Spear & Jackson CSP4 No. 4 Smoothing Plane

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

First of all, if you've seen the prices for vintage planes recently; you'll understand that these Spear and Jackson planes are a deal and a half. It's hard to find a vintage plane that doesn't need 10 times more work for 3 times the price. That said, you will need to do some work to true this tool up. By far the biggest issue is the grind of the blade. The back is nowhere near flat. And because the steel is relatively hard, flattening the back of the blade can take time. The bevel grind is also only fair at best. It's not hard to clean up the bevel with just a simple inexpensive diamond stone. The second biggest problem is the chip breaker. Even after you flatten and sharpen the blade, the chip breaker isn't going to be well fitted. Getting the correct angle and sharpening/polishing the top is a little tricky but not impossible. The bed does have a bit of a belly, as is to be expected of almost any modern cast iron part (the metal can continue to move for up to a year after casting). But flattening that out doesn't take long. My only other gripes are pretty minor. The over all finish of the tote and knob are inconsistent from one plane to the next. The number 5 I bought was great. The number 4 had some half hearted attempt to cover over a small spot of sap wood. The sap wood doesn't bother me. The big glob of obvious brown paint did. Still it only took a couple minutes to sand it off and re-apply varnish. Bottom line, these aren't "great" planes out of the box. But having restored a couple dozen vintage planes in the past few years...they can be made into really good planes with fairly minimal effort. I've been really happy with the Spear and Jackson tools I've bought recently. I wouldn't say any of them were work ready out of the box. But then again...they've all been less than a 3rd the price of other "inexpensive" options. And with a little attention, can be made in to really good user tools.

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.

For the price its ok but required just as much work as if I had picked up an antique at a garage sale. 30 bucks is hard to beat though.

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!

Impressed by the quality with this price! This is right out of the box result. If you tweak it would be even better.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This plane is my first and boy do I love it, it was soo cheap, so I was expecting junk but found an awesome plane that I use all the time, it's perfect, except it has an odd screw that holds the locking cap, it also has a lose angle adjuster lever, that I can't stop rattling, the Stanley planes changed the block plane for the worse, they have too many little adjustments that are not needed.

Le réglage est précis et la coupe est franche