Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Our local woodworking club has dozens of members who have this exact plane from Great Neck. Since I was raised in a violin shop and have been using planes of all sorts for over fifty years, the other guys often rely on me for advice when they purchase planes or need help sharpening and tuning their new planes. In that humble capacity, I have fettled at least a dozen of these planes in the last year, mainly because they are available locally from HD. So... I am very familiar with this product! The blades are a bit thin by today's "boutique-plane" standards, but Great Neck uses real carbon tool steel of sufficiently small grain-structure and hardness. Great Neck blades will take a keen edge and hold it quite well. How well? Not as well as a Hock, LN, or Veritas A2 blades... but well enough to plane all American hardwoods and a few exotics too. Thin blades are prone to chatter unless firmly and accurately bedded to the frog, but tuning the frog & bedding is part of the tune-up process you always expect when buying any plane in this price-range. Thin blades are tricky to sharpen by hand because the bevel is smaller than on a thick blade. That is easily solved by using a cheap honing guide. You can buy those or make them. The soles are not beautifully smooth like expensive planes, but that is easily fixed in about ten minutes with sandpaper on glass. Plane soles DO NOT need to be perfectly smooth for the plane to work well. However, the blades MUST be sharp and the sole must be reasonably flat. (within a thousandth or two) Again, sandpaper on a piece of sheet glass will remedy the flatness issue in minutes. You can also place your sandpaper on marble tiles (available at any Home Center) that cost about 2 bucks. I use a granite flat block at home simply because I have one, but I do not carry that heavy thing to the woodworking club. There I use plate glass for the sole-sanding. For rough soles, start with rough sandpaper; as low as 100 grit. Work progressively through the grades until you reach 600 grit (wet-or-dry). You can go farther to achieve a polished sole, but that is unnecessary for the plane to work well. Reasonable flatness is paramount. Perfect "mirror" smoothness is NOT. The point is, sole-flatness is important! But NO plane in this range has the same finish as boutique planes. ALL planes in this range require a little work, that's all. To bed the plane-assembly to the frog, use mill-bastard files, preferably with safe-edges. A few minutes with a flat file makes the frog smooth enough to seat the blade very well. I have seen a couple of these come in with ill-fitting handles. That was easily fixed by either: filling the hole with a dowel and re-drilling ~ or ~ Just tightening the handle's adjustment screw. In one case, the owner filled the hole with epoxy and screwed it down. That handle will never rattle again! The adjustment-levers and screws on some of these are a little too tight & rough when new. We solve that by using toothpaste (as a mild abrasive) on the threads. With the plane disassembled, unscrew the knob, apply toothpaste to the threads and rotate the knob fully forward and back ten or fifteen times. Clean off the toothpaste, oil lightly and replace the knob. You will immediately notice an improvement in the smoothness! After cleaning everything, oil all the moving parts before reassembling with the sharp blade. All planes of this type have some back-lash in the adjustment, so sneak up on your depth-adjustment a quarter turn at a time. Check the shaving to see if you need lateral adjustment, then re-set the depth. After this process, all of us can get gossamer-thin and even-thickness shavings in the one to two thousandths range. So, my high rating is NOT for how great the tool IS when you get it, but how effective it can be when you tune it. True, ...it does require some fettling to get the sole flat and smooth. All of these planes needed at least a little filing of the frog and some cleaning before use. Absolutely all of them require a good sharpening. So if you have a little know-how, these are a great value that can serve you for a lifetime. You won't get the bragging rights, instant gratification or "pride-of-ownership" that boutique tools lend. But for those of us who want value over convenience, these are fine tools and a great bargain. Regarding another reviewer's problem with the squareness... So what? A plane's sides have absolutely nothing to do with how well the bottom of the plane works. The only time side-to-sole squareness can be an issue is when using a shooting-board. The curious thing about that reviewer's gripe... THIS is NOT a block plane! (Any plane with a bevel-up design is technically called a "block" plane. We tend to think of block planes as the small hand-sized planes, but bevel-up designs are used in larger planes too, ... "Jack planes" for instance. ) This plane that the other reviewer reviled for its out-of-squareness is a "smoothing plane" with the bevel down! It is not the type of plane we use on shooting-boards for shooting edges, end-grain or miters. So why would the squareness be an issue? I do not know... Perhaps he, like many a new woodworker, is confused by magazine articles or brainwashed by advertising hype. Consider this... Even IF you wanted to use an out-of-square plane for a shooting board, you can easily square the ramp of a shooting-board with tape. I have done this exact thing for numerous friends and fellow woodworkers. We always use a replaceable ramp on the shooting-boards anyway, since ramps wear with use. A removable-replaceable ramp allows you to easily lift the ramp and place shim stock (or tape) under the ramp (on the low side), thus squaring the sole to the work. I have seen the expensive shooting boards in Fine Woodworking and other magazines. They don't work any better than mine which costs only a buck or two to make. If you used an out-of-square cheap plane (as several of our club's members do) ...just shim the shooting board's ramp! So, partly in response to the other negative review, which I feel is completely unfounded, and partly because I have lots of experience with this exact plane and many others like it, I wanted to share this information. Perhaps some who read this can save some money yet get the results they need. At the very least, I hoped to dispel the MYTH that plane soles must be perfectly perpendicular to the sides. Think about it. The only time that would make a difference is when using a shooting board. This is not a "bevel-up" or "block" plane for shooting-boards anyway. Even if it was, the squareness issue is no issue at all if you have some shims around. If you need a decent smoothing plane for woodworking, this will do well with a little tune-up and it's a great bargain. As I stated, have been using hand-planes all my life. I should also mention; I own several high-end planes by Lie-Nielsen, Veritas and even one Bridge-City plane I received as a present. I have two E.C.E. planes ( that I love!) and I have three of the Rali planes. I maintain an absurd collection of Japanese, Taiwanese and Chinese planes. I make wooden "Krenov-style" planes for fellow woodworkers, have helped several guys build planes from those wonderful Hock kits. I can't afford to buy those gorgeous handmade infill planes, but I have used many, made and still own a few. So... If there was ever anyone qualified to review a plane, or another review about a plane, I'm that guy. This plane is not expensive, but it is just fine for most woodworking. Even haughty tool-snobs need a cheap plane or two for rough tasks or a traveling tool kit. This is a great bargain choice for everyone.