Sharpening a Scrub Plane Blade

The  scrub plane blade has an arc-profiled cutting edge, with  more or less  marked radius according to the job required. This profile makes it more difficult to sharpening by guides so many people prefer sharpening it by hand.

Im not very good at this job, so I searched for sharpening guides available that could serve the purpose. The Record 161 is a guide which is easy to find on ebayUK for few  pounds. It has only one central contact point (a rolling ball in the middle) and this permits to incline to the right and left allowing to follow the cutting edge profile easily.

The  blade is held firmly in place by a clamp screw that allows unrestricted iron orientation, useful even if it was necessary to sharpen skewed blade. The  dark side is that you have to ensure the correct blade position by hand.

For bigger curves the guide can be moved to the sides of the sharpening stone to allow for greater tilt, as seen in the short movie. The result was satisfactory with 35 ° bevel. To re-sharpen exactly to the same  angle Ill use a simple self made jig.

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Sticking Board

When you have to work small in section pieces with molding, plow and rebate planes, may be convenient to use a proper board which helps to keep them steady during planing. It simply consists of a leveled board , at least 150 cm long and with section of about 10 x2, 5 cm. On its surface can be glued  a stright rail (section 4x2, 5 cm).

It is important that the side of the rail is square with the backing surface of the piece. I used some screws inserted at the end of the board; they have the task of stopping the piece during processing. They can be tightened and loosened to allow to avoid the piece escapes from board. If the piece is square it will be sufficient. However, it is convenient to work pieces longer than the final measure to use the edges or parts that will be discarded (cheek of  a tenon in the pic), to ensure all through thin nails. The table is stopped by dogs and lateral vice.

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