Thread: Going hand tools.

I advise not to sell off your power tools until you are comfortable with the hand tool equivalent. I use hand tools a lot, but I like my drill press and my table saw which I wouldn't do without. I have a jointer and a big thicknesses that I don't use that often except on special occasions.
Instead of purchasing and selling on a large scale, I'd focus on thinking carefully on what kind of hand tools you really need and just purchase a small inventory of hand tools to start off with. Start using them and see what you think of them. Learn to work with a minimal setup is a joy on its own and gradually you will get rid of those that you no longer need.

Hi B. One power tool I use less and less in my work shop is my sliding comppund mitre saw. Cutting timber to length by hand is quick and a good chance to practice accuracy. Even for simple tasks, I have been striking a line across the face and down both edges and cutting to them. Each time I do this I am training my muscle memory and it seems to be working

Originally Posted by Mountain Ash

One power tool I use less and less in my work shop is my sliding comppund mitre saw.

I'm with you, MA, though I still use my SCM saw quite a bit since my sawing skill still leaves a lot to be desired. But in time, and with a shooting board (which remains on the to-do-list), am hoping that it will be retired so that I can reclaim the much-needed space. With the dust collecting staton it's currently sitting on, the SCM is hogging so much floor space.

I feel like I'm about to order a beer during a bar brawl... Getting in between you lads might be unwise but here goes....


When I moved, I had a huge huge huge think about what my wooodworking "future" was to be.

I started as a silly little hobby 10 years ago and quickly built a business pumping out masses of commission work. It was so easy it was stupid. But, it was all straight, easy work (not physically, but the manufacturing).

I had to give all that up due to a forced and unplanned/untimed move. Clients were disappointed, bigly.


BUT at a time I thought to give it up completely, I realised the "why" I started.... I liked the sound of it. The sound of a chisel, a plane, a saw.


My personal problem is I saw the machines as a means to the job. They kept getting bigger. And noisier. And Dustier. And more expensive. And specialised. (apologies to the English language there). Each job seemed to bring in another damned machine, tool or bit.

I put most of my tools into two decent sized storage sheds. Have to admit, I haven't missed them much. The noise and the dust was making me crazy.


Now, I use an array of simple electron-tools and high-quality second hand hand tools (thanks fellow forumites!)

I've settled on:

-- A Parf desktop (nice and big, can be put away)
-- Festool router (never used), circular saw, track and a bunch of dogs/holddowns
-- Veritas hand tools galore
-- Simple clamping system (using wedges on the parf. Its magic!)
-- Mirka Ceros ROS sander (looooooove it)
-- The Festool dust extractor
-- Building a basic workbench and bench-top mini-bench


I'm as happy as Larry.

No longer do I need to fight the dust or the noise. I'm enjoying the work more.

Tearouts are a constant PITA with hand planing, but that's because I'm a hack. The accuracy I used to get with the table saw, Incra sliders and the under-table router table were unbeatable and I missthat for boxes.... but by hand I feel they have much more soul.


IF I had the space I'd definitely bring the bandsaw and thickness sander out of storage. Those two tools are essential for ripping things down. I miss not being able to make veneers and boxes. The BS and TS was brilliant at that.

As for boards, I can rip everything using the Parf table, festool tracksaw and taking my time.

On an aside, I llllllooooovvvveeeee my new Veritas scrub plane. Absolutely love it. I have the Lie Nielsen too, but the handle is too small for my hands. I absolutely love the way I sweat up a storm using it. Its hard work. I thicknessed down a whole bunch of Oak two weeks ago and I felt it for days. I must have lost 2kg in sweat alone, but I felt excellent. My shoulders and back punished me in evil ways.


Its far too easy to spend money on stuff. I'm a horder and love stuff. Especially shiny stuff.

I'm 51 and unfit

Tearout shouldn't be a problem hand planing except in rough work for the worst of woods - dealing with that is something that you get used to pretty quickly, but getting past it is pretty critical.

The difference in working with hand tools in the long run is really avoiding similar woods that work less well by hand. An example, three choices in the US:
1) hard maple
2) american beech
3) ash

The market loves hard maple because it's bright (you can use a dye/toner and make it look like anything and almost no pores), it's cheap, easy to dry, etc. But for its level of hardness, it saws and planes like crap - often has mineral inclusions in it (silica - which are meaningless to sandpaper and carbide teeth, and it takes pigment stains poorly - again, if you're going the power tool route and spraying on a toned lacquer instead of staining, then who cares if it looks terrible with a pigment water stain. You can work around that with micronized artist pigments, but why bother).

So, power toolers love to build things with hard maple (the cut and planing isn't really a problem for smoothing or cutting joints, it's a problem for bulk work). A hand tooler will choose something else, like ash, maybe beech, or perhaps change the look and go with cherry or sycamore.

This is why I said you will build different things if you work entirely by hand. If you build a large case, you may end up admiring mouldings instead of squareish power tool looking things, or more common modern power tool setups - like a door with a bead and flat panel instead of a cope and stick look.

As far as the level of physical ability, I'll reiterate - it's no more tiring than doing a brisk walk or moderate yard work, but you cannot start the first day with 2 hours of it. If my grandfather went from nothing to 6 hours of firewood, i"m sure he'd have passed out. But in his mid 70s, he could so about 6 hours of timber cutting, splitting and wood stacking a day. Almost everyone here could do it in their 70s is they didn't have an injury, but they'd need to start at half an hour a day and learn efficiencies on movement, etc, that my grandfather would've had, and train their muscles to react a certain way.

I'm not much or any stronger than I was when I first started hand tool only, but my dexterity and muscle reaction is much different - it just happens. Just like it would with golf or anything else. My work is far more efficient. I don't use metal planes for bulk work because the act of pushing a plane rotates from the handle down and puts downforce on the sole whether you want to or not. This is important for hand work as it keeps the plane in the cut. When modern manufacturers like LV try to make an upright plane with the idea that this is antiquated and you should push a plane straight forward, then two things happen: 1) the plane has to be out in front of you more, and 2) it will act dull sooner. The former limits the length of your stroke (we don't walk with a plane, we stand in place, plane an area, then move, and so on. The answer for efficiency is to use the classic designs from the early to mid 1800s for all of the heavy work get the downforce of handle rotation but without friction. There's no way around it, and despite a gaggle of opinions (all the way up to rob cosman recommending people buy the heaviest metal planes made to learn to dimension wood - an absolutely stupid recommendation, but one good for a beginner's class, I guess, where you just want something that works to move on with the class and sell the next class - nobody would dimension by hand for long with planes like that), the way to do the work by hand is to do the bulk work with wooden planes of either continental european or english design (whichever you like better). Then the smoothing (which is done in a sniff after hand planing from jack to trying) plane can be metal and take advantage of an adjuster (which is what I do). The friction difference doesn't amount to much because you use a smoother for about 5% of the time.

All of these things are part of whether or not you really want to do it by hand. If you really want to and you're moderately able bodied, you can. If someone doesn't really want to and they try with metal planes or poorly designed wood planes (like krenov type or whatever), it's not going to work out. Everything in life is that way.

I had a coworker at one point who broke me of the habit of saying I wanted to do something that I didn't really want to do. I wanted the results of one thing, but not to do it, and she cursed me out. "if you actually wanted to do that, you'd do it. You don't want to. that's the problem".

But do start slow if you're going to do this. A jack plane and a trying plane are a good way to go, and a good rip saw (there is no combination saw that works like a rip saw, and no japanese rip saws -avoid that stuff. The only people who can use larger japanese rip saws effectively (better than they could sit on a board and push a disston saw through it) are people who have pulled a saw since a child - it's not a motion we make and a saw big enough to be efficient pulling will make your hamstrings and back hurt.

I often people off who use mostly hand tools by telling them I know more about planes and planing than they do, both design, efficiency and use.

I do. They know more about power tools than I do - I can't recommend much - how could I? I use portable tools for rough work because I no longer need accuracy from them. It comes at a high price and I can fit things with planes very quickly off of crude power tools.

Originally Posted by derekcohen

David, I am not aware that I wrote anything like this .... unless you read into my question how old you are. I know how old you are. I know what type if woodworking you prefer, what you are and are not experienced at, and have not said a word.

As you are aware from my numerous builds on-line, I love and use hand tools a lot. However, what is also evident, is that the initial stages of preparing the rough sawn timber - often very rough indeed - is done with machines. For myself, scrub or jack planes are not going to be used for this purpose. It just does not make sense with my local hardwoods. Someone working softer woods would see it differently. Indeed, someone working wood professionally with hand tools would select the timber very carefully to this end.

Working to close tolerance is not about needing to use machines. In my case I take pride in doing this with hand tools. Good Lord, I have posted enough builds to show this to be the case. Part of the reason for doing so is to encourage more to not fear using hand tools. However, this is not about the ability to build with power vs hand; this is about learning where the strengths and weaknesses of one type of tool lies, and how to use this knowledge to both enjoy woodworking and to keep doing woodworking as long as possible.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Derek, we seem to be playing soccer on different fields. I kick the ball expecting a certain response, but you kick a ball on another field, and then I do the same.

The re-enacting is based on a quote of one of your posts from SMC. I could go look it up, but I remember the term - it's pretty stark, because I'm uninterested in re-enacting, rather do in the present. I become interested in the past only when present discussion seems lacking. I tried bevel up planes, it seemed like they sucked for what I want to do (they do), so I went to single iron bevel down. IT seemed like they suck for what I want to do (work with FAS or #1 common medium hardwoods entirely by hand). They do, terrible. I went to double iron thinking if it didn't work out, I would go back to playing golf or something else. They worked. I read backwards with my sharpening experimenting and planing to see if it had any historical precedent. IT did. That was comforting. But I didn't read first and then re-enact. I am lazy, but curious, and also determined. Determined lazy (which I guess is more like intermittent determination, hard to explain it. I want to solve the problem at hand, but in the easiest way possible). One point of frustration for me will be something like WArren's assertion that nicholson's suggestion of rounding cap irons ends the argument. I am not a re-enactor and can't see the benefit, but there is possible detriment. Warren's pointing to a couple of text sentences doesn't do it for me, I match the cap iron to the sole - I think it's simplified advice from nicholson - that's the large difference between re-enacting.

I can't recall the exact reason for your post, but it may be over the washita use or oilstone use - that's again off. I use them because i'm lazy. Slower stones end up being faster because you can game them, but they're only faster if you game them - not faster if you try to use them like waterstones.

There are no absolutes. There's often an assertion that "we can buy accurate power tools and then do accurate joinery by hand". Of course. I almost went that route. But I like the engagement of hand tooling better - there's a clarity of mind and ability to do it when you're tired that's really not safe with power tools (the latter). Power tools when you're tired lead to wasted wood, slow working, pausing to make sure you're not going to hurt yourself. That's the draw.

Accuracy can be the same either way. Too many people who are re-enacting make claims like "you can't dimension wood accurately, therefore you'll have one flat face and the non show sides will be rough". That kind of thing isn't necessary. My default hand work is about as accurate as my planer. I can work to a thousandth if needed (I only do this on things like moulding planes - it slows things down). I cannot work to a thousandth with my machine tools, but the person who got me into this has a depth readout 20" spiral planer that must weigh 1000 pounds that can hit a thousandth or really close if you really want it.

What I can assert is this - anyone who can do an hour or two of yard work per week can work by hand, but one can't take the same thing you'd do on machines and assert that you can also do it by hand. I wouldn't work maple by hand - it's not impossible, and not really even that difficult, but it's much more obnoxious to work than cherry, and twice as obnoxious at least as mahogany. Working entirely with power tools, hard maple yields a crisp poreless wood and is easy working and nice.

The influence of the tools tends to yield different results. You work with harder wood, and your curved work looks more like curved work done with power tools vs. curved work more of the sculptural type of the 1700s. It is easier to do a long gradual curve with power tools than it is to make something that looks like a sculpture, but with hand tools, it's about the same either way - a volume of physical work. It has changed what I make and how I make it by a large degree.

Only a small % of people seem to enjoy the things that I do - the physical involvement combined with a touch of laziness. I don't watch TV or do something and then try to fit woodworking in an hour. Instead, I give woodworking two hours or four and skip the TV or other things. If someone has some production desire and limited time, they probably will want to work with power tools for most of what they're doing, but the reality is that woodworking won't be a priority and they probably won't get very good at it, either. And if that's what they want to do, that's good. If the desire, though, is for engagement and 90% of the time working "in the wood" and figuring out how to do it without making it painful, that's attainable. It's far less painful than my grandfather's axe with a bar stock handle welded to it.

What the internet is full of is folks who assert something must be done some way "you have to get to the meaningful work, the joinery only. the rest is bulk". OK, that's someone's opinion. It may be the majority opinion. I would do the same amount of it or less without the hand dimensioning between. If someone really likes hand work and is ho hum about rough work with power tools, they will probably be in the shop four times as much with hand tools, and make twice as much stuff. That's what I've found - the assertion above that time will be wasted on bulk work is off - it's a false dilemma unless there's a stopwatch. What's more likely for someone who really likes working by hand is that they'll figure out how to do it, and at the very least, they'll do just as much joinery and times that they would've spent watching netflix will instead be done otherwise with dimensioning. It becomes a draw, but it's not at first and not if one isn't curious.

Accurate machines are well documented, not hard to find, and not difficult to work with if one really likes that kind of thing. George constantly reminds me that if I really want to start making tools and metal bits at a high rate and cleanly, I need to get a mill. I don't want to learn to use a mill, though. That's the point here.

Just as dealing with tearout becomes a much bigger deal for me than it does someone else - I want to do the rough and middle work without dealing with tearout so that it just becomes physical bliss. 98% of the woodworking world is still stuck with the idea that the cap iron is a device made to eliminate tearout when smoothing, but the real value of it is planing 1 hundredth at a time instead of 1 thousandth, or doing most smoothing at 4 thousandths rather than 2 or 1.

If someone isn't willing to work through those things and accommodate hand tool use and get to the point that it isn't punishing, then they're telling what the can't do, not what can't be done.

(we also need to be realistic about our accomplishments, too - I make nice tools, but they're still amateur tools. You make nice furniture, and it's better than almost anything made now, but nothing that either of us makes is remotely close to people who have mastered either craft. So, if we get into the weeds and start talking about what someone must do this way or that way, it has to be kept in context.

none of us is going to make history books in a professional context. I think E&Y might have some documentation on components of my day job from auditing my work, but my woodworking work isn't that great (and tool making), it's just chasing a jones.

I can see just how primitive it is by going downtown to the museum and looking at french pieces that are 350 years old, and then tying that together with comments from George where he says "I think thinks were really cheap by the 18th century, they'd really been cheapened a lot -the design, the production - not nearly as good as work done in prior centuries". )

Originally Posted by woodPixel

I feel like I'm about to order a beer during a bar brawl... Getting in between you lads might be unwise but here goes....


On an aside, I llllllooooovvvveeeee my new Veritas scrub plane. Absolutely love it. I have the Lie Nielsen too, but the handle is too small for my hands. I absolutely love the way I sweat up a storm using it. Its hard work. I thicknessed down a whole bunch of Oak two weeks ago and I felt it for days. I must have lost 2kg in sweat alone, but I felt excellent. My shoulders and back punished me in evil ways.


Its far too easy to spend money on stuff. I'm a horder and love stuff. Especially shiny stuff.

I'm 51 and unfit

I'm 44 and unfit!! As evidenced by the fact that I am in the 1A class for the vaccine.

as far as the scrub plane goes, they are indeed punishing to use. What develops if you go further into hand tools (this isn't a challenge, just an observation) is you end up using a wooden jack plane instead, and instead of working up a huge sweat (well, you will if your shop is hot and humid), you find pretty much your limit of speed and force working, and then you back it off until it's 75% of that, let's say, and you find a rhythm that you can just work at for a while. Maybe a half hour, maybe 20 minutes, but if you work how hand tool work is typically done, you will probably only do one of anything for 20 minutes max. As you're working stock, you won't saw all of it and then plane all of it, etc. You'll saw something out of a board rough, face it, and then continue from there. More typically it's a couple of minutes of jack plane, then a minute or two of try planing and then if you're going to thickness to parallel, mark the board and then do the opposite side (or you may cut to size first and then do that).

Rather than being like running a half marathon, it's more like wandering around a fitness course like they used to have in the 1980s where you'd jog a mile and a half over 30 minutes because embedded in that was 15 stops at various other exercises for aminute. If you're short attention span like me, that kind of thing was much better - it tricked you into not getting board and blowing up running until you almost passed out, it kept things changing.

I LOVED scrub planes the first time I used them. A friend and I bought both premium types and swapped them (LN and LV), but no longer have a scrub plane. They're just much more effort to use than a wooden jack, and when you work entirely with hand tools, you just gravitate toward whatever is easier and feels good. It's not the 1700s, so we have that luxury. Coming up to a firm rhythm and working at that rather than going as fast as possible ends up being more productive, whereas the latter when required by mandate (and survival) is faster, I'm sure.

I'm never in danger of passing out in the shop. My grandfather was a nut in his younger days wanting to set unwritten world records for work rate, and he did actually work himself into going to his knees more than once. Scrub planes waste a lot of our energy on sole friction and inaccurate planing, and then the little wooden versions of the same batter our hands, elbows and shoulders. It becomes pretty apparent in feel as to why they weren't common in the english set of tools when working rough wood.

David let me jump in on the wood thing...

It's different for Australians!

90% of the videos a self-taught individual will watch show American walnut, cherry, poplar etc (yanks) or oak, pine, beech, fir, oak, sapele (poms). Occasionally something like hard or curly maple or purple heart will be bought out as a "challenge" wood.

In my state in Australia, if you go to a timber merchant you will find in non-pine, in my albeit limited experience:

- 30% Plenty of "Vic Ash" / "Tassie oak", being a plantation grown eucalypt which has a roughly similar appearance to european oak on the long grain (although not the end-grain, which lacks that meatiness) and is fairly workable.

- 10% imported European / American / exotics (although in very limited quantities)

- 10% "nice moderate Australian woods to work with (cedars, tassie blackwood, huon pine - although latter might belong in exotics given price/quantity available/rarity!)

- the rest, combinations of tough Australian hardwoods (spotted gum, bluegum, blackbutt, karri, ironbark etc)

In a timber recycler, there will be piles of rubbish (twisted old bits of pine, old doors and pine fence palings and rubbish covered in old paint and full of nails), and otherwise super-tough Australian hardwoods used in timber framing.

The outcome is that for Australians, once you graduate from pine, it is usually pretty rough going. There is a good reason HNT Gordon are so popular with their options for planing Australian hardwoods. It really is - once you get out of basic pine and ply - very different it seems.

this is the part I've heard a back and forth on .If you can't get hand workable woods in any quantity or reasonably, and you can't find local timber that might suffice if you locate a sawyer, then hand woodworking is out.

The same would be true here if you lived in an area where your options are mesquite, texas ebony, pecan and locust. No go for hand tooling.

The common oaks here are pretty much out except for quartered white as red oak is commodity lumber here - why bother .

Straight clear pine isn't that common except in styrofoam wood, so it's out in the other direction, but the gurus love to demonstrate in it because nobody is noticing that just handling whatever they're working dents things.

But I've been made aware that at least in some parts of australia, workable wood isn't quite as rare, and in others at least it's communicated that it's not common or affordable if found. All relevant considerations.

I would have to find a sawyer here to find good clear softwoods, though, that had any reasonable density (radiata pine and such things are available, but it's overpriced, extremely soft and ugly. Quartered pine like you'd use for drawers is not generally seen, and pine full of knots is not worth messing with unless you're really really hoping for cheap and will be painting.

The luck here is the combination of cherry (walnut is out as an option now), soft maple (if it's liked, i don't love it, but it's OK for drawer sides), ash (though that is disappearing due to the ash borer), sycamore quartered (often not that easy to find either but huge sycamore trees are everywhere locally) and white oak. I may be missing something, but I live literally in the middle of cherry region. Not sure what happened to walnut, but it's $10 a board foot for little skinny boards, so no good. 15 years ago, I could get 8/4 in 10" wide boards for $8 a board foot, which wasn't a bargain, but it's usable at that (that's $8 US, of course).

#1 common cherry can be found here from local sawyers for $2 a board foot (but often not that great for joinery due to runout, and not great for hand work) and FAS for $4-$5. Add 25% for retail and less good wood. Red oak is findable for $1 a board foot or just more clear and flatsawn if you buy green, but again - ugly. The virtue of red oak is that the second growth grows at the same density as the old growth (or more) and you can end up with trees 3 feet in diameter at chest height in 75 years, with a long clear section. It's marginally decent if quartersawn, but only local sawyers.

Great firewood, though - grows fast, good heat value, very little ash, cuts easy with a chainsaw and splits easy everywhere except right in the knots and a wye in a tree. Otherwise, it splits like someone else pre-split it for you.

This is the best thread I’ve read through in ages, well done all of you.

Now, I know there will be lots of rolling eyes here, can someone please show me the exact difference between a scrub plane and a standard jack plane? I know as a professional woodworker I should know, but it’s possible that the old man just called a scrub plane something else, and I know it by a different name. thanks.

My issue is I'm not retired and my free time is mostly taken up by family stuff.. I built my first three guitars nearly 100% hand tool. The only power tools I had were a laminate trimmer (for rosettes and bindings) and a hand drill. I did all my thicknessing 100% by hand. Ugh! it took me nights and nights and nights of planing to get all the plates thinned out and ready.

The first big tool I bought was a 22" drum sander (and dust collector)... It was the best investment I ever made, because it quickly does a job that takes me a long time by hand. It let me move quickly past thicknessing wood into the fun parts.

Besides resawing, I do nearly all my sawing by hand. I fit all my joints by hand... Etc. I can do "the fiddly stuff" considerably faster and better this way than with power tools.

I love my hand tools, but let me tell you... You'll pry my bandsaw, laminate trimmer, electric drill, and my drum sander out of my cold dead hands.

So, just try it out. See what works for you and go from there.

Originally Posted by riverbuilder

This is the best thread I’ve read through in ages, well done all of you.

Now, I know there will be lots of rolling eyes here, can someone please show me the exact difference between a scrub plane and a standard jack plane? I know as a professional woodworker I should know, but it’s possible that the old man just called a scrub plane something else, and I know it by a different name. thanks.

Jack plane -preferably wood, double iron (With cap iron) even though it's not usually needed for jack work -sometimes it is. 14-17", irons 2-2 1/4" wide, width of the plane about 3/4" wider than the iron.

Camber depends on the hardness of the wood involved - softer wood generally allows more camber (deeper cut). Only about 70% or so of the iron is in the cut (not all of the width from edge to edge.

I measured mine a couple of weeks or months ago as this came up on the English forum and found that to my recollection, for cherry, my iron cuts about 4 hundredths deep and about 1.5 or so inches of it is in the cut (maybe more). The reason the corners aren't in the work is two part - one, the cut doesn't need to be that wide, and two, if the corners get in the cut, you're tearing fibers at the side of the cut rather than cutting. That's more work.

The reason you have a wider sole than necessary for the cut width is because it results in a flatter surface without doing anything to lessen the volume of wood removed.

Around 3 1/2 to 5 pounds if wooden. Stanley 5 is referred to as a jack plane, but not a good substitute for much work due to friction. There's no way to wax a stanley enough to make this an even competition.

You do as much as the wood will allow with the jack plane before the trying plane (long plane, whatever you want to call it) and the try plane leaves a near finished surface only for a few following swipes with the smoother. I tend to work to about a 16th from the thickness mark with the jack - it's the easiest plane to remove material with.

(most people would call a try plane a jointer - it's not, but if it's thought of like that, no problem). The mouth of the jack is probably about 1/8th inch. More than that invites bigger tearout.



Scrub plane - single iron plane, generally metal (in think centuries ago, some may have been used for boat work or with green wood, but we don't work much with green wood now). Narrow with a narrow iron and drastic camber. Not really sure what they're good for -stanley put them in with utility planes to plane width off of doors. The metal makes them high friction, but the small size probably is handy to carry on site.

They're a thrill for people new to woodworking because they take narrow thick chips off, but they don't take off more in volume for each push than a jack plane, can cause spectacular tearout or blowout on the back side of a cut (or even just odd things like literally popping little areas of figure out of figured wood). The mouth is wide open, thus no ability to hold down the spectacular tearout to at least moderate some of it.

The name sounds fun for people, like "scrubbing off huge amounts of wood" like scrubbing away dirt or something, but they cannot do the work of a jack and a jack does their work at least as well but under more control.

No mention of them is provide in nicholson's text, though I hadn't read this before discarding my scrub planes on ebay. I just couldn't figure out where to use them once I had a good wooden jack plane.

Originally Posted by riverbuilder

....... can someone please show me the exact difference between a scrub plane and a standard jack plane? .......

rb, if you are thinking metal scrub planes, most people would picture the Stanley #40 or its various clones like the Veritas version.

What my old pot (& perhaps yours) would've called a "German jack" is essentially the same bit of kit, in wood: Engels a.jpg

The above are all shorter & narrower than a typical jack plane - most of us would think of the Stanley #5 or the slightly longer & wider woody equivalents as "jack" planes. The common feature of scrubs, is a solid, single iron, about 1 1/4-1 1/2" wide, with a very short-radiused cutting edge and a huge gob - these things take shavings that look like giant pill-bugs.

But just about anything can be used as a "scrub": apply a short-radius cutting edge, open the mouth as wide as you can, and away you go. Lots of people prefer longer soles to the ~230mm soles of typical scrubs, so 5s & old woodies have been modified for the task, as well as #4s (my own preferred weapon before I got a Veritas), & probably all sorts of other types too.

Cheers,