Thread: The plane that made me nearly fly to Sweden

Originally Posted by MartinCH

...... Sometimes I feel that I would be better served by a metal scrub, with its additional mass. Fortunately by the time I have arrived at this opinion I have usually removed the offending timber and it's time to move to the foreplane.....

Yairs, the extra mass of my metal plane does give it a bit of momentum in harder woods, but there's a trade off to be sure - the mass increases with every stroke after the first 100! My biggest worry with the wooden types is that using them on really rough, hard woods (read spotted gum or black wattle free-hand cut with chainsaw or split from a billet & trimmed with a hatchet), is pretty hard on wooden soles. I think the one I had was especially soft too, it didn't have an extra piece of hard wood on the sole and when I first got it the sole was badly beaten-up. I had to plane at least 3mm off it to get it clean & flat again. It was great on softer woods like Camphor or jacaranda, but I think I only used it once on really hard wood & it left some deep marks on the sole.

Rob, I think we can safely ascribe the current use of "scrub" instead of "roughing plane" in this country to the dominance of US-derived woodworking media. I like the name "roughing plane" but "scrub" is pretty descriptive too, so I'm ok with either. We just have to remain bi-lingual down here in our little island......

Cheers,

I did a bit more research and ha e to retract a bit. German manufacturer had Schrubbhobel or Schropphobel (=scrubplane) in their catalogues already in 1861.

Weiss&Sohn, 1861



Weiss&Sohn, 1909



Hiessinger, 1925



ECE, 1932



So Germans have used this type scrubplane for long time and bought them for that purpose. Weiss&Sohn offered them with lignum vitae sole as well as with a steel sole.

When, I said "normal plane" above it was because I did not have a proper translation.

In German tradition, they used the Schrubbhobel , aka scrubplane, to dimension boards and remove lot of material. As we do.

After that they'd go for a Schlichthobel. That is a single iron plane with same length as a smoother. That was used to flatten the boards and getting rid of the scrubplane marks. There is no direct equivalent to the Anglo Saxon planes as far as I found. I guess a few of these ended up as scrubs later in their life. I think we'd use a jackplane for that. Germans did not have jackplanes with the intermediate length.

And then they use Putzhobel (=cleaning plane) as smoother for final finish. These had double irons or as we call it, blades with chipbreaker.

Only if they had difficult grain they used a so-called Reformhobel, which featured an adjustable mouth on top of the double iron. Some had a cutting angle of 49 degrees. Reformhobel exist at least since 1894.

A bit more to think, I guess [emoji6]

Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk

Ian

your poor scrub-lanes, they get thrown to the wolves, don't they?... My plane only has to deal with twisting, cupping, and occasionally ripping off the side of a board.

Mind you, I have 3 Cape Lilac logs waiting for me time decide its time to cut. They will need a roughed out reference surface ..

Cheers

CK I have a few E.C.Emmerich planes (one of which I turned into a scrub) big mouth and no Hornbeam sole). I have always wondered what European woodworkers think of them? They are certainly pricey here when bought new. Are they more a "Stanley" than a "Lie-Nielsen/Veritas"? I know they have been made for a long time and they don't seem to have suffered Stanley's post WW2 decline.

There are only two main manufacturer left in Germany. ECE and Ulmia. They stick to their tradition. I do believe quality is still the same.

Sadly, a lot of younger German YouTuber seem to push now also more the bailey type planes. Mostly because of the allegedly easier adjustment.

In regard to mouth size, they do seem to be bigger than we'd like. As far as instructions and teaching goes, they do rely more on the chip breaker for control of tear out. Only when that does not help they go to the Reformhobel with adjustable mouth.

I do not know, but my theory is that is is mainly linked to the typical timbers used there. Spruce, beech, cherry, oak and sometimes mahagony and teak. From my memory mostly straight grain with little figure is used. So maybe not as much of an issue compared to what we like to use here.

As to why Germans did not follow the cast iron plane path when Stabley showed up, I couldn't find any explanation from experts yet. Maybe they did not feel the need. Maybe they saw them as too heavy. A lot of trades people moved around within Germany a lot. Maybe all the steel went into weapons industry rather for WW1and WW2. Maybe there was not as much interaction between America and Germany as between America, UK and Oz? There were a lot of Germans in the US, but because of the wars they were discriminated and did not interact with their homecountry as much? Maybe all of the above. I am still trying to find explanation for that as I am wondering myself.



Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk