Back in 2007 I bought one of these to convert one of my No. 4 smoothers in to a scraper. As it turned out, I never really had a decent go at using it.
Quoting direct from the Lee Valley website:
This Veritas product will convert any plane 2″ or wider (Record, Stanley, Footprint, etc.) into a very accurate and highly controllable scraping plane.
All you have to do is remove the regular blade/cap iron and replace it with the Veritas insert. The plane’s own lever cap holds everything in place and you still have full use of the depth and lateral adjustment mechanisms. In addition, the insert has an integral-tilt mechanism that makes fine adjustment dead easy.
The great advantage of this insert is that it fits all standard plane bodies from #4 to #8. It comes with a 2″ scraper blade (0.016″ thick), bevelled and honed with a hook on it, ready to go. 2 3/8″ blades are available separately for #6, #7 and #8 planes.
I put the insert in an old Turner No. 4 Smoother (and for those who don’t know Turner planes – orange is not the original colour for the nose).
Insertion was simple with the blade being replaced by the V-shaped insert, the original lever cap positioned and the plastic nose piece on top of the lever cap and held in place by the lever cap screw.
The angle of the scraper blade is adjusted using the brass screw.
The position of the blade is adjusted via loosening of the grub screws on the blade holder and manually adjusting the blade. The planes original depth adjustment wheel gives some level of depth adjustment for the scraper blade – but it does move it forward in the mouth of the plane.
I’ve read a few reviews of this insert and most seem to think it wasn’t very good, but there were a couple of complementary reviews. I suspect Veritas realised that it wasn’t really all that good and they had stopped making them by the time I bought mine. I’m of the opinion that a dedicated scraper would be far better (but also more expensive).