# Hand Plane Buying Advice



## Stevebo (Nov 11, 2014)

I'm looking to buy a hand plane for preparing edges for glue-up for a table top and also for smoothing it out.

Having read up on the various plane types I figure I'll need something like a #5 jack plane, a #7 Jointer Plane and a #4 smoothing plane, but there are soooo many options out there that I'm a bit lost making sense of them all.

New Plane Options:
When I look at Stanley I see two #4 planes:
Plane 1 at around $150

Plane 2 at around $30

Stanley seem very well regarded so I assume they're not putting out garbage, so is the price difference largely because the first one uses nicer materials, has a nice wooden handle and looks a lot better or would there be a functionality difference too?

Similarly, their website features a #5 plane that appears very reasonably priced at about $60.

In terms of functionality - should I expect good performance out of this? Looking at other brands it looks like I could have to pay several times that for a new #5 - would I be paying for form or function?

Number 7... I don't see one on their website and don't have $400 to fork out for a LN plane. Ebay appears to have a selection of used jointer planes [LINK] but I have no idea on what the various sub-models mean.

For the #7 - I'm joining boards about 4' long - do I even need it or would the #5 suffice for now?

If I do buy an old plane - are there issues I should expect if I need a replacement blade? If I buy online what are the odds of getting something bent, broken or otherwise lacking function?

Thank you in advance - any advice or help will be greatly appreciated.


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## Woodenhorse (May 24, 2011)

There are folks (Paul Sellers) who use a #4 for most everything including jointing, but I've seen him switch to a #7 when needed. I find I get most usage out of my #4 and #7 and occasionally use a #5, mostly when I'm trying to flatten a board face. So for Jointing you could conceivably get by with only a #7 or a #4. In any case it will take some practice to get good consistent results with either. As for the prices, I am assuming those are used planes you quoted. With Stanley I prefer pre-WWII from about 1915-1939. The better it was cared for the better it will perform but you will likely have to do some kind of restoration before you can use it. 
In new planes, I have not tried any of the latest generation of Stanley's so I cannot speak to their quality of late but I have seen some favorable reviews. Likewise, I have tried a Wood River (Woodcraft's brand) and liked it's overall performance. At the high end you also have Lie-Nielsen which are based on the Stanley Bedrock planes and are very finely crafted and therefore very pricey. Lee Valley's Veritas brand are also no slackers and I have a couple of their planes which I find to be very fine quality and the price is moderate. Bottom line, unless you are lucky you get what you pay for. If you can save up a couple of hundred dollars I would opt for a Veritas #4 or #4-1/2, buy an extra iron and camber the second iron more like you would a #5 and you'll get the best of both worlds. You could do the same with a #5 having one iron more cambered than the other so you can hog off wood and then change for a finer set and take a finer shaving. It's also important to have a plane with a moveable (easily adjustable) frog to vary the throat when necessary.


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## pweller (Mar 10, 2014)

I think the most important thing in a plane is the sharpness of the blade. You'll want to leave some money set aside for sharpening tools, because even if you buy something new it will probably need to be sharpened before use.

It's no different than a kitchen knife. A great, expensive, Japanese/German hand made whatever is useless if it's dull. A cheap sharp knife will cut better than a dull expensive one.

Personally, I just buy used Stanley planes on ebay. They're cheap, and yes, you'll need to fix them up. Just find one that is complete and isn't cracked, and you should be generally OK. You'll probably need to clean up some rust, flatten the sole, and sharpen the blade. If you buy one new, you'll only have to flatten the sole and sharpen the blade. :laughing:

You'll need maybe $50 for sharpening tools.


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## fareastern (Sep 19, 2014)

pweller said:


> I think the most important thing in a plane is the sharpness of the blade. You'll want to leave some money set aside for sharpening tools, because even if you buy something new it will probably need to be sharpened before use.
> 
> It's no different than a kitchen knife. A great, expensive, Japanese/German hand made whatever is useless if it's dull. A cheap sharp knife will cut better than a dull expensive one.
> 
> ...


Excellent advice!


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## Wrangler02 (Apr 15, 2011)

pweller said:


> I think the most important thing in a plane is the sharpness of the blade. You'll want to leave some money set aside for sharpening tools, because even if you buy something new it will probably need to be sharpened before use. It's no different than a kitchen knife. A great, expensive, Japanese/German hand made whatever is useless if it's dull. A cheap sharp knife will cut better than a dull expensive one. Personally, I just buy used Stanley planes on ebay. They're cheap, and yes, you'll need to fix them up. Just find one that is complete and isn't cracked, and you should be generally OK. You'll probably need to clean up some rust, flatten the sole, and sharpen the blade. If you buy one new, you'll only have to flatten the sole and sharpen the blade. :laughing: You'll need maybe $50 for sharpening tools.


Couldn't have said it better myself. Better steel can stay sharp longer, but cheaper planes can be made to work quite well. It just takes a bit of fettling.


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## Nick Sandmann (Oct 24, 2014)

If you're just jointing edges and smoothing you could skip the #5 and just grab a #4(or 4 1/2) for smoothing, and a #7 or #8 for jointing.

The #5 is typically for hogging out a lot of wood if you are flattening boards by hand which I am assuming you are doing most of the work with a power planer and just cleaning up the edges this guy wouldn't be necessary.

That said, there are a lot of uses for a #5, and my old Stanley #5 1/2 is one of the most used planes in my shop, however I "typically" don't use it for jointing edges or smoothing. If you can afford it, go for all 3 planes, if you're on more of a limited budget, based on your requirements get the jointer and the smoother.


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## Nick Sandmann (Oct 24, 2014)

also, most of the "Stanley" fan fare is for the old Stanley's manufactured prior to WWII.

I've never used a new Stanley, but I love my old ones I've found on Craigslist, and I've yet to hear anything good about the newer ones.


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## Stevebo (Nov 11, 2014)

Thank you all.

So my goal is to rip, flatten and joint the boards by hand.

I realize this may be an ambitious first project but while I don't have the space or budget for a complement of power tools I do have time and patience for doing the work all by hand, coupled with a desire to learn how to do this manually.

We'll see how it goes...


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## Nick Sandmann (Oct 24, 2014)

Stevebo said:


> Thank you all.
> 
> So my goal is to rip, flatten and joint the boards by hand.
> 
> ...


In that case definitely get all 3 planes, though I would still advise against buying brand new stanleys(the old ones are cheaper and will probably require just as must work to get working well).

Also, depending on the size of your project, this will be 1 hell of a work out. The learning curve is going to be larger for sharpening and tuning up an old plane rather than the dimensioning of your lumber. Dimensioning lumber by hand takes some skill, but if you have sharp, well tuned planes, it's really not that difficult, just a good work out  Also very time consuming, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if this is a hobby for you.


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## fareastern (Sep 19, 2014)

Stevebo said:


> Thank you all.
> 
> So my goal is to rip, flatten and joint the boards by hand.
> 
> ...


It will take a little time,but the skills you pick up will put you well ahead of the woodworkers who can only push wood through a machine.Keep an eye on your lines and pause to sharpen your planes just before they need it as sharp,rather than nearly sharp,tools make all the difference.


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## Wbwufpack (Nov 8, 2013)

pweller said:


> I think the most important thing in a plane is the sharpness of the blade. You'll want to leave some money set aside for sharpening tools, because even if you buy something new it will probably need to be sharpened before use.
> 
> It's no different than a kitchen knife. A great, expensive, Japanese/German hand made whatever is useless if it's dull. A cheap sharp knife will cut better than a dull expensive one.
> 
> ...


Can you elaborate a little more on this sharpening advice. I recently inherited some old Stanley planes and they need some work. I am planning to purchase a Norton sharpening kit for about $130 on Amazon but $50 sounds much better.

Here is the kit I am thinking about buying.

http://www.amazon.com/Norton-Waterstone-Starter-Kit-flattening/dp/B000XK0FMU


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## epicfail48 (Mar 27, 2014)

Wbwufpack said:


> Can you elaborate a little more on this sharpening advice. I recently inherited some old Stanley planes and they need some work. I am planning to purchase a Norton sharpening kit for about $130 on Amazon but $50 sounds much better.
> 
> Here is the kit I am thinking about buying.
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Norton-Waterstone-Starter-Kit-flattening/dp/B000XK0FMU


Check out the scary sharp method. Uses silicon carbide sandpaper on a flat surface, usually float glass or granite. Total startup cost is about $10 for a multigrit pack of sandpaper, and anywhere from $0-10m for the flat. Add a $10 honing guide if you must, and youre good to go


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## pweller (Mar 10, 2014)

epicfail48 said:


> Check out the scary sharp method. Uses silicon carbide sandpaper on a flat surface, usually float glass or granite. Total startup cost is about $10 for a multigrit pack of sandpaper, and anywhere from $0-10m for the flat. Add a $10 honing guide if you must, and youre good to go


This is essentially how I do it. The cheap honing guides work fine. For a flat surface, I bought a single granite/quartz tile at Home Depot. Alternatively, you can get diamond stones on ebay for pretty cheap, I got one that has a different grit on each side. For a final finish, you can use a piece of thick paper with some polishing compound on it (I use simichrome metal polish, but a lot of different things would work, or just a very fine piece of the silicon carbide sandpaper).

It's probably worthwhile to get a diamond stone, just because they don't wear out much and they always stay flat.


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## Nick Sandmann (Oct 24, 2014)

Scary sharp would be a good place to start for a minimal investment. However, if you keep up with doing a lot of hand planing, investing in a good set of stones(water, oil, diamond, etc...) is going to be cheaper in the long run. 

Sandpaper sounds cheaper up front, but you will go through a LOT of paper if you do a lot of work with your planes.


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## Wbwufpack (Nov 8, 2013)

Thanks for the advice guys. I will give this method a shot to get up and running. I will likely pick up some stones in the future.


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## Oneal-Woodworking (Apr 14, 2013)

Wbwufpack said:


> Can you elaborate a little more on this sharpening advice. I recently inherited some old Stanley planes and they need some work. I am planning to purchase a Norton sharpening kit for about $130 on Amazon but $50 sounds much better.
> 
> Here is the kit I am thinking about buying.
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Norton-Waterstone-Starter-Kit-flattening/dp/B000XK0FMU


For just a couple of dollars more you can get a Grizzly 10" wetgrinder setup that will be a LOT faster and much more accurate. 

For even more you can go with other wet sharpening systems that will give even faster and more accurate results... :smile:

It would take anyone a good while to fix this 'new' blade with just sandpaper and a flat surface:









I got perfect results fairly quickly with my Tormek. Flattened the back + put a perfect 23deg angle on this: 










Looks black in pic but that IS a mirror finish... :yes:


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## Nick Sandmann (Oct 24, 2014)

OnealWoodworking said:


> For even more you can go with other wet sharpening systems that will give even faster and more accurate results... :smile:


I'm guessing if he is shying away from the $130 price tag on the stones that a Tormek is probably out of his price range on this too. As far as the grizzly I only have experience with stones and can't comment on any of the power sharpening systems.

One note on that norton stone set. That "flattening" stone that comes with it is crap. I ordered one a couple years ago from Lee Valley because it was cheaper than a diamond plate to flatten my stones. The "flattening" stone got out of flat very quickly(couple months) and wound up in the trash bin. I now own a diamond plate solely for flattening my stones and it works great.



OnealWoodworking said:


> It would take anyone a good while to fix this 'new' blade with just sandpaper and a flat surface:


This is true, but he could always just buy a blade from Veritas and skip the back flattening process all together. I've yet to see a blade from them that required more than a minute of polishing on my finer stones to get them polished up. Their lapping process at the factory is fantastic! However if he's flattening the original blades, your power grinding solution would likely save tons of time.


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## Oneal-Woodworking (Apr 14, 2013)

Nick Sandmann said:


> *I'm guessing if he is shying away from the $130 price tag on the stones that a Tormek is probably out of his price range on this too. As far as the grizzly I only have experience with stones and can't comment on any of the power sharpening systems.*
> 
> One note on that norton stone set. That "flattening" stone that comes with it is crap. I ordered one a couple years ago from Lee Valley because it was cheaper than a diamond plate to flatten my stones. The "flattening" stone got out of flat very quickly(couple months) and wound up in the trash bin. *I now own a diamond plate solely for flattening my stones and it works great.*
> 
> ...


 
Here is a smaller grizzly wet system for @100.00

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/281487630562?lpid=82

While this is not what I would call a horrible tool - It does not come with anywhere near as many accessories (bells and whistles) as the Tormek would.

Grizzly does not even sell a decent tool for flattening / truing the stones (wheel). Fortunately Tormek accessories will fit and work with the Grizzly stuff just fine. 

This will get the stone surface back perfect in a few minutes:
http://www.amazon.com/Tormek-TT-50-...1418692302&sr=8-1&keywords=tormek+truing+tool


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## mako1 (Jan 25, 2014)

Obviously a sharp blade on any edge tool is important.With hand planes the setup is just as important.A sharp blade will not work well if the chip breaker,frog and throat opening are not correct.And the sole is not flat.
My vote would be for used Stanley "Bailey" planes.


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## fareastern (Sep 19, 2014)

OnealWoodworking said:


> For just a couple of dollars more you can get a Grizzly 10" wetgrinder setup that will be a LOT faster and much more accurate.
> 
> For even more you can go with other wet sharpening systems that will give even faster and more accurate results... :smile:
> 
> ...


 Reasonable grinding job.Just needs sharpening now-I suggest a 6000 grit water stone.


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## Oneal-Woodworking (Apr 14, 2013)

fareastern said:


> Reasonable grinding job.Just needs sharpening now-I suggest a 6000 grit water stone.


Have been shopping around for the best prices on the 4000 grit Japanese water stone...

:yes:

As far as I know - That is the finest that Tormek sells. 

If you got any suggestions as to who else may offer other quality stones that fit - It would be much appreciated Sir. :yes:


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## fareastern (Sep 19, 2014)

4000 grit will give you a good edge.Alternatively you could use an ordinary bench stone,which are available in a range of grits.


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