Harbor Freight Jack Plane - How Does It Stack Up?

i was at harbor freight the other day pretending everything there was beneath me when i suddenly spotted what appeared to be a reasonable copy of a stanley number four smoothing plane really this appears to have all the same parts as this so is this a sao's ear or a silk's purse and if it is a salsier can we make it into a silk purse let's unpack it and find out [Music] well to begin with the packaging this plane comes in doesn't give me much hope the folks from central forge call this a jack plane when plainly this is a copy of a smoothing plane now just so you know what i'm talking about and for the education of anyone from central forge or harbor freight who may be watching this is my collection of stanley bench planes now a bench plane is a two-handed plane where the cutter is mounted bevel down you have smoothing planes for surface preparation jointer planes for truing the surface and jack planes when you need a plane that will swing both ways stanley gave each of its bench plane numbers the smoothing planes that i have here are numbers 3 4 and four and a half the main difference between these planes is the width of the iron this iron is one and three quarter inches wide two inches and two and three eighths the jointer planes that i have are numbers six and seven both have two and three-eighths inch irons the main difference between these planes is the length of the whole sole the number six has an 18 inch long sole the number seven 22 inches the jack plane has a two inch iron and a 15 inch sole now there are other bench planes that aren't shown here the most obvious admission is number one and two most craftsmen myself included consider these toys there just isn't enough room behind the iron for me to wrap my fat fingers around the handle or the tote there's also a number eight with a 24 inch long sole and i just don't have the room in this shop for the tractor you need to drag that much iron across a piece of wood heck i have to get travis to lift up the other end of the number seven when we take it down from the shelf the most popular planes in this lineup was the number four smoothing plane and the number five jack plane woodworkers and cabinet makers seemed to find more use for the number four while carpenters were more likely to carry around a number five in their toolbox because it walked the line between smoothing and joining the central forge plane is obviously a smoothing plane as you can see it's a knock off of the stanley number four smoothing plane not a jack plane like the packaging claims well that must seem like a lot of effort just to prove that the guy who wrote the packaging got it wrong but if you're going to get this thing to work you've got to understand what it was intended to do and speaking of which let's see what it does straight out of the packaging first of all let's take the old stanley number four and show you what it's supposed to do there you go paper thin curls leaving a beautifully smooth surface now let's adjust the cut here looks like the iron is buried and said okay it's just barely protruding i did nothing with scrape let's give it a little bit more more protrusion now it's doing nothing but scraping and not a very good job of scraping so this is going to take some serious tuning let's break this down so we can see how much work we have to do i'm going to disassemble both the central forge plane and the old stanley number four so we can compare the parts as we go now the first pieces to come off are the lever caps yeah as you can see central forge tried to reproduce the iconic kidney-shaped slot that stanley has been using since the 1930s but their kidney looks somewhat diseased and if you turn these over well the difference between the quality of the castings becomes even more apparent there's a lot of work we're going to have to do here with a round file maybe even some sort of kidney transplant next let's take a look at the chip breaker and the plane irons the plane iron is the cutter and the chip breaker is what rolls up the shavings to make those nice little curls i'm going to take the chip breaker off the plane iron oh look at that uh the chip breaker on the central forge plane is wider than the plane iron and doesn't quite fit between the sides of the sole so there's a little bit of grinding to do there now let's take a look at these side by side the first thing i notice is that the central forged chip breaker is a lot thinner than the old stanley and uh this could be a problem this machine bolt here that they uh used to fasten the chip breaker to the plane iron on the stanley there's two full threads it's that thick on the central forge yeah just like i thought just only one thread so we're going to have to be careful when we fasten the plane iron and the chip breaker together if we get this too tight it could strip out that single thread okay let's take a look at the plane irons uh well actually they look pretty substantial if i mic the stanley i get a plane iron that's 75 thousandths of an inch thick and if i make this one whoa 86 almost 87 thousandths so they give us a little extra metal there that's good we might need it the surface is extremely rough you can see it isn't anywhere near as smooth as the old stanley and the the edge is as dull as old shoes you do not want me doing that same test with the stanley there would be blood everywhere i don't know what metal that these things are made out of i do know this one this is high grade tool steel but there is absolutely no indication on the packaging or the instructions from central forge as to what metal this uh plane iron is made out of however there are some tests we can do that will give us an idea and we'll do those when we get to sharpening this the frog that beds the chip breaker and the plane iron to the sole appears to have some of the same problems as a lever cap apparently no one at central forge ever learned how to remove flashing that's the metal that leaks between the surfaces of a mold or a die when they do the casting take a look at the uh old stanley frog uh nice and clean uh the slots that allow you to adjust the frog back and forth uh closes down the mouth of the plane or opens it up those are nice and crisp uh and here uh not so much a lot of work there that we're going to have to do with a file in order to get that to slide smoothly furthermore some of the surfaces that should be machined and made smooth aren't so there's even more work to do with the file and see this little tab here at the end of the frog or at the bottom this tab fits over a slotted machine bolt and allows you to slide the frog back and forth with precision uh see how substantial that tab is on the old stanley it's uh much much thinner on the central forage plane uh so that means that we're going to have to clean up these slots and be careful to have those machine bolts loosened when we attempt to adjust the position of the frog otherwise we'll risk bending that tab the back handle or the tote on this central forge plane and the front knob are made from plastic no surprise there the uh the tote and the knob on the newest stanleys are also made from plastic all the the ones from this old stanley are made from rosewood uh once again the folks at central forge appear to be absolutely blind to flashing you can feel the seams and the molds on these handles and that will become annoying if you have a lot of cleaning to do so i'm going to have to take a very sharp knife and carefully trim the flash away from the tote and the knob you know the amount of work we have to do here is becoming less like a tune-up and more like a rebuild we're finally down to the soul the whole foundation of the planes and here again the quality in castings uh just jumps out at you on the old stanley all the lettering and the bosses are nice and crisp where here in the central forge casting well you can barely read that that says number four everything is rounded over and filled in and there are some parts that just aren't there you see this y-shaped yoke here this boss right here is what guides the frog as you move it back and forth to close down the mouth or open it up and here it's completely missing which is weird because the frog itself is notched to accept a guide that isn't there so figure uh this will make it a little harder to align the cutting edge with the leading edge of the mouth when you close down the mouth or open it up but not impossible and speaking of the mouth uh the the front or edge or leading edge isn't quite parallel to the back so there's a little work to do there with a file let's see whether or not the sole is flat now it's slightly arched from toe to heel and ooh badly cupped from side to side you know a friend of mine bought one of these and found exactly the same problems in fact he bought three one after the other and they all were arched and cupped so that indicates a manufacturing problem so there's a lot of lapping to do here since the most important task in tuning a plane is sharpening the iron let's start with that uh after all if we can't get this sharpened then the rest of this is just so much scrap art along with a healthy dose of plastic now ideally we'd like this to be high carbon tool steel since tool steel holds a cutting edge for a long long time other forms of steel mild steel and most stainless steels are just too soft to hold a cutting edge now there are some tests we can do to figure out what this might be five in fact let's start with examining the blade and looking at the color most tool steel is silvery and shiny all other forms of steel are a dull gray and this certainly is dull although the dullness could be the result of the rough ridges left by the by the grinding this might uh shiny up quite a bit once i once i polish it next let's see if we can put a scratch in it i have here a scraper that i know is is a quality tool steel and it's been tempered so that it's very very hard well i can put some mild scratches in it but it's actually pretty hard stuff that's a good sign next let's try a magnet that's another good sign magnets won't stick to most forms of two of stainless steel although there is a type called martensitic which is used for knives and cutting edges where the magnet does stick so we're not out of the woods yet let's try a spark test for this test i've removed the cage from the grinder so that we can see the spark pattern we're looking for the color of the spark how far the grinder throws the spark and whether the sparks fork the pattern will appear bushy when they do let's start with a piece of mild steel this angle iron is made of just that the sparks were sort of a yellowish orange uh the grinder threw the sparks almost the full length of the uh the workbench and there wasn't much forking really not much bushiness to the pattern not like you'll see when i do this old worn out file because this is made from really good tool steel [Music] the spark pattern is much whiter uh the sparks don't go as far they only go maybe a third to halfway across the workbench and there's a lot of bushiness a lot of forking and bursts going on inside that spark pattern let's take this hex bolt this is made of stainless [Applause] steel that was undramatic uh not much sparking at all it seems that when they replace the carbon in the stainless steel with chromium it really dampens the spark pattern so dramaall let's do the central forge plane iron that was a pleasant surprise okay uh now this still could be martensitic stainless steel but it has a pattern very close to that of uh tool steel there's one more test that we got to do i took a paper towel i wet it and then i wrapped the plane iron in it and let it sit overnight now if this is tool steel there should be some surface rust and there isn't so taken everything else together i'm pretty sure this is martensitic stainless steel now that's not great news but it's not bad news either there are some things that we can do during the sharpening process to get a really good cutting edge on this now that we have some idea of what we're dealing with let's uh smooth the back of the plane iron so that it slides easily over the frog now remember the plane iron is mounted bevel down so the back is actually the surface where you can see the plane iron now because this is so rough i'm going to do this on a belt sander it would take me just forever to do it by hand and to protect my fingers i'm going to use a magnet to hold it this magnet is part of a dial caliper i just remove the caliper put the magnet on the iron throw the little little lever and there we go i'm just going to uh smooth this with 100 grit there's no sense in going any finer this isn't part of the cutting edge 100 grit will make this smooth enough that it will slide easily [Music] okay that's uh that's smooth enough there's still some ridges there at the top but they won't interfere at anything now i'm going to give this a chance to cool off and we'll do the same thing with the back all right with the back and the front relatively flat it's time to move to my sharpening rig now this is a pastry stone a piece of marble that's been ground perfectly flat and then polished it's perfect for sharpening plain irons and lapping plain soles you just stick down a piece of sandpaper and wait in i've attached two sanding belts here this is a 120 grit and this is 240 grit i'll start with this well it's been a day or two since i tried uh flattening this plane iron to get it ready for the sharpening process i worked back and forth between the pastry stone and the belt sander and at the end of about five hours i had removed four ten thousandths of an inch of thickness from the plain iron and still these two corners here were recessed below the area that i had flattened well at the end of a very frustrating day a friend of mine jim mccann the chief engineer for shopsmith dropped by and i explained to him what i was trying to do here well jim has access to a surface grinder so we packed up all the plane irons and headed for his shop and along the way we bought a second central forged plane so we could compare the two plane irons and see if the problems i was having were common to just this plane iron or were possibly uh something that you'd experience in all the central forage irons jim started by testing the hardness of the irons to see if they were consistent and they were depending on where he tested it on each iron it registered between 56 and 62 on the rockwell c scale of hardness just for comparison the stanley iron registered between 61 and 59. so these are probably pretty good quality pieces of steel well then we put them on the surface grinder and we had exactly the same problems with the corners that i had experienced jim had to remove eight thousandths of an inch from this iron the one that i'd already been working on to get it perfectly flat and ten thousandths of an inch from this iron jim's take on this is this is a manufacturing problem in all probability the folks at central forge ground the bevel on these iron irons before they did the surfacing the surfacer actually bent down the corners where the iron had been weakened had they done the bevel after the surfacing they might have actually produced a good iron thanks to jim we now have a flat plain iron and we know that it's a good piece of steel so let's forge on i'm going to continue honing the front working my way up from 120 grit all the way to 600 grit and as i do so i'm going to keep checking that the plane iron remains flat and also that there is a shine that develops i'm going to stop at 600 grit even though there's a little more work to do but i'm going to wait until i've got the bevel up to the same place to condition the bevel first i'm going to regrind this at 35 degrees now i know most woodworkers choose between 25 and 30 degrees for the cutting angle on their plane irons but 35 degrees should be fine as long as there's a relief angle between the bevel and the wood it'll cut just fine now i've chosen this larger than normal a cutting angle because stainless steel is notoriously hard to sharpen it's much tougher than tool steel and it doesn't grind away as fast the 35 degree angle has some extra meat in it and this will resist wear and extend the time between sharpenings both the bevel and the front surface have been honed to 600 grit now i'm going to switch sandpaper to 1 500 grit and i'm going to hone the bevel then without taking the iron out of the guide i'm going to flip it over and hone the front this not only makes the edge keener it removes any burr that might have developed while holding the bevel finally i'm going to get rid of the sandpaper all together make sure the stone is relatively dry and replace it with regular paper then i'm going to rub this paper with polishing compound just like i was coloring it with a big crayon then i'm going to polish the bevel and the front just like i did with sandpaper there's the mirror finish i'm after let's test this and see how it cuts i think this just might work now we have to flatten the sole of this bench plane and like i said it was pretty badly arched and cupped so i'm going to do the initial flattening on this belt sander using a 100 grit belt all right that's as good as i can get it on a belt sander so let's go back to the pastry stone i'm going to use the sanding belts again 120 grit 240 grit and to monitor my progress i'm going to draw some lines across the sole with the sharpie now as i work the lines will slowly be removed when i removed them all i'll know this thing is as flat as i can possibly get it the sole is dead flat and feels pretty smooth you'll notice all the marks are gone i'm just finishing up here on a piece of 320 wet dry to give it a little shine the smoother the sole the less of work it is to push it across a piece of wood when you've got the sole as smooth and as flat as you want take a file and round over the edges where the sole meets the wood this will keep it from digging in and possibly scratching the wood finally wax the sole after you finish lapping and filing this will keep it from rusting okay now we have to do all that filing i mentioned when we were tearing this plane apart generally we have to remove all the flashings smooth some surfaces shape some slots and generally make sure that the parts fit together properly while filing and reshaping the parts i found two more problems that are going to need our attention first of all the chip breaker doesn't meet the plane iron the way it should the front edge of the chip breaker should be parallel to the cutting edge and it isn't as you can plainly see this is because the the arches on the chip maker are higher on one side than they are on the other i'm going to have to try to flatten them by carefully squeezing them in a vise on one side and hope that i can get it to match the other side a little bit now that worked better than i hoped i'm going to remove the chip breaker from the plane iron now and i'm going to take a couple swipes across the leading edge of the chip breaker so that it will rest tight against the plane iron by the way the uneven arch was a problem with just this chip breaker not the second one that i bought so this is a screw-up with quality control not manufacturing the next problem that i found is that the lateral adjustment lever this thing right here isn't laterally adjusting this is the central forge plane as you can see when i move the lever the plane iron barely moves here's the stanley plane from which it was copied and there's plenty of movement what i found is that the recess in the frog where the head of this machine bolt rests this is the machine bolt that holds the plane iron to the chip breaker there's just barely any room for the head of that bolt see look at that barely any movement not even a sixteenth of an inch but here it's nice and wide and there's plenty of room for that bolt goes back and forth easily so i'm going to have to find out some way to widen this recess i think i have it i've removed the frog from the plane and i'm going to take this dremel tool with a cut off blade and i'm going to carefully remove some of the metal on the frog in an attempt to widen the recess [Music] hmm [Music] yeah i think that might do it yeah quite a bit more movement okay let's stop monkeying around and put this thing back together to find out whether or not we've got a plane or a small boat anchor while we're putting it back together i'm going to give you my invaluable opinion on this tool and that is i really do believe that to put anything this bad on your store shelf you run the risk of capitalizing your customer base let me explain this thing is obviously aimed at the novice probably a first time buyer and the problems that are found are way beyond a novice's expertise in plain ology your customers are going to be disparated disgusted and furious and it's going to make them much less inclined to come back and buy more tools and beyond the monetary reasons it's a shame because the the feeling that you get with taking a swipe with a finely tuned plane is just a joy beyond description if woodworking were a religion this would be our sacrament and a plane like this is a sin against craftsmanship okay i'll get off my high horse and let's see if this thing will actually cut some wood and that ladies and gentlemen is how you turn the silk's ear into a sow's purse [Music] i can't believe that worked [Music] this [Music] you

Channel: Workshop Companion

Views: 234,973

Keywords: Unboxing, Hand pland, hand plane, bench plane, central forge, stanley, jack plane, restoration, woodworking, crafting

Id: QSnLgE7fWCQ

Length: 32min 5sec (1925 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/zippy1981]

So unlike the Stanley 404, the worse current production Stanley #4 or Stanley clone, the adjustments are servicable minus lateral out of the box. It feels like if you got this plus a high end chip breaker and plane iron you could be productive without hours and hours of work.

I might get this.