Toothed low angle jack plane

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mikefab

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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
 
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.
 
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
 
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
 
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
 

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