# Mercy...cheap, cheaper and cheapest



## allpurpose (Mar 24, 2016)

My customer gave me these cheapo planes with a "lifetime professional woodworker™ warranty" of course made in India and the web site no longer exists..$9.99 so you know they're quality! Upon closer inspection the bed is actually quite square, but the rest of the parts are about as cheap as can be. The block plane has several plastic pieces, but I'm going to go ahead and see if they're salvagable with better parts. We'll see over time if any of them will hold up . There's also a Stanley 220 block plane I suspect is one of the newer cheapo's, but we'll see about it as well. Someone hit a nail I believe so the blade, newish as it is has a couple nicks in the cutting surface, but they're not so deep as to be irrepairable..I may just go ahead and order a Hock blade, but we'll see..
For the price I can't beat em. That doesn't mean I have to ever use them and I might even give them to a newbie woodworker if they're rotten enough.. Still, free is free. I've seen worse and even owned worse. My first ever Stanley was one of those twin screw adjustment POS's. I finally gave up, rounded the blade to turn it into a standby scrub plane and it actually works ok for that..








A makeshift soda can chip breaker?


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## allpurpose (Mar 24, 2016)

Kind of tinkering around with the "smoothing" plane and I think the only adjustment is how far I have to throw it to reach the trash can.. Actually it might be made to be usable, but the chip breaker is absolutely useless. It will not flatten to the blade and is pre-bent upwards on the right lip.. IDK..maybe one for parts might actually make it into a useable plane, but right out of the box? You would have better luck using a box of wet Cherios to plane anything..


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## allpurpose (Mar 24, 2016)

The cheap little block plane cuts pretty good after honing it. I'm not wild about the plastic parts, but they don't really affect it like they might on a larger smoothing plane. All in all well worth the purchase price of $0.00.. The smoothing plane? Ehhhh..might be worth a whopping -$9.99, but hey..free is still free.


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## AJ. (Feb 22, 2012)

I would keep them around.
Yet this does remind me of a choice quote I read a long time ago:
I am not rich enough to buy cheap tools.


Make of that what you will.


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## Tool Agnostic (Aug 13, 2017)

Keep them around as teaching aids:

* If you can get these to work, everything else will seem easy.
or
* What not to buy.


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## m.n.j.chell (May 12, 2016)

Paint the plastic parts to make them look more expensive and put display them with all the other planes. 
Looks impressive, like "Stumpy Nubs", when you have 43 planes racked behind you on the wall.  
I like his videos, but not being a hoarder, the display of tools that will never be used just doesn't "do it" for me.

In case you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic. 


allpurpose said:


> I might even give them to a newbie woodworker if they're rotten enough.


Would you do this to prevent them from getting better and becoming "competition"?  Terrible idea, giving a newbie bad tools.


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## allpurpose (Mar 24, 2016)

I'm really quite surprised just how flat the sole of the smoothing plane actually is for being so cheap. I ran it across sandpaper on flat glass and got almost zero dishing. From front to back it's nice and flat and side to side is pretty good as well. It's the parts like the chip breaker, frog (covered by cheap paint and bits of crud from the casting) that makes it not so desirable, but those are really minor issues that can all be fixed with better parts. I'm kind of thinking that an old beat up Stanley might be worth it for the parts and use this one for the base alone and the few decent parts it still has.. I was joking about giving it to a newbie..I wouldn't wish garbage on anyone.. Ok, I admit it. My bench looks like a trash pile today.. I'll clean it up tomorrow night probably. I have steps to tear out and rebuild for the customer tomorrow though.. Fun, fun, fun dragging treated lumber across the back yard. I really need to get several years younger quickly!


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## allpurpose (Mar 24, 2016)

I'm not sure if it's the frog assembly or the chip breaker and the hole in it where the frog assembly catches or both, but the most shallow it'll go is about an 8th inch cut like cutting slabs at a time. Perhaps I'll see if one of my stanley's will fit or not.. Skip it..the frog is trash..the lateral adjustment doesn't work at all.. Damned..nice flat sole and the rest is trash.. Wouldn't you know it?


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## David Nickell (Jul 6, 2020)

Giving a beginner cheap tools is a good way to get them to move on to something else. Just my opinion.


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## m.n.j.chell (May 12, 2016)

allpurpose said:


> the most shallow it'll go is about an 8th inch cut


Yep, useless if it can't withdraw the blade completely. Perhaps it's already a replacement blade and it's too long for the planer?


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## allpurpose (Mar 24, 2016)

mikechell said:


> Yep, useless if it can't withdraw the blade completely. Perhaps it's already a replacement blade and it's too long for the planer?


It's a cheap knock off #4 from India and was still wrapped in the original plastic inside the original box never even opened. The original owner passed away a few years ago and his surviving spouse gave me several old tools, the two planes in the box above were among them. From my understanding he was a lot like my own father when it came to tools. Apparently he was the kind of guy who wanted to learn this stuff, but never really did. Like a lot of people that doesn't stop them from buying cheap tools never quite understanding just what a waste of time and money they really are. That's not to say all inexpensive tools are a complete waste, but a great deal of them certainly are useless.
Perhaps someone really ought to start a comprehensive collection of the least useful tools and write a good website explaining why each one is so useless and which ones the general public should avoid at all costs..
I don't have a problem with people trying to save a few bucks, but so many of the tools sold by even reputable retailers are worse than useless, they're downright dangerous in the hands of the illinformed. As far as giving it to a beginner that comment was a joke. I wouldn't do that. I might give it away with the understanding that it's useless, but I wouldn't give it to someone trying to learn how to do woodworking.


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## JayArr (Sep 18, 2018)

There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey.
John Ruskin


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## fareastern (Sep 19, 2014)

I have a surprising tale about a cheap plane and its all true.Several years ago I saw a brass smoothing plane in ebay,no name anywhere on it and it had a Norris style cut depth control without the skew facility.Absolute rubbish-the sole was higher in the middle than at the ends and very thin.There wasn't enough metal to flatten it by abrasion so I stripped the plane to a bare casting and used a hammer and block of wood to get it almost flat-at which point I used fine sandpaper to lose the pimples that had appeared.A bit of sharpening and adjusting and I actually made a few shavings,just to prove a point.

It sat on a shelf s a reminder not to buy junk until a year or so ago when I decided the lesson had been learned and I could make better use of the space.So I took it to an auction house for inclusion in their next sale thinking that somebody might buy it as an ornament-maybe a bar or restaurant.It came as a great shock to find somebody had paid five times as much for it as I did.I hope they bought it for display or it will be a more expensive lesson than mine was.Although the second part of the lesson was that somebody or other will buy about anything.


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