Scrubbed gluts

[Paul-in-Plymouth]

I’m expecting to get some green white-oak trunk for recreation this spring.  In the meantime, when my trees were trimmed recently, the trimmers saved me some red oak branches 5"-6” in diameter to make wooden wedges or “gluts.”  I plan to use these to help break down the white oak.

I began with an axe, but my hand quickly went into a persistent spasm on the thin haft.  With my Parkinson’s tremor under control, I’m finding other things I can’t do quite like I used to.  So, how to cut the tapers?   I don’t have a ripsaw I want to consign to green wood.  The drawknife can remove lots of material fast, but I have enough residual tremor that I don’t feel safe yet facing that long blade….  

What else do I have that can remove large amounts of material quickly?  Answer: the scrub plane.   

I set up operations on an old woodworking bench in the unheated garage below my shop.  Down there the air is cool and at ambient humidity.  With the log secured against the end stop, I “hewed” four faces enough so the log would rest stable on any side.  I settled on about 1/8” blade extension and then let the chips fly.  And fly they did.  In the next few minutes, the room was flooded with chips by the bushel.

The process I followed is similar to cutting a groove with a plow plane: starting at the far end and gradually working back to full-length.  To keep things regular, it was helpful to establish complete tapers at successively shallower angles.  I think in terms of bisecting the angle between the original parallel face and the previous tapered face and working the new taper from this midpoint.  I mostly worked the scrub with the grain, not across.

The scrub plane scoops out divots and leaves a scalloped surface.  The scallops disappeared with a few swipes of a #29 wood-bodied plane that I have for use on green wood.  You can see a few full-width shavings from the #29 on top of the pile of divots from the scrub.   

I aimed for a taper of about 2” in 16” per side, for a full included angle of about 15º.  I left the apex about 3/4” thick.  A 15º wedge may be a bit aggressive.  The steel wedges I have for starting a split are 10º-12º.  I can always cut it down, and while I’m at it now, I’ll probably make some more wedges with different angles.  The scrub plane is too much fun to stop at one or two.  


Here’s the product with a coating of end-grain sealant to slow moisture loss and, hopefully, avoid checking.  I made an identical wedge from the other end of the log and sawed the piece in half.  Red oak is probably not the ideal material for this.  It's prone to split, but it’s what I had available.   If these don’t hold up, I’m sure I can find something tougher this spring and make some more, e.g., elm. 

The scrub plane is very efficient at removing material and fun to use.  Because I have more experience shaping things with a plane than with an axe, it probably made this easier, nicer and quicker than if I’d used the axe.

[gMike]

Even green that's a lot of work just to make the wedges.  I think my solution would have been much cruder that what you did.  I think I'd have tried to cut the wedges down with a sawzall and finished up with the drawknife.  Where there is a will, there is a way!  Good for you, you found a way to get done what you needed to do despite your physical issues!

[Paul-in-Plymouth]

Mike,
I considered defining the ramps with saw cuts from the side to break things up, as you suggest, and then taking it down with drawknife or a big chisel (or even a highly cambered chisel mounted in a plane body).  Rejected the drawknife for reason given.  The sides were not smooth enough to mark a line to saw to, so then I pondered planing the sides so I could mark a decent line.   I didn’t really care how regular the sides were in the end, so figured I’d try the scrub first without sawcuts.  

I got a full-body workout doing it, but was amazed at how quickly it went.  Must have been the green wood.  I also think about the process as making a series of shorter, steeper tapers - 45º, 23º, 12º - that eventually gets down to the desired taper of about 8º.  Focusing on starting the each new taper at the intersection of the original topside and the previous taper meant the cuts were mostly short jabs - taking divots -  at least until near the end when the ramp got toward full length.

Whatever the reason, it turned out to be a lot quicker and easier than I thought it would be when I thought to try the scrub.   I was pleasantly surprised.

[JimReed@Tallahassee]

Great project! The lowly scrub is one of my go to planes. It is one of those "what would I do without it" planes.

[Paul-in-Plymouth]

I took the wedges from the garage up to the shop yesterday.  It’s warmer and drier up there.  I keep the temp in the shop in the low 60s and the relative humidity will be consistently <35% until late May.  I weighed them and measured the moisture content with a Timber Check meter.  They’re wet - every place I sampled on both wedges maxed out on the TC at ≥ 25% moisture content.

The idea now is to let them lose moisture and harden up until I need them, but not to develop internal moisture gradients and stress gradients large enough to cause them to check.  I coated them both with Endgrain Sealer from Highland, including the tapers.  That should help reduce moisture gradients but at the expense of  slowing overall moisture loss.  I can check the weight now and then to see if I sealed them up too well.  

I’ll probably make more wedges this week and treat them differently in some way, maybe only coat selected high-stress areas with endgrain sealer, so there’s a better chance of drying in my lifetime.