Amazing Indian Hand-Planes

all this summer I'm on the hunt for affordable high quality hand planes that anybody can just go on the internet and order and I'll tell you what this hunt cannot be over soon enough for me if you've been tuning into the woodwork for human series you saw me make this quick basic shooting board and shoot some boards straight and square with my inexpensive twelve 404 hand plane and I gotta tell you I am just about fed up with this thing not only is it weak and chintzy and difficult to adjust it is not square it is really really not square and that makes it very difficult to shoot square edges with it so as much as I've really enjoyed working with and fixing up the 12400 for playing it's just reached the end of its useful life even for our ultra basic woodwork for humans projects it is time to step up to something more professional and luckily I think I found something I've actually found to some pests this is the Grizzly 10-inch smoothing plane and this is the Bighorn 19 3/16 adjustable smoothing bench Jack plane in marketing guys did you did you get enough words in there yeah enough and you might notice that these two planes look similar surprisingly similar and they also look surprisingly good for the price so I had to know where they were made and where they came from him I did a lot of research and it turns out both of these planes were manufactured by a company called soba industries in wait for it Delhi India it turns out that India is actually a manufacturer of some very high quality woodworking hand tools oh and they're also the world's largest democracy so yeah good job India okay so these two planes are not identical but they are extremely similar for instance the frogs adjusting mechanisms handles and bodies are identical now the lever caps are a little bit different this one has a screw mechanism and this one has a cam lever but aside from that they're both made out of chromed cast iron and they even have the same tool marks on them now the real giveaway with both of these planes is the Frog adjustment screw it's a really unusual design that I've never seen before it's identical on both these planes and it exactly matches the planes in the sobah industries catalog that's how I know that these came from the same Factory and which factory they came from but despite all these similarities they're not exactly the same and the differences are significant enough that I want to look at them separately let's start with this one this is the Bighorn bench smoothing Jack Cuisinart whatever and I bought this for $37 with Free Shipping now weirdly in the two or three weeks since I bought this the price has shot up to 50 bucks which is a big junk but it's really nothing to worry about because this exact same plane is sold under a number of different brand names so in addition to Bighorn you can also grab this under the Draper and faithful names or if you're in the UK you can get it under the Speer and Jackson name no matter which brand you buy they all come in at about 45 46 dollars after shipping and they are the same except for minor cosmetic details so it doesn't seem to matter which brand you buy shop around find the best deal and pull the trigger on the one that's cheapest I believe links to all of these down in the description so for under fifty bucks with Free Shipping you cannot expect these planes to work straight out of the box you're gonna have to do some preparation to them I'm gonna get started with the Big Horn which was the less expensive when I bought it this is pretty much a straightforward copy of a basic stanley plain from like the sweetheart or post-war era here is my day-to-day user for comparison and you can tell these are almost exactly the same plane what I particularly like about the Bighorn is that it's got the cam lever on the cap very quick and easy to adjust and the big adjustment wheel which you can grab really easily and it spins super smoothly that makes adjusting the blade depth very preparing this plane is really straightforward I started by checking that the sides are square to the base and they're very square so this plans gonna make an effective shooting plan now right off the jump I noticed that the handle was loose and I couldn't tighten it anymore no matter how hard I turned it with a screwdriver so I took off the attachment bolt and ground it just a little bit shorter on my bench grinder that gave me the clearance I needed to tighten that thing down a lot harder and get that handle to be rock-solid it was a quick fix and now that problem is solved next I checked the bottom by coloring in the sole of the plane with a sharpie all the way from toe to heel and then giving it a couple of rubs on sandpaper stuck to some glass now what I see here is that the bottom is pretty flat this would probably work ok straight out of the package I've seen planes with very uneven soles lots of high and low spots this has two pronounced high spots on either side but they run the full length of the plane and it's just a little bit hollow in the middle that's pretty good I can just keep grinding that on the sand paper stuck to glass until the entire bottom is smooth and polished it only takes me about five minutes and the bottom of this plane is good to go next I'm gonna look at the iron and the cap iron now the iron needs to be flat and polished for about the first half inch on the back this is very important for the planes performance and I have to say the iron here was a little bit disappointing not only was it very much not flat it also had really heavy tool marks and a pronounced hollow in the middle of the iron so I had to spend a lot of time grinding this on sandpaper and I finally finished it up with a diamond hone to get a flat and polished section on the back for the chip breaker to meet to this part is annoying but I also think this is where some of your cost savings are coming in if they were doing this preparation work at the factory your cost for this plane would go way up so doing it yourself is part of how you're gonna get this plane at an affordable price I was actually kind of happy to see that it took me a while to grind away that hollow on the back of the iron because that means that iron is hard and tough it seems like good quality steel and given the choice I'd rather they give me a good piece of steel and let me take the time to prepare it that's fine with me the cap iron for this play was kind of like the iron it was a little bit rough so I ground a knife-edge on the bottom and then smooth and refined the whole thing both with sandpaper and with my oil stones while I was there I honed and sharpened the bevel of the iron also on my oil stones then I made it together the iron and the cap iron which is also called the chip breaker and I checked to make sure that there was no light passing between the two of them this tells me that I have an excellent solid meeting surface between them and chips aren't gonna get stuck in there and jam the plane with all this done it was time to actually test the plan and I did that in a variety of ways I tried it on the edge of a board where it gave me an excellent surface and light feathery shavings I took off the corners of that board and the plane was good at that it handled easily and wasn't too heavy I did face grain on highly figured wood and again I got excellent shavings and a very smooth shimmery surface this would be ready for finishing if I needed it to be and then I plowed the plane through some tough end grain and it cut very well better than really any block plane I've ever owned and just as good as my other plants overall the performance of this plane was excellent and I have no complaints now on to the Grizzly plane it is extremely similar to the Big Horn plane a couple quick differences first of all it's got a powder coated body this thin flat matte coating on it instead of the thick shiny paint on the Big Horn you wouldn't think this would matter but the Big Horn is already showing chipping and flaking just from a couple days in the shop whereas this powder coat is still 100% undamaged so that seems like a decent feature the other big difference is it the chip breaker on the Grizzly is a more advanced and robust design instead of just taking a thin piece of sheet metal and stamping it into a curve the manufacturer made the chip breaker with a machined knife edge along the top this is a surprisingly high-end feature for a budget plane to have you typically only see this on something like a Veritas plane and there really surprised that the manufacturer was willing to put in this extra time and effort for a plane that you get for 50 bucks shipped now preparing this plane was almost identical to preparing the big horn I flattened the bottom and it had the exact same level of flatness good on both edges in the middle about five minutes to fix I flattened the iron and it was the same deal as the other one heavy machine marks very hollow in the middle kind of tedious to get fixed but once it's done you'll probably never have to do it again the machined chip breaker was very well done and crisp but the edge of it was kind of rough so I spent some time refining and polishing that on the sandpaper and then my oil stones I checked that for a fit and also honed and polished the bevel of the iron while I was at it i sharpened this plane and the other one to my usual smoothing plane setup was just a light camber across the iron with all this work done I ran the Grizzly through the exact same tests that I used on the big horn I did edges faces and endgrain and this plane performed almost exactly the same way easy to use good surfaces held its edge really well a really solid plane all together so at this point I'm sure you're thinking okay these planes are basically identical I should just find whichever one is cheaper and buy it and I wish it was that simple but it isn't I've been using both of these planes for a couple of days and I've noticed a pretty significant problem with the big horn the cheaper of the two of them when I did my initial tests I did all of them using a very light setting of the blade because that's what I use most often in my day to day work but also use a medium setting and even a heavy setting for quick stock removal depending on what I'm doing so one of the reasons I like a mechanically adjustable plan I can get a bunch of different cuts with minimum screwing around as I was testing this plane further and I went for a medium cut or a heavy cut the plane just wouldn't do it the iron just wouldn't advance to more than a very light cut which was puzzling to me because this seemed like a really great plane overall I took it apart and I realized the problem was that the screw that holds the iron and the cap iron together was bottoming out in its space in the chip breaker he just couldn't travel far enough forward this bummed me out for a minute but then I thought this isn't really a big deal I'll just mark the spot where it's hitting take that over to my bench grinder grind away a little bit of metal reinstall that screw and it shouldn't be a problem and I did get plenty of travel at that and I still couldn't get the blade to advance much further and I noticed that the blade adjusting fork was actually slipping off the adjusting wheel as it got more towards the end of its travel okay that's not a huge problem this is made of stamped steel so I just grabbed a pair of pliers squeeze that thing together for a better fit and it didn't slip off anymore and I still couldn't take a heavier shaving with this plane when I finally figured out is it the adjustment fork which has a little bit of a divot coming out of it that engages with the chip breaker well that little divot is too short and it's not shaped very well so it doesn't engage with the chip breaker the way it needs to as the chip breaker an iron get further down their travel this little divot just slips out of the adjustment hole and it won't connect anymore so it literally can't push the blade out further and this is no kind of a problem honestly the whole point having a plane like this is to be able to make several different cuts and get different adjustments quickly and easily now this plane is good enough in general and these planes have a good enough reputation and I'd be willing to bet this is just a quality control issue I just got one that was bad in some way that's totally fine if you can find one of these and it's at a good price and you can return it I would still think buying just whichever one is the cheaper is totally fine this is the big horn the cheaper one that you can tell is cheaper because it has paint on the body the more expensive powder coated grizzly plane on the other hand has none of these issues and it's clearer than in the factory they paid more attention to the adjuster the adjustment fork is already really well fitted to the adjustment wheel it can't slip off it's also chromed whereas the one on the big horn is just plain metal and it's already quite rusty this one is shiny and in perfect condition and then the divot that sticks up and engages with the chip breaker is longer and has sharper better defined corners on this one so it doesn't lose contact with that hole as its engaged forward overall it just works better and here's what I think is going on here I think that soba makes at least two models of this this is more or less the base model that generally sells for less money and this is the higher-end model it's sold by grizzly and maybe a couple other places I'm still doing some research on this and it typically costs a few bucks more but the difference in the quality of the plans is actually pretty significant the grizzly cuts better works better the knife a chip breaker isn't like revolutionary or anything but it's good and it is easier and quicker to prepare overall this is a better plane and it costs about the same so I really think what most people want to do is lean towards the grizzly model higher-end version of this plan it is an excellent bang for the buck so as much as I like this grizzly plane I'm not ready to tell you to just go out and buy it and that's the end of the story there are a lot of inexpensive hand planes out there on the internet and I need to try at least a few more of them so I'm gonna do one more video where I try a couple more inexpensive hand plane models and then at the end of the summer a big shootout testing video where I figure out which plane or planes gives you the best bang for your buck at the end of the summer I'm also gonna be releasing my guide to finding buying and fixing up inexpensive budget hand planes that you can buy on the internet that guy will be available at Rex Kruger calm and if you like you can go there right now and check out t-shirts hoodies and plans for a lot of the projects that I've made and before I go I've always got to thank my patrons on patreon not only do they make all of these videos possible with their support they provide the funding that lets me buy things like this plane when most youtubers want to review a product like a tool they contact the manufacturer and ask to get one usually free and yeah those companies will send a free model of that tool to check out but let's be honest nothing's really free in life if somebody gives you something expensive for nothing they might want something in return well I don't have to worry about any of that what I want to review a tool I buy it out of pocket and my patrons are the ones who make that possible if you'd like to be a part of making these fun DIY videos go on over to patreon calm right screw Durr and check out the early access Ward's and benefits that I have only for my patrons they're the ones who make all this possible and if you're just watching because you want to see which plane I pick if you're just enjoying my content that's great and love having viewers thanks so much for watching

Channel: Rex Krueger

Views: 337,109

Keywords: plane, handplane, hand tool, handtool, hand tool woodworking, tool review, review, cheap, affordable, beginner, diy, shop, shop life, make, maker

Id: vSnKkSDb8aw

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 14 2019