066 - Luban Rabbet Block Plane first look

hi today I am going to take a quick look at a bachlin a new banner opening block plan before we get into that though I should stress that this is not a paid review this is something I have bought and it's also not going to be a review there's going to be a quick look at it as it's difficult to review tools and machinery if you have a man sufficient time to use them and find if there are any flaws or things that don't work in your workflow with that said before we get looking at the plan I'm going to tell you how I ended up at this plan rather than a different brand it is generally recognized that pre-world War two Stanley and record are pretty awesome post-world War two the quality dropped and brands like Stanley and record now Ellen produce plans that aren't really worth the price they're not necessarily flood they're not necessarily well made and often just don't perform how the brand really should or used to perform so it is quite common for people to have a whole horde of pre World War two plans that they've restored boarded a flea mugged for not very much and that way you can get quite a lot of handles for not very much money unfortunately the popularity of these pre World War two planes has meant that they are starting to get a little bit expensive I know I've sent many planes in from America that the planes are getting worse and worse quality that they're more rusted more petered broken whatever but people are charging more and more because there's other collectors or there's people wanting to use them and not a very much and so there's suddenly a market so the price been skyrocketing in Australia I think he'd struggle to find pre-world War two planes most of what you find at junk markets and on eBay not great they're very rusted they're in poor condition and often they're the more recent playing that have the plastic handles and all those other bits and pieces that aren't over the desirable so it gets to a point where you can pay fifty hundred one hundred and fifty dollars for a secondhand plane that still requires all the rust to be removed everything has to be reef flat and in the case of a chip breakers you need to fit all them down so they actually seat properly which can be quite a bit of an effort and and it's a lot of work so you might spend that new 10 hours restoring a plane that you spend 150 dollars on suddenly the value proposition isn't quite there there are two plane makers that come to mind for high-end planes that either match or exceed the old stanley plans those are Lee Nielsen and Veritas unfortunately both those brands are quite expensive certainly in Australia they are very expensive plans this new bomber plane was $109 I believe in Australia to get the equivalently Nielsen or Veritas you're looking at just under triple the price of the late Nielsen ad at 275 I believe and the Veritas one comes in about 250 so you're paying a lot of money for not a lot more so move on not many people may have heard of that brand there I suppose the model line of chemical quenching I'm not sure on the pronunciation which as the name might imply as a chinese-made plume well that might not sell many people on the plane they are also rebranded under a few different names including Wood River in North America and Wood River is generally considered a very excellent value for money option between the bargain secondhand flames that you have to be able to work on and the higher end Veritas and Lee Valley and Lee Nelson without all said let's take a closer look at this particular plane as I mentioned this is a rabbiting block plane rabbiting in this case means that it's at the open guy lots or openings there and the blade extends all the way to the edge of the body which lets you rabbit things this is compared to a more traditional block plane which the blade doesn't go quite all the way so one of the reasons I bought this plane is this is my existing block plane which as you can see is quite a bit longer interestingly the weight is about the same between the two this particular Stanley block plane the number 130 doesn't really have an adjustment mechanism you loosen it loosen the lever cap like that and you slide it back and forth it can be very fiddly to get a good result in contrast the lube and you can still loosen that but then you've got the blends of Nora style adjuster to bring the blade back and forth so that it's easier to adjust ya out of the very uninteresting box the plane comes set up and covered in grease so you'll into a disassembled by plan I use a citrus cleaner degreaser and the blade is sharp enough to take some shavings but like with most planes other than the very highest end you'll need to do some final honing out of the box the sole the plane seems pretty flat the back of the blade seems fairly flat so I'll disassemble everything and we can take a closer look if we put the blade cap - aside for a moment feeling around these edges there's no sharp edges they've all been broken which is great which means that you're not going to cut yourself on the overall fit and finish is pretty good they're using the adjuster here with the blade in it obviously there's very little slack and that can be shown by having a look at how much or how little room there is in that slot there that was larger there'd be more slack between advancing and retracting the blade on the bottom I have some scratches which I believe was actually from the red gum I attacked with it first so kind of ignore those it may just be superficial I haven't really investigated getting back onto sharp edges other than here the mouth opening and maybe these edges which need to be square nothing is particularly sharp and that is a good thing the paint on it is nice it's fairly smooth and even coverage no globs and the brass will no knobs feel great and there's a nice detent here so let's look at the blade it's a fairly common T style blade common for what we're rabbiting plants that is with nothing more than the lube and logo etched into it it's not engraved and deeper than that the back is relatively flat let's see if you can see that you might just have to take my word for it and we haven't done any particular flattening of that so I'll grab my stone up I can see that right up to the edge is nail shiny so those four the high spots so perhaps slightly scold down like that which is not necessarily a bad thing as it means that it won't stop the plane from seating properly looking at the bevel you can see that we're starting to get a nice mirror shine I'll get a nice close-up of them though we haven't spent a lot of time working on them out of the box it came at pretty much bang on 25 degrees which is what we are wanting a sharpener that this is a low angle plane so that angle plus the angle the bed is the actual angle that you're cutting it I mentioned that these are the same as the Wood River planes and that is almost entirely true obviously they would have Wood River branding on them but the one area where would River plants apparently differ is the blades themselves and they are believe it's a to seal blood I'm not sure what this is I'll put a link to the specs in the description below well if I do a review on these I will go into more of a breakdown on whether these blades are suffice level.if Lube and produce a rabbiting block plane before Wood River you can get that replacement blade for this quite easily I found that assembling these can be a little tricky as there is no edges to nicely square up the blade easiest way is to squeeze the two edges of the blade and then it should be relatively straight from the most important question other than prices does this actually perform now remember this is not as sharp as it could be as we have just spent the time to sharpen the properly what I'm finding is that despite being quite a small planet is very heavy I'm finding that is one of the advantages of metal planes is that that extra weight allows me to apply the effort more correctly so I can get a pretty good shading so not quite thin enough to see the text on camera but you just see through that and this is some fairly rubbish construction grade pine hopefully you can see that perhaps not a mundane to take a photo but the text is on the ruler is actually visible through the shavings so well there's not an indication of much the blade is able to take a relatively sharp edge well the reasons we've got a rabbiting block plane rather than a standard block plane is for cleaning up things like shoulders of Tenon's or rebates or half-laps thatthat sort of stuff with a regular block plane the blade doesn't go right to the edge so there's no way you can clean up all of a tenon you'd end up leaving a shoulder on the shoulder so as I said this is not a review this is more of a preview I suppose a first look at there may be issues that arise down the track and whether the blade retains its edge very long how difficult it is to sharpen compared to other blades that sort of stuff I'm a big fan of the weight the look and the finish on that everything feels pretty good in hand having my palm on this cap on I guess and finger or thumb in there is very comfortable one thing I'm not a massive fan on is the very narrow mouth opening now I don't know if that's actually going to be an issue but it does mean that I can't hold out very much material time of a block plane that being said not really designed to be helping out a lot of material more for a touch up finishing type thing and if I do then hog out a lot of material particularly in a rabbit I have this record number 78 plane which is a rapping Phyllis - plane which is designed to hog out a lot of material I picked mine up from fine tools Australia I have no association with them but I found that JSON over fun tools is very helpful and quick to respond to emails so shout out to those guys they've got a range of planes I've got a number four and a low-angle jack on order they have sold out of a lot of their stuff but they have a shipment on the way which should be arriving hopefully quite shortly they also have a range of also they have many cranking planes some wooden bodied ones which I guess come from another manufacturer and they have a range of the check made narrow axe chisels which they're quite interesting while I do like my new newly handled LD chisels the check ones then sorry the narrow axe chisels are highly regarded so I'd be interested in being up some of them mortising chisels to see how they go at the moment I'm not doing a lot of mortising by hand so it's not a high rush but it's certainly something I'll be looking into in the future thanks for watching

Channel: The Wood Knight

Views: 52,577

Rating: 4.8010473 out of 5

Keywords: Block Plane

Id: P1g4hhv7U_k

Length: 13min 36sec (816 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2015