Smoothing planes and card scrapers

brianlanning · 2006-02-23T20:02:48+00:00

I'm getting ready to make several largish projects in hickory and hardmaple and I'm not looking forward to sanding. I've heard that you canreplace sanding with a smoothing plane and scrapers. My goal is toremove marks from the jointer and planer, then hvlp spray a tungoil/poly mixture several layers deep.I was thinking about picking up a smoothing plane from grizzly. Thereare several in the $30 range, although I'm not sure which one to get.My gut is telling me the biggest one since it's a large project. Doesanyone have the pros/cons for this plane compared to theveritas/lieneilsen type expensive stuff?How do you decide on the blade depth of cut? I'm worried about takingtoo much off in one pass and unflattening the board I'm trying tofinish.As far as the scrapers go, anything special I should look for? I wasplanning on getting one of the sets I saw on leevalley (iirc) that hadseveral scrapers with the burnisher, file, and other stuff.Should I give up and just sand? I'll be able to use a DA sander whenthe big compressor gets here.thanks.brian

Feb 23, 2006 31 Replies

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somewildmonkey 20 years ago

I was in a woodworking class where we were building these coffee tables. One of the students made the top by laminating a 3 inch wide piece of ebony between two outer pieces of some other hardwood (forget the species - but it was a nice color combination). He used a newly purchased Lie-Nielson large scraper plane to finish the top, one of the reasons being that sanding would have potentially caused staining from the ebony onto the surrounding wood. Anyway, the result was absolutely beautiful. The finish was like glass.

- MB

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brianlanning 20 years ago

I ordered a package of scraping related stuff from lee valley. Included int eh kit is a holder for the scraper that allows you to turn a thumb screw to set the amount of bend. That should make it much easier on the fingers.

brian

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Teamcasa 20 years ago

"Roy"

Where is that!? I can't find a local woodworking group here in SoCal!

Dave

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bent 20 years ago

i didn't read all the replys. there was a post a month or so ago about the diffs b/t planes of different qualities/quantities.

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Enoch Root 20 years ago

Good answers above, but for smoothing a surface that's already been machine planed, you just want a smoother (using the stanley numbers):

1-4: smooth 5: jack 6: fore (sortofa anemic jointer) 7-8: jointer

The dimensions of these planes can be found on Patrick Leach's page:

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you want a cheap plane you are better off with a cautious purchase of an old Stanley on ebay.

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Leon 20 years ago

I did not see the other.

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Enoch Root 20 years ago

It's right there!

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Andy Dingley 20 years ago

Only the ones Norm uses

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Andy Dingley 20 years ago

Ebony scraper finishes _beautifully_, and quite easily.

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Dave Balderstone 20 years ago

It's also way overpriced in Canada, even though LV says it's made here.

$25 US, $36 CAD. I called our local store, pointed out that the two currencies are onyl 15% apart.

djb

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Andy Dingley 20 years ago

If it wasn't for the postage, I'd send you one of mine.

The #45 is a turkey. Like all of those iron combination planes it has lousy cut quality. A rack of old wooden moulders might take up more space, but the results are incomparably better.

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Leon 20 years ago

LOL.

OK OK OK,, I do not always proof read may spell checkers changes. LOL.

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