Spear & Jackson CSP4 No. 4 Smoothing Plane

This! This is what affordable tools should look and feel like! This sucker is heavy, I mean HEAVY. I barely have to put pressure down to get a good feathery shaving. Out of the box, the foot was flat enough that I didn't feel it necessary to sand it at all. The blade was sharp and had a great shape so I used it straight away. I was able to tune this baby within about 2 minutes and it got to work immediately. I only sharpened the blade after 30 hours or so of intense work, but it sharpened up in less than 20 minutes and then it was back to work. She is as sturdy as it gets and the weight and size feel good in the hands. I can use the pinch technique for edges or grab both handles and go for the gusto, full bore. Honestly, I wish Spear and Jackson made a spokeshave. I would buy that in a heartbeat!

As someone new to hand tool wood working getting this I was expecting to find an Amazon quality item. And to my surprise it only needed to be sharpened. My only gripe is the coating on the bottom comes off quick but for the price and what I got I don't care about those little things.

If you are a beginner, and have the need for #4 then this plane is for you. Know this, I have a Stanley #62 low angle plane and a Wood River #5 1/2. Any new hand plane takes some prep. This plane is no exception. The one major thing that **ANY** plane must have is an absolute flat sole. My Stanley and Wood River planes were perfectly flat. That is the one area this plane fails at. Fortunately it's not so far out that it's not correctable. It will take an hour or so smoothing on a flat surface to get it close enough were it's good enough. The Good: 1. Price, Keep in mind that you get what you pay for. 2. The lever cap prep took about 25 minutes 3. The Chip breaker took only about 5 minutes of prep time and was pretty much flat. 4. The blade was straight and flat. It took about 20 minutes to have it very sharp. The Bad: 1. The sole is going to take some time to get prepped. 2. The blade is very thin, too thin really. If their blade was .030 thicker I would buy a dozen of these. 3. The frog I is not machined as good as it could be. I did flatten it as best I could. 4. I'm not a fan of this style lever cap. But it's functional. All said it's a really good value. I was able to get it taking .001 shavings within an hour. A thicker blade and a more traditional lever cap along with a better sole surface grind at the factory would make this plane a strong competitor to some planes that are literally 10X the price. If you are a beginner, I can not stress enough the prep stage of **ANY** plane. Do a YouTube search for a video called 32 seconds to sharp. I won't mention his name here, but the person teaching this is giving you a master class in hand planes and how and why they operate. Know this, a properly sharpened and prepared hand plane makes your wood prep so smooth there isn't a grade of sandpaper that can make it smoother. I make cutting boards and picture frames out of hardwood. I don't use sandpaper. That is the kind of precision a properly tuned hand plane can get you. Once the prep is done all you ever have to do after is sharpen your blade. The rest is a 1 time thing. You do need a few other tools to achieve this. I have a diamond plate with 400 and 1000 grit, this is used to prep your sharpening stones and to do some blade prep. I have a 1000/6000 whet stone and a 12,000 grit stone. You also need a small thin 6" pocket rule. Watch the video and learn their use.

You see, I don't know much about planes so I didn't want to spend a fortune. After research on what a really good plane is I opted for this because of its price and features. If weight is any indication, this is heavy. Brass and iron fittings. Wooden (real) handles. The first thing I did was take it apart and examine each piece. The blade might be a little thin but I have nothing to compare. All the knobs and threads work as they should. If you're going to buy one (any plane) learn HOW they work before purchase. You will have to sharpen and flatten the shoe on any new plane so study how to do that. Once you get the parts, you'll do fine. They ought to sell this in a kit with a sharpening stone and a selection of sand paper but I already had those. Even if you didn't use this it'd look great on the shelf!

The motto "you get what you pay for" certainly rings true here. I bought this to turn into a scrub plane, so I had lower expectations than I would for a true smoother. This plane is very roughly finished, so I took it apart, sanded off most of the excessively thick, unevenly applied paint and sanded down the very roughly cast frog. I then gave the interior a light coat of spray paint, which greatly improved its looks. Since I was converting it a scrub plane, I didn't even check the sole for flatness, but the sides were reasonably square. I also removed the tote and front knob, which were very roughly and sloppily finished with blobs of whatever finish the factory used. I sanded them down to bare wood, then applied a coat of linseed oil and sanded over with 220 grit and then applied a second coat. I then reground the blade to a heavy camber and honed it to razor sharp. All told, the whole process took about 5 hours. It seems the blade maintains its edge reasonably well, but I'd guess this had a lot to do with the heavy camber and steep angle (I added a 35 degree secondary bevel). As a scrub plane, I'm happy with it's performance. If I actually wanted a good smoothing plane, I would have returned it as soon as I opened the box. As other reviewers have noted, trying to flatten a badly bellied plane bottom is not only not worth the effort, but is nearly impossible without hours and hours of work.

Well made product, nice looking and works great. Now a valuable part of my shop

I must have gotten a good one. Mine didn't take much work to set up. This is my first hand plane. I have used them from time to time but never owned one. I got this to use as a scrub plane. Once I got it I took it apart to check and clean up the casting and milling and such. Everything is fine. Some very minor touch ups. The sole came fairly flat and it took no time to straiten that out. Lapped it on 80-150-220 grit sand paper. The handle was a little crudely carved but again that was easily fixed with some sandpaper. I have an old really thick cutting broad made from an bowling alley lane. Over the years the center dished. I used this plane as a scrub plane, what would have take hours with sander only took a few minutes. I probably removed about an 1/8 to level everything out. I've decided to get another iron to set up normally for smoothing. So that this can do double duty as a finishing and scrub plane. I'm very happy. I do wish the rear handle was a bit chunkier to fit my hand a little better. But all in all that is not a big deal.

I'm a fairly inexperienced wood worker, and this is only my second hand-plane. All-in-all I really like it, especially over the prospect of paying $100+ for other options. For context, the first one I got was a harbor freight. That one took a lot of work to be usable, and even then is still eh on ergonomics and adjustments. This plane also takes a lot of work to get it working really well, but in my case it was mainly just two areas. 1. I had to basically recreate the blades edge from scratch and 2. the sole was way out of flat. Both are very tedious and, if you're a beginner like me, probably means going through a lot of sandpaper. For the sole, I'd recommend starting out with a really low grit (like 80) and then finishing off with 120. As for sharpening from brand new, check out Rex Kruger or Paul Sellers on youtube, they have much better guide for that than I could ever give here. Once mine was in good shape, I found I really appreciated the quality of the adjustment components and the ergonomics. It feels very sturdy and in my opinion pleasing to the eye. As for a recommendation, I'd say it's a definite yes. If you're going to use hand planes, I feel like knowing how to maintain/restore them is part of the experience, and at least with this one you get a nice product afterwards. I don't see myself replacing this tool for a very long time, and if I wanted an easier option, I'd have just gone with power planer.

Está muy bien. Si ocupa preparación previa, pero no es muy complicado. A pesar de ser un poco más barato que un Stanley, me ha servido de maravilla a mí como principiante.

Item arrived broken

Not used yet, but quality seems to be very good. It will be very usefull in the future.

Works very well, specially at this price. Shaving very thin cuts once set up and sharpened. Its made me fall in love with hand planers.

I've seen a few reviews complaining about the sharpness of this plane and so I thought I'd offer my opinion on it. It's a nice little plane, fully functional, acceptable quality, and .................blunt. So what. Every bladed tool you will buy will need sharpening before use. It took me all of 90 seconds to sharpen, and another couple of minutes setting the plane. Now I have a very nice piece of kit that didn't cost the world. But a word of advice. If you're going to buy one, you have to invest in some diamond plates and a leather strop. You not only need these for initial set up, but also to keep the iron sharp going forward. Hope this helps.