Recently I was honored to have the scrub plane you see in this picture accepted into the Reader’s Gallery section of Fine Woodworking.  The issue is their annual Tools & Shop edition and it should be on the newsstand by the end of this month.  It’s been over a year ago but there was an email invitation from Fine Woodworking where they asked readers to submit tools that were shop made.  As it turned out, I had recently built this plane which uses a Ron Hock radiused blade and is roughly patterned after a James Krenov style plane.  I was happy with my tool so decided to submit it to them.

It has been modified from the Krenov style with the handle (tote) at the rear which is patterned more like a backsaw handle plus the knob on front.  This knob is somewhat off center but was formed to feel right in my hand while using the tool.  My reasoning for the design was that for scrubbing work you need to really get a good grip on the tool; something the typical Krenov style plane didn’t provide.  As it turns out, I taught a class on making a block plane based on the Krenov design.  The students used blades from Ron Hock with their own wood and others bought the complete kit he offers on his website.  The class was taught at Wooditis, a woodworking school here in Las Vegas.  One of the students replicated my design to make his own scrub plane.

It gets a bit long but for those of you that may be interested in the construction of this plane I documented it on my old Blogger site.  Included is the first project and a “how to” on using the plane.  Here’s a LINK to that series.