Well, as regards the development of the "Scrub" Plane as an individual thing, here are a few parts of emails between an a "person of note" and myself. We were discussing planes, and inparticular, scrub planes.
Of issue was when I was learning about the use of planes, I never remember my grandfather telling me to grab the #5, or the #7. He would say something like, "grab the plane that is about 14" long," and "No, the wood one" and some such thing. He did use the terms of foreplane, jack and so on. But didn't use the numbers.
The gist of my comment below has to do with the fact I believe Stanley et al made up and fostered the division of planes to garner sales. Call it, value added sales.
That said, I also think some of the specialized planes they came up with are pretty darn handy.
Mike
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[to person of note],
One more thought re scrubs and a related issue regarding ...
I think that Stanely, in their infinite marketing wisdom, are responsible for driving the plane making industry to specialized designations of planes and their use. As regards a scrub, why would a planemaker foster the notion of "modifying" (really repurposing) one of their planes for such work when they could via a value-added approach create a specialized plane and garner additional sales?
This marketing schema I think extends to many of their tools. Make another specialized widget and convince the buying workman it is necessary, or a refinement to, both their work and how they think about their work.
And this idea of value-added tools is alive and well in present day form.
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Mike,
I’m often amused by the lack of understanding out there for how planes are to be used. It’s all laid out in Moxon and nothing really has changed technologically in the 300 years since. We might have extra gadgets on our planes now, but the two most important features of the planes are the length of their soles and the shape of their irons.
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[to person of note]
I find it amusing at times the entrenched ideas people have as regards what purposes planes are for. Sometimes people have a very rigid idea of the function of Stanley's planes by numbers scheme.