Old school woodworking meets old school metalworking...

Here I take a £20 Stanley No.5 Jackplane that I bought at a car boot sale, and hand scrape it to be flat to within about 2 ten thousandths of an inch (0.0002").

Wood planes are cheap to buy second hand, so if you are a metalworker that wants a cheap source of cast iron to practice scraping on a wood plane is a cost effective way of practicing. What's more at the end of it you will have a highly capable hand woodworking tool that you can use yourself or sell to a woodworker.

In this video I am not advocating that you need to scrape a plane to less than 0.001" of flatness, or that this is a better way of flattening a plane than the traditional method of lapping on a flat surface with abrasive paper. For me this is the perfect way to practice the art of hand scraping whilst ending up with a perfectly flat plane that looks amazing.

Want to see it taking some shavings? See here    • Taking some shavings...