Gentle Galoots,

Some years ago a horned smoother followed me home from a flea market. The body
is unmarked. The cast steel tapered iron is marked Sandusky, and it is 3/16"
thick at the base of the bevel. Nice and heavy. You may need to log in to
groups.io/g/oldtools to view these links.

https://groups.io/g/oldtools/photo/263897/3222963

When I got the plane home I discovered that there was a problem with it. The
iron was not bedded square to the body of the plane.

https://groups.io/g/oldtools/photo/263897/3222976

To use it as a smoother I would have had to grind and maintain the iron at the
matching angle. Then I would have had a "skewed smoother." Whoever heard of such
a thing?

Since the mouth is nice and wide, I decided to regrind the iron with a heavy
camber and use it as a scrub plane. I figured that a slightly skew bed angle
wouldn't matter for that purpose and besides I didn't have another scrub plane
at the time.

https://groups.io/g/oldtools/photo/263897/3222978

Yes, 2" is too wide for a scrub plane iron, but it's only the part that
protrudes from the mouth that matters and that you can control by grinding the
iron appropriately. Seems to work well enough.

Several of you commented on how to grind a camber. Since this iron has a cap
iron, it has a slot. I have tool rest with a flat platform that can be set to
the appropriate bed angle. I centered the bevel on the tool rest, put the tip of
my thumb through the top of the slot and pivoted the iron right and left on that
as I ground. I didn't measure it, but it's not far from the 1.63" radius Bill
Kasper mentioned. Measured another way, the tip projects 3/16" from the corners.

I make no claim that this plane is superior to a Stanley 40 or 40-1/2 scrub
plane, but it does seem to work pretty well.

Cheers,
Chuck Taylor
north of Seattle USA