STANLEYHand Planer, No.4, Smoothing (12-136)

Clearly Stanley is going after Veritas and Lie-Nielsen with their Sweetheart line of planes. And it's ironic that as their competitors continue to improve on the original Stanley Bedrock design Stanley has taken a different approach. After over 100 years of offering bench planes with an adjustable frog Stanley has borrowed an idea from their block planes with this new design.I own a Veritas #4, it's great, and a number of Bailey and Bedrock design planes. I bought this plane specifically for the mouth adjustment design which is similar to that on a block plane. This means that the frog is part of the base casting. I thought this and the 1/8" blade that is the new standard should make a pretty sturdy plane. It did.And this is a beautifully made plane. The base casting is smooth and flat. The sides are polished, "Stanley SW #4" is etched on the right side. The cherry tote is held in place by a clever brass cross bolt also bearing "#4". That should help the tote last as long as the plane body. I always laugh at write-ups that say, "Comfortable knob and tote", but that is the case for this model. The weight is substantial and the blade was ground to a very nice finish and honed, ready for use.Indeed, the mouth adjustment is easy and intuitive. You loosen the cherry knob, adjust the opening with the large brass lever, then re tighten the knob. No tools. Clever and aesthetically pleasing, something I look for in tools.The cap iron was so well machined that I once mistook it for the blade. I ran into a little trouble there. On my first try, maple shavings were getting wedged between the blade and cap iron. I had to grind a relief angle on the cap iron starting with a coarse Crystolon stone working up to fine India. I can't believe that Stanley is machining the raised edge of the cap iron parallel to the iron itself. That would always cause a gap to open when the cap iron was tightened to the blade. After that fix I got lacy shavings of curled maple.

My #4SW just arrived a couple of days ago. Curious to see how it would perform I grabbed a bunch of scraps of poplar, pine, oak, etc. from the bin and took the #4 for a ride out of the box. Wow! It performed nearly flawlessly - no honing or tuning of the blade (that will come this week), just wanted to see what it would do. Adjustments of depth, throat, side-to-side alignment all as easy and simple. Adjusted depth from a mil to so fine that the shave would almost powder coming through the throat. Wood surfaces glass smooth and true edge to edge. Just my opinion, but if you want a reasonably priced tool that is very well designed and constructed you should consider this #4. The wild card will be how it holds up, but I believe that the Stanley brand will take it through a long life. I don't make a habit of reviewing or expounding on purchases, so this is somewhat new for me but I hope it proves helpful for someone else.

The product itself is well made. The bottom is perfectly flat. As a first time user of a hand plane I struggled to figure out how to get everything setup. I ended up watching a few YouTube videos to help me out. I was able hone a micro bevel on the blade as it states. Once I got it dialed in and understood how to make adjustments it worked fine and was giving me nice thin shavings on some hard rosewood.So if you have used hand planes in the past this will be easy for you and give you great results. If you’ve never used one and you are dumb like me, it can be a bit of a pain to setup. Functionally is great feels like a solid project. The price point for what you get I think is decent for your average diy who doesn’t do this on a daily basis. You could spend 3x the price or higher on one! I would love to see the performance difference and if it’s worth it for your diy’er who isn’t hardcore. I highly doubt it is. If the goal is to get paper thin or thinner shavings from a planer, this guy does that so more than good enough for me.I do recommend sharpening the blade before first time use and adding the micro bevel edge like the instructions say. If you have never sharpened a blade and don’t have that skill already ( like me ) you need to buy a sharpening kit or set of sharpening stones as well as a honing guide which will ensure you get the angle you need. Spend a little more on the honing guide it’s worth it I think. Mine has a chunk of aluminum that has the most common angles used so you can insert the tip of your blade and visually see what angle you are at and check once you achieve your desired angle. For newbie’s I think this is a must have for sharpening blades. If you have the skill already to do it freehand well kudos to you and you wouldn’t need such a device.All in all a good general planer once you dial it in which for a first time user can be tricky. Don’t forget to sharpen before first use. The blade feels wicked sharp out of the box, but one you hone it yourself you’ll see how much more sharp it is! 4 stars because the manual was ok but still a bit confusing to a newcomer and you really should sharpen the blade before use. It doesn’t say you have to in the manual but everything I read and saw said to do so. It probably should be 5 stars it my ignorance on the tool as a first timer combined with the manual caused me to drop one star. That may be unfair to the product but it’s how I feel.