If you take the blade from an old coffin type smoothing plane, grind it square and hone as you would a cabinet scraper, then by using it back-to-front, you have an effective scraper plane, providing you pare a bit off the mouth so that there is an escapement for shavings.
Incidentally, grinding a blade square is what you can do to trim Formica, because the conventional edge lasts merely seconds otherwise. But you need an iron bottom plane, obviously. (Tip from Robert Wearing)
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