Scraper plane?

If you work in hardwoods, some time or other you are going to wish you had a scraper plane to work that difficult grain structure right in the middle of your masterpiece. Unfortunately, they are horribly expensive for a plane you may only use once in a while and you perhaps can’t justify the cost. Especially, if like me you would prefer to use a hand scraper for the added control they give. Never the less, faced with a large area, scraper planes do have their place. Fortunately, there is a crafty way around the cost, by making your own scraper plane from a block plane, or from any low angle plane, the principle is the same. All you need to do is buy an extra blade for your existing low angle plane and regrind to a negative angle. If you don’t have a low angle plane of your own, you can pick-up a Stanley 220 block plane, for a few pounds on ebay; these make great scrapers.

Lay the plane on its side, take a rule and felt tip pen, now mark an angle on the plane side, in line with the leading edge of the blade. The angle should be about 97° leaning towards the front knob of the plane. Draw another line parallel with the plan iron as shown in the photo, set a sliding bevel to this angle and use as a guide for re-grinding. (if you don’t have a sliding bevel, you can simply glue or staple two pieces of card together at the correct angle) Now remove the blade and regrind to angle indicated by your sliding bevel; this will give a negative cutting angle to the blade. Take your time grinding the blade making sure to cool it, by dipping it in water every few seconds of grinding, you don’t want to loose the temper of the steel; this would make it useless. Hone in the usual way, if you really want to be accurate you can cut a block of wood at the same angle and use this to steady the blade while honing. Just lay the wood block on the stone and run the blade along it while honing. You don’t need to form a hook on the blade like a hand scraper; it will work fine as it is. I use a 220 just as described; I have a few block planes, so keep this one just for scraping. If you only have the one plane it’s a simple job just to change blades as needed. I’ll tell you one thing, a scraper plane like this is much easier to adjust than the real thing. Although you will need a little practice to get it just right, this will be time really well spent and you will be producing gossamer shavings from that impossible grain.