Toothed low angle jack plane

[mikefab]

As mentioned in a previous post I am finding my way into woodworking, and currently prepare all my boards by hand. A few months ago I went to the Lie Nielsen demo at G&S Timber near Penrith.

I was keen to try out a scrub plane to ease the pain of thicknessing by hand. Deneb from LN had a strong point of view that I shouldn't buy a scrub plane until I had a low angle jack with a toothed blade. His arguments for this were as follows:

1 - the toothed blade allows fast stock removal without tear-out
2 - the LA jack is very versatile for other tasks while the Scrub is highly specialised
3 - the scrub plane can cause a large amount of tear out and it is necessary to have the toothed LA jack as an intermediate step to 'fix' the tear out.
4 - if I bought the LAJ I may later buy a scrub and they would sell two planes instead of one (he didn't say that...)

I decided to go with this recommendation, as at the time I was quite impressed with the demonstration.

The toothed LAJ does indeed allow fairly rapid stock removal without much tear out, but it isn't *that* fast. I've since reground my number 5 jack plane blade to a 100mm radius to use as a scrub plane. The difference in stock removal rate is of course night and day.

My current sequence from rough sawn now runs: 5/Scrub, toothed jack, 7 (with a very slight camber), then maybe a smoothing plane. For thicknessing I may omit the scrub plane step depending on the amount of work to do.

I find myself wondering whether this wasn't a sensible way to go. Deneb's point number 3 is clearly flawed. That tear out could be fixed with any plane. The rate at which it can be fixed varies though. I do find the toothed jack is quite easy to push through the timber given the depth of cut (as one might expect).

My total spend would have been less if I had just bought a scrub and carried on using my number 5 to follow on from the scrub.

I wonder if anyone else uses
the toothed jack in this role or has any other comments?

Mike

 

[MIGNAL]

Perhaps it should state something like 'relatively fast'. It removes wood in thin strings, there's no way it will ever, ever compete with a scrub for speed of removal. A toothed blade has a specific task, removing material in 'difficult' wood. There are sometimes other, better solutions though - such as planing straight across the grain, something I virtually always do in highly figured Maple. I honestly haven't used my toothed blade in years and I work some pretty difficult wood.

 

[Paul Chapman]

I have the Veritas scrub plane and the Veritas low-angle, bevel-up jack with toothed blade. I use them both extensively for stock preparation and other tasks. I wouldn't be without either. I would suggest that as you use them more, you will find them both very useful.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[bugbear]

A home-made Krenovian (laminated body) scrub or a converted woodie jack are both extremely cheap, so "why not"?

The decision point is then the LA jack, which cannot be had so cheaply, but is very versatile.

BugBear

 

[mikefab]

Thanks very much for your replies. It will be interesting to see what I reach for as time goes on and I build my experience. Nice to know that someone else uses the same workflow too!

I certainly wouldn't be without the scrub /converted jack for the speed it offers: thicknessing is otherwise tedious and needs to happen as fast as possible! I agree that the LA jack is versatile (I keep the standard blade ground square for the shooting board), but think that on balance it might have been a rather expensive solution.

Cheers,
Mike