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A finish carpenter in Santa Fe told me he uses a 4 inch putty knife for scribing cabinets instead of a block plane, and I thought he was joking
I was doing a built in pantry in Santa Fe last spring and this old guy named Earl was doing the trim. I watched him scribe a cabinet stile to a lumpy plaster wall with a 4 inch flexible putty knife, just pushing it along and letting the blade follow the bumps. He said the knife lets him see the gap in real time, where a block plane makes him guess. I tried it on my next 3 cabinets and the fit was tighter than anything I ever got with a plane. It takes some feel though, you have to not dig in. Has anyone else heard of this or is Earl just from another planet?
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webb.ben23d ago
That trick with the putty knife works because the blade flexes with the wall instead of fighting it. I tried it on a wavy plaster job last year and the gap was way tighter than my block plane ever got. Earl sounds like he knows what he's doing.
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