Spear & Jackson CSP3 No. 3 Carpenters Smoothing Plane

This is an excellent tool considering the price. (I paid a bit less than $25.) The casting is good, handles are nice, and the blade, chip breaker and cap seem to be pretty well made. Straight out of the box, it was ready to take nice shavings from a piece of red cedar I had laying around. However, the plane needed quite a bit of work to get it to perform like a proper smoothing plane. I disassembled the plane and examined the components. The casting appeared to be well made with no gross defects. The sole of the plane was more-or-less flat, but it did require about 45 minutes to flatten properly. (Working from 80 grit sandpaper to 220.) The sides were perpendicular to the sole. The casting was nicely painted, although there was a bit of paint on the seating for the frog, which I scraped off with a razor blade. As is usual for new planes, the back of the blade needed to be flattened before sharpening. That took about 15 minutes, and sharpening the blade took about 5 more. I put the plane together, adjusted the frog, and made test cuts. Some debris was accumulating between the blade and the chip breaker, indicating a poor fit between the two. I flattened the end of the chip breaker on a stone so that it fit the blade correctly. That took about 10 minutes. Total time required to properly set this up as a smoothing plane was about 1 hr 15 minutes. After setting up the plane, it did indeed perform like a proper smoothing plane. On figured maple, the plane removed very fine shavings and left a glass-like surface. At this point, I am very happy with the plane and consider it to be a bargain despite the work needed for tune up. Thus my 5 star rating. My only real only real complaint is the excessive backlash on the wheel that adjusts the blade depth, but I expect that with an inexpensive plane and can live with it.

For the price its fantastic I paid $21.76 including tax and shipping! I have been experimenting with these modern hand planes from India under various names Grizzly, Draper and Spear & Jackson. I think there is a larger degree of variability with many of these planes from India, some are better machined and made and require a little less work. This plane by S & J was one such plane? It required the least amount of work out the 3 recent planes I have gotten. They all require flattening the sole and this was no exception just that it was closer to flat to start with. The blade and chipbreaker weren't bad either and was able to flatten and sharpen them in short order. I did not check the side squareness to sole since I had not planned on using it on a shooting board. The handles were nicely finished a bit more like the handles from Grizzly they were nicely shaped and finished with only like light oil or wax finish which is the way I prefer them, you can actually feel the wood this way. I had to fuss with the plane a little to get the blade and mouth adjusted properly but then it would take nice shavings, I may convert the plane into a scrub plane with a convex sharpening of blade? Overall very worthwhile plane! and I might look and see about ordering other sizes of S&J?

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’m so angry!! This just fell off my work bench. This hand plane is amazing. I wish I could afford to replace it. It’s amazing quality. Just don’t drop it. 😫

Prodotto mediocre

Item arrived broken

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.

Bardzo dobry stosunek ceny do jakości. Polecam

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.