What To Look For When Buying A Hand Plane

if this is a saw till wouldn't you want to call that a hanger hey y'all I'm James Wright and welcome to my shop today we are talking hand planes on recently I did a video on what to look for when purchasing a used hand saw and that brought up a whole bunch of questions about hand planes so what do we need what are we looking for in this and what are some of the ins and outs now rather than talking about individual features I'm actually going to go through this series of hand planes and show you some of the common things you see and say yeah don't get this and get this instead just to give you some real-world examples of what's going on so let's actually dive in now this is a topic that could go on forever and I could go into all the details in the ins and outs of things that would take hours and hours and this would probably be like a 20 hour long video and yes I could talk that long about hand planes so because I'm an arrow down a little bit I'm not gonna be talking about block planes I'm not gonna be talking about low angle plans I'm not gonna be talking about transitionals I'm just gonna be talking about your standard bench plane now most of these are number fives or number fours I do have a few others in here and most of the things that I talk about between number four or five can be transferred to anything from you know a number eight jointer all the way down to you know number two what's up let's dive in and take a look at some of the specifics now this is a number eight and you might look at it and you think it's it's okay there's some rust on the sides here you can tell it's someone put screws into the handle here as the horn broke off at some point and you're thinking wow this is gonna need a lot of restoration but this came out of a shop in usable shape it came functional and usable and the soul is actually relatively flat as well so this is actually one that I have kept and not done any restoration to it this is an example of a yes you see it by it yes there's a little bit of surface rust and you see some chipping in here things like that but nothing out of the ordinary on this that is not functional so one of the things that a lot of people worry about ralfie bat is a flat sole so sometimes I'll have a square or a straightedge and I'll just put on there and reference across there and see if anything pops out as out-of-the-ordinary if anything stands out we're just running a straight edge across it then I might say hmm that soul might need a little bit of work I'm particularly with a joint or you want the sole to be nice and flat I don't care as much about the wings being perfectly 90 degrees to the face if I'm going to use it as my shooting plane I might think about that but that can be easily adjusted by pivoting the lateral gesture on the blade so if the soul I don't really worry about them that much for a jointer I'm gonna defend a little more time looking at the soul but if it's something like a smoother and number four number three even a number five I'm really not going to worry about how flat the soul is if it needs a little work I can clean it up now this this is the first plane I ever purchased it's a union hand plane a really decent quality company you can tell it by it has this folded over lever adjust err the only problem with this one is that the yoke here is broken on this side you can see there's no ball on this end whereas on this side there's a ball here that fits into the the adjuster other than that this works perfectly fine is is a functioning plane I'd restored this one repainted it I left the totes away but it was a really nice working plane so I wanted to show you this is the one this is my first hand plane I ever picked up I think I paid five bucks for it something like that a good hand plane a name that not too many people know about but it's very trustworthy so now let's go to the other end of the spectrum this is the Harbor Freight special and you can pick this up at Harbor Freight for I think twelve or eighteen bucks something like that and at first look it's a really nice hand planer works fairly well the sole is relatively flat but the problems with it it's just literally cheaply made and a lot of the pieces are loose and wiggly and you can dial this in you can turn it into a nice plane but it's going to take a lot of work and after a couple minutes of working everything's gonna wiggle out and you're gonna be driving yourself bonkers though this is cheap and new I'd really generally tell people unless you know what you're doing or you want to turn this into a scrub plane do not buy a new hand plane that is under fifty bucks it's just not worth it another one you're gonna come across very commonly is a post-war Stanley and a lot of times the handyman Stanley comes with this light steel blue color they'll have plastic knobs or plastic totes in this case this one's a plastic the the knob is plastic the adjuster back here is plastic you know they work they're okay but they're they're going to cause you some problems they're not as good a quality as you can get with some of the older ones there's just a few things in these I like to pick these up if I find them for three bucks or less because I can use some of the parts from some of the screws or the iron and chipbreaker sometimes I'll use that but for the most part I don't get one of these as a using tool now let's talk about some drop damage now this is a beast of a plane and a lot of rust and most of them I would look at this and I would say absolutely no way this is an old Sargent and I don't even know if I can pull this off right now no I can't you can tell that it's missing this wing apparently at some point this fell and that snapped off most the time I wouldn't pick this up except for there are a few parts on this that I could probably still clean up and use so I decided to get it for that as well as a demonstration purpose but you can see here the wing broke because it fell off the horn on the back of the tote fell off it also has broken here there's another crack in here this is so rusted up and pity that I'm not going to get this to work none of these screws function this won't clean up I mean I could spend a ton of time on this and put other parts into it but you're never going to be happy with a piece that's this far gone unless there's a specific part you need just pass it up okay this is a trustworthy plane a brand you're not going to hear that much it is a newer kind of brand I'm guessing it's from like the 50s or so I don't know exactly on it there's a few things particularly one this folded over lever here this is a sure sign that it's not a really high quality plane but it's okay this is commonly made by Sargent but several other companies used it the stanley levers are actually made from two pieces you have this bottom piece that has been pinned into the lateral adjuster whereas a lot of the sergeant and other companies went for the cheaper model where they just bent this over but saying that that is cheaper does not mean it is lower quality it is cheaper to make but it doesn't change the quality of the work sometimes that might be a notifier that hey this plane might be cheap but sometimes it's just you know cheaper plane and in this case this is a really nice one with a very large gesture knob everything on this is functional all the pieces are there there's very little rust the only downside to this I would see is that the handle here was clearly made with a router so there's a nice big flat surface here and the rounding from one side of the other is not what I would like yes you could go through there with a rasp around this out make the hand a little more ergonomic but all in all this is a good plane if you can find one of these for you know 15 20 bucks a good user plane and I would definitely say pick it up along the same line of the trustworthy is the Dunlop another brand you're going to hear quite commonly also has the folded over lever cap this is from a very similar time frame in this one the handle is actually a bit better someone spent some time and worked this one down in this one has a little bit more work on it there's some more surface rust but everything is generally functional it just needs to be cleaned up and all and all this would be another great plane it's kind of older its post-war but all the pieces are there and it's in good condition everything is nice and tight another plane I'd say if you want spend the time to clean it up a great plane to have now I don't know the brand and this one for sure it's not easily seen I'm guessing it's a dumb lot Dunlop from my experience the handle on this one you can tell was not a good quality they just ran over our the router but a really cheap router as well you can almost see the logo on here so if you're going to redo something like this you're gonna have to rebuild this handle it's in many pieces it's just not worth it you can tell this one particularly was in a bad fall and the iron has been bent as well as the lever cap and most the time I'm going to tell you that that's a no-go if something like that happened on there you can spend some time trying to flatten this iron back out but you're probably been running into problems so unless you want to replace the iron and do a lot of work on this for a Dunlop it's just not quite worth it I would say probably pass on this one now I purchased this one because it was four bucks and I'm gonna use it for parts there's things on this that I can use and clean up fairly easily so for that case it's a good buy but most the time I tell people good and pass that one up this one is a Fulton a post-war hand plane you can tell the knob probably is broken because someone's wrapped some tape around the front so you might have to do some work on there also you can tell that apparently this was broken off at some time and someone cleaned it back up but all at all it's all there and there's there's a there's a decent pile of grime on it there's some surface rust but most of the parts are functioning everything on this is pretty darn decent and with a little bit of work this could be turned into a functional number five now number fives are really common so you may or may not think it's worth it but for 15 20 bucks I'd probably say this one is a go so here is a Stanley and this is when they really went downhill I'm guessing this was from the 80s or so it's got the bent-over they've stopped making the two-piece lever cap they've really started cutting some corners on this now that being said it does have the brass depth knob it also has the screw for moving the Frog in and out and all in all it's a fairly decent plane all the pieces are there it's decently tight and on top of that it is a five and a quarter which is a hard size to find that being said I really kind of liked this plane even though it is a newer one and it's not that high a quality plane it would still make a good functional plane and if you're looking for a five and a quarter this would be a good buy okay now here's a confusing one this is a craftsman hand plane and a lot of times people hear the name craftsman and they think trash but there's a time when craftsman was actually a decent quality plane this one was actually made by Stanley though it was branded with craftsman it was one of the later Stanley's as you can see there's a the bent over lever cap it's not the highest quality hand plane but it's a pretty darn decent one it has the large depth adjuster screw everything is in here the only problem is that the the tote is broken in from a fall but all that being said everything else is in this plane everything is in good condition this would be a good usable plane let me talk them for a moment about corrugation a lot of people don't know what corrugation is originally Stanley put corrugation in a plane and they sold it as this will make the plane easier to push unfortunately the science doesn't actually work out that way this isn't easier to push the nice thing is this is easier to flatten so when you are going to be flattening it on sandpaper or something of that nature the corrugation makes it very easy to make the salt route up so the corrugation does not make it easier to push and in most cases I don't like it because if you're working on thin wood it might get caught in the corrugation of corrugation might mix things up so I don't use it that much but from a collector's standpoint often the corrugation is something that people are looking for so if you're wanting to collect a tool get the corrugation if you're wanting to use the tool now you might be okay with the corrugation or you might not like it you have to try it to find out okay here's one that a lot of people are looking for this is a stanley and this is one from around world war two i don't remember which type exactly this one is it still has the small depth adjuster knob it also has the frog adjustment screw the handle is well made except for at some point it has dropped and the horn was broken off but the person cleaned it up I might make a new handle for it cuz it also has a crack down here but it's really not in that bad of shape this is actually a really good plane someone has taken care of it there have been a few modifications done on this one though the front wings here have been ground down but all told if I come across the Stanley like this I'm probably going to pick it up because you can almost always get parts for it it is a functional plane it is one that will serve you well for the rest of your life and probably into your kids lives so when looking for a used plane expect to do some work and don't be afraid of some rust don't be afraid of some dings or horns that are rubbed off there are things that can be fixed there are things you can work on it and often spending the time and the love required to restore a plane and bring it back makes it that much more valuable to you and something that you know very well so when something goes wrong with it you quickly can identify it and you can change what you're doing to get a better surface so don't be afraid to jump in and find something that still needs a little bit of work when out looking in the field feel free to grab a square or a straightedge and check the sole check how things work but in most cases it's rare to find something where the sole is so far out that it can't be fixed there are times out there but most of the time if all the pieces are there you can tell it was a good brand or a solidly built plane and the price is right by it it's a good one you can you can fix them up pretty easily and I'll probably be doing a few videos about fixing them up if you don't know what all the parts are I do have a video on that I know that's kind of confusing and until you know what all the parts are you might not know is it actually missing anything I don't know so if you want to see that video I'll leave a link to that down as well now I know I could go into a lot more detail and there's a lot more questions out there and I'm sorry I can't answer all of them in the video if you do have a question that I didn't answer let me know in the comments below once you get into looking for hand planes your eyes get very quickly adjusted at this is a good plane and this is not a good plane and really you won't get there until you've actually experienced them and played with them and made a couple bad buys be okay with that it's kind of the the fun sometimes you win sometimes you lose and sometimes you get that amazing it's like can't believe I got that so I hope you have liked this if you did please let me know in the comments below feel free to like share subscribe that really does help out the channel so thank you for that and until next time have a wonderful day

Channel: Wood By Wright

Views: 23,289

Rating: 4.9506173 out of 5

Keywords: Wood By Wright, woodworking, Handtools, Hand tool, Hand Tools, Hand plane, Hardwood, Hardwoods, how to buy a hand plane, what is a good hand plane, what hand plane should I buy., Hand plane restoration, rust, broken hand plane, what to look for

Id: AQEy2Q9GCYY

Length: 13min 34sec (814 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 19 2018