Today, while trying to recover from my cold, I was finishing up on my sharpening, the last on my list for now is this #4 Stanley Handyman plane that I got cheap on auction. Plastic handles and poor quality control really did leave me thinking I'd wasted my money on this, but it had been mentioned that turning it into a scrub plane might be possible.
First thing I did was to take off the frog and just like Jim said, the body of the plane and the bottom of the frog were just painted rough casting, not a very good "Seat" for things. I was able to hand file the bottom of the frog down to smooth metal, but the inside of the body of the plane itself was a bit more of a challenge. I came up with this........
Using my "XY" vice on the drill press, with a stone in there to do the milling, I was able to make nice flat spots for the frog to sit on. (I forgot to take pics of the plane being milled, I DO have a cold and my mind is wandering)
The other thing that screamed "Scrub Plane" to me was the large mouth on this plane......
You can see how the regular #4's mouth is very closed compared to the Stanley Handyman version, so my scrub plane was born!
You can also see the reworked blade, I think the arc is about an 8" arc, I just attached the blade to a thin piece of plywood, with the edge of the blade sticking out past the plywood by a bit, then I put a screw into the plywood about 8" from the edge of the blade, into a temp platform I put on my grinder, the screw acts like a pivot point, just move the blade right and left, and you have a nice arc ground on your blade. I then cheated and used the power honing set up, took seconds, and I had a VERY sharp blade! (Again, no pics, I forgot)
Now I had to put it to work....
Rough cut board (this one is actually fairly smooth)
A piece of Japanese Red Oak from my rooftop stash.
The scrub plane take a lot bigger bite and produces chips, not shavings.
Finished with the scrub plane
Then the #5 Jack and finally the #4 smoother, the board is flat and smooth.
I'm quite pleased white how this turned out, for the amount of work I'll be doing using a scrub plane, I think this one will fill the need.
now I have to learn how to get my cabinet scraper in shape....