What to turn my Bailey 5-1/4 into

[Patrick Chase]

The Bailey is also a 5-1/4. So for roughing do I want a full radius on the blade or a straight section in the middle and rounded toward the edges?

The Bailey 5-1/4 and the Veritas 5-1/4W are actually very different planes. If you put them side-by-side with the sole facing up you'll see that the Veritas has a 2" wide blade vs 1-3/4" on the Bailey. You'll also see that the Veritas plane's mouth is quite a bit further back along the sole (it's a rather unique plane in that respect). The point I was making earlier is that if you're going to pick one to use for roughing work then the Bailey's narrower blade might be preferable.

I grind my rouging planes with a camber radius that equates to somewhere between 0.050" and 0.070" of blade projection when the blade corners are level to the plane's sole. That works out to a 3-4" camber radius on a 40-1/2 scrub with a 1-1/2" blade, and 6-8" a camber radius on a #5 with a 2" blade (all of this assumes bevel-down planes with 45 deg beds). It would correspond to a 4-6" radius on your Bailey $5-1/4. People typically use rounded edges on jointers and smoothers, not so much on roughing planes.

[lowell holmes]

I have a #3 Bailey that is sharpened as a smoother. It is a Canadian plane and has a great feel.
I have a 1 3/4" wide plane iron that I bought from Lowes or Home Depot, I'm not sure.

I sharpened the iron with a severe radius in the beveled edge. I use that combination as a scrub plane.
It works, try it. I put that combination in the plane when scrubbing.

One plane does both jobs. I use the #3 smoother more than I use my 604 Bedrock.

[Paul K. Johnson]

OK, then one more question. I use basically two types of wood. I either order 3S from a sawyer. Not sure if that's the right nomenclature but the two faces and one edge are jointed and smooth. The second edge is live.

The second type of wood I use is kiln-dried pine from big box.

Do I even need a scrub plane? From what I can tell it's mostly used for really rough wood to prepare it for a jack and then a jointer. Or skip the jack and go straight to the jointer.

Remember, my background is building stuff out of balsa where you cut and sand and occasionally use a razor plane.

Thanks for all the help!

[Patrick Chase]

OK, then one more question. I use basically two types of wood. I either order 3S from a sawyer. Not sure if that's the right nomenclature but the two faces and one edge are jointed and smooth. The second edge is live.

The second type of wood I use is kiln-dried pine from big box.

Two questions:

1. Is the wood you get always the thickness you want?

2. If not, are you fully committing to electron-free woodworking or will you use a thickness planer?

If the answers are "no" and "yes" then you probably need some sort of "serious" roughing plane by which I mean a scrub, jack, or fore with a heavily cambered blade, set up to take narrow-but-deep shavings.

Otherwise you'll still want a Jack (for removing cup for example), but you can give it more of an intermediate setup.

I have my 5-1/4W set up with a 12" camber, and it works great when I want a deeper cut and lighter weight than a jointer (roughing with a jointer can be painful btw), but I also don't want to blast off hunks of wood the way a scrub or heavily cambered Jack can. IMO it's a reasonable setup for a "machine-assisted" workshop. An equivalent setup for your 5-1/4 would be ~9" of camber.

One thing I hope you're getting from all of this is that the setup matters at least as much as the specific plane type. A #3 (nominally a smoother) with a deeply cambered blade and open mouth is a scrub for all intents and purposes. A #5 with a close-set cap iron and slightly cambered/rounded blade is effectively a smoother, etc. Some combinations are more problematic than others (for example I don't spend enough time at the gym to rough or smooth with my #8, and trying to joint with a #4 is more hassle than it's worth) but the Jack-sized planes we're discussing here can do almost anything that you set them up to do. A Jack-of-all-trades as it were.

[steven c newman]

Maybe show up at my shop, and try this one for size?
junior jack.jpg
Happen to have some Curly Maple that needs jointed down smooth. There are four sitting there, needing some work...my thumb won't allow it to happen, right now.
Need to crosscut and resaw the board below those four..into 10 rails..will also need planed..then..
curly maple.jpg
A few boards like this one, will need crosscut and ripped to size, then hand-planed into some raised panels..
All to be done with that Junior Jack plane....get busy.

[Michael Ray Smith]

***

Be careful, making shavings with a scrub plane is just as mesmerizing as the gossamer shavings from a freshly sharpened plane.

***

jtk

Indeed it is! I turned a Stanley 5 1/4 into a scrub plane. I bought a new blade (IBC, if I recall correctly off the top of my head), heavier than the original, and cambered it. I don't know what the radius is because I just eyeballed it. Not nearly as tight a radius as a No. 40, but far more than just enough to relieve the corners, like you'd do with a smoothing plane. I had to file open the mouth just a bit, but not very much, probably not even enough to prevent it from being returned to its original purpose. I like it so much I sold my No. 40. As, as Jim says, scrubbing a board cross grain is just as addictive as using a finely tuned smooth plane to turn off shavings that float to the ceiling. I've been known to ended up with a board 1/4" thinner than I intended because I got carried away with the scrub plane.

I don't think you'd regret turning that beat up 5 1/4 into a scrub plane.

[John Kananis]

Hi Paul, this is what I was getting at - not implying that you needed yet another plane, just judging what type of work you do based on the planes in you 'arsenal'.

OK, then one more question. I use basically two types of wood. I either order 3S from a sawyer. Not sure if that's the right nomenclature but the two faces and one edge are jointed and smooth. The second edge is live.

The second type of wood I use is kiln-dried pine from big box.

Do I even need a scrub plane? From what I can tell it's mostly used for really rough wood to prepare it for a jack and then a jointer. Or skip the jack and go straight to the jointer.

Remember, my background is building stuff out of balsa where you cut and sand and occasionally use a razor plane.

Thanks for all the help!

[lowell holmes]

Actually, it was a 1 1/4" wide iron . The #3 is 1 3/4" wide.

[Patrick Chase]

Actually, it was a 1 1/4" wide iron . The #3 is 1 3/4" wide.

You use a 1-1/4" iron in a #3 body for roughing?

There's no reason why that wouldn't work, and that's the same iron width as the #40 (Stanley's basic scrub), but I imagine it looks a little odd :-).

[steven c newman]

Considering the #40 didn't use a chipbreaker....was more like a block plane on roids..... it was a solid iron, no slots, nor holes. How one would even get it to work in a #3 plane......weird.