as well.
Does the radius of scrub plane increase slightly for wider mouth planes?
Great idea
Great well made video!
Thanks I learned from from your video, awesome
As luck would have it someone gave me a cheap Stanley plane. Guess what I am going to do with it??
hiya have been watching your videos for over a year now and as someone new to woodworking really appreciate your channel. With regards to scrub planes.... someone gave me a really long plane (17 inches) which has a curved blade and a curved base. I have been using it as a scrub plane is it? the only thing i have foudn online is saying sthg about this is how scrub planes used to look in the 17th century? Some help with this would be really appreciated .
Before Stanley made their #40 scrub plane, people used their old wood body smoothing planes for scrubs once the soles were worn and the mouths were too wide to effective use for smoothing. These planes were short, 8-10 inches. I have never heard of a 17 inch scrub plane. But that doesn't mean someone couldn't have used it as that.
Generally speaking, Americans didn't use scrub planes (they were more common in Europe, especially Germany). Americans used their jack planes with a cambered (curved) iron. Jack planes are longer. So what you likely have is a jack plane that has been used much like a scrub plane to remove a lot of material quickly.
@@StumpyNubs , thanks for the information, its working really well as a scrub plane although it took some getting used to having a curved base, the closest i have seen to it is the Moulson Brothers 15.75" Wood Block Body Round Curved Bottom Base Hand Plane when i googled it.
If the base is curved (convex along the length like a log) then it is meant for planing inside a cove. It was likely a specialty plane made for a specific purpose.
@@StumpyNubs yeah exactly like that, and makes sense came with some straight edges that could be screwed along one length I guess to adjust the cove? Poor thing ending up in my hands and being used to hog out the bow of a board! Thanks so much for the info .
I heard scrub plane and images of a 737 came up in my mind.
😂😂😂
thanks for the video
thanks for the videos! subscribed!
Stumpy Nubs did you do anything to the sole of the plane?
I believe I filed the front edge of the mouth (right in front of the blade's cutting edge) to open it up a bit more so that really thick chips could slip through. That's it.
My first impression is that you have to be wealthy to do what you do. That tool wall, holy cow.
I have a no.40 but it broke right at the throat. :(
Forgive me if I sound simple but why does this video seem different than your others of late?
This video is made up from two short portions of old videos. The first half (where I'm wearing the hat) was part of a longer workbench building video made a couple of years ago. The second part is from one of the very first videos we made, back before HD cameras and microphones. :) Some of the old videos had a lot of information that was missed because they were pretty long, and people rarely watch all of a long video. So about once a month we take a piece of one of those old videos and re-release it as a short, covering only one subject.
+Stumpy Nubs (James Hamilton) oh ok. Thanks for the explanation. You made woodworking videos on RUclips great again
It is sort of interesting to see how things have changed in just a few years as far as video and sound quality goes :)
I did this. I DON'T recommend it. The HF plane's lever cap and adjustment knobs are so flimsy and wobbly that the iron can come flying out of the plane when you're scrubbing hard. Your thumb knuckle is like a half inch from that iron's edge. Bad idea.
the plane is up to $14.99 now
I saw that. In fact, I was going to put up an affiliate link to it on Amazon (if someone uses that link, I get a small fee for sending Amazon the business) But it's $20 on there, and I didn't want people to spend more for it. So I linked to Harbor Freight website instead. Still, at $15 it's a good buy!
I just got a set of the new Bench Dogs planes (a #4 smoother and a block plane for $200). I didn't know what to expect since they aren't a plane company. But these things are REALLY nice. They're more on the level of Wood River from Woodcraft, but less expensive. Not as nice as Veritas or LN, but a lot nicer than Stanley. I'll do a review about them when I can get it on the schedule.
Use more coupons!
I just bought one two weeks ago (3/2021) for 13.00 at harbor freight. I can get it to work some, but I have a hard time getting the blade to stay in.
This price came down a bit now, seven years later it’s like $13. As if $20 for a scrub plane would be a bad deal though, right? 😃
I tried this plane and I returned it the same day . Piece of junk couldn't even put the blade in. It didn't fit
Not sure what this even means but if it’s true you got a defect. Just open the box in store and see if it fits. Or maybe you don’t know how the plane works and didn’t listen the right screws or something.
CHEAP TOOLS ARE STILL CHEAP TOOLS, You'll spend more time trying to keep them sharp than using them!
It’s not a great lifetime solution but for $13 it works great as a scrub for beginners or people who don’t want to spend several hundred on a better plane just to scrub.