STANLEY No. 60-1/2 Low Angle Hand Planer (12-139) - Premium Woodworking Tool for Smoothing & Shaping Wood - Perfect for Carpentry, DIY Projects & Furniture Making

Contrary to what some reviewers say. This is a actually a great block plane, and is very usable. Its machined well, robust for its size, feels great in the hand, and weighted quite well. To all of you potential buyers: This plane is not going to be ready to be ready to work right out of the box, nor was it meant to be. It is a mid level plane and all mid level planes require some tuning out of the box. If you prefer a plane that is perfectly ready to use out of the box then spend the 175 bucks on a Lie Nielson 60 1/2 block plane. Which I own and I will tell you that after spending about 2 hours getting this plane tuned up. Id put it against the Lie Nielson any day. I see people critiquing this plane as if it was forged by God and sent down from heaven on a fiery chariot only to be handled by the most worthy of wood craftsman. One guy critiqued this plane so much that he determined it to be unusable. Now in his defense he has probably sat down and watched to many collectors on you tube that scrutinize every little detail and tune a plane to perfection so that it can sit on a shelf and look good. Another guy said he spend an entire day trying to level the sole of this plane. I dont care how much you spend on a new plane. If it takes and entire day to get the sole leveled. You never should have touched it. Instead opted to return it back from wince it came. If a new plane is more than .003"-.005" out of flat depending on how much you paid for it. Dont mess with it. Send it back. Understand something people. Stanley has been producing hand planes since the mid 1800's. Companies like Lie nielson model their planes on the Stanley hand planes and for good reason. Stanley produced the best hand planes you can find and many of those turn of the century Stanley bedrock and bailey planes are still being used today. So if stanley wanted to produce a top tier hand plane that was ready to go out of the box. Then they are more capable than anyone else to do it, but as I said before this plane was not meant to be that.So when i received this plane it was no different than any of my other mid level planes like wood river that I own. The sole was not completely flat, but it was with in workable tolerances. The worst part of the sole was around the mouth of the plane and the tongue where if you know anything about planes this is the most crucial area for flatness. All this was expected though, because before I even opened the box I set up my granite surface plate and water stones to go to work on the thing. There was minimal burrs the had to be removed around the mouth. Since I dont like wasting time. I started with 80 grit on my surface plate to flatten the sole and finished with 120 grit. When flattening the sole of any hand plane. Leave the blade and all of the planes components installed as the sole flexes ever so slightly when blades are installed and tightened down. The sole of a plane does not need to be honed to anything more than 120 grit. I also ran the bottom sides over the 120 grit at an angle to light chamfer the edges. The chamfer just helps the plane ride over uneven joinery more easily with out catching the edge. I then used a fret leveling file to take off all the sharp edges and put a slight bevel on all the bottom 4 corners of the plane. This took me about 45 minutes. I then dissembled the plain and sprayed the main plane body down in rust prevention oil for it to soak in while I honed the blade. The blade out of the box was very flat, surprisingly sharp, and had a nice primary bevel. I honed it because I like to put a secondary micro bevel on all of my plane blades. Usually 30 degrees. This just makes resharpening much faster. For this I use my Shapton whetstones. I put a very slight bevel on the back of the plane blade with my 1000 grit stone. Then proceed with my vertias MKII honing guide to make my 30 degree micro bevel in the 25 degree factory bevel. I then moved to 5000 grit shapton stone and finished up the micro bevel on my 8000 grit shapton stone. This sharpening creates small burrs on the back of the blade so I knocked those burrs down with the 8000 grit stone. This method creates a crazy sharp plane blade the slices through paper with no fuss. At this part you want to be careful because this blade is razor sharp and can easily cut you. I let the blade soak in rust prevention lubricant while I wiped down the main body. Put the plane back together and put it through its paces on some Yellow pine which is soft wood and some birch which is hard wood. My goodness is this little plane fun to use now. Planes wood with little effort and the nice crisp continuous shavings.The methods I use above are not my own. I am not some 80 year old hand plane guru that came up with all this stuff myself. There are many methods to tuning hand planes and I use the ones that work well for me. The point of me telling you this is to let you know that all these processes for a new mid level plane such as this one are completely normal and well worth it. If you like a plane to go to work out of the box or just do not have the proper tools and materials to tune a plane. Then use by all means. Purchase a top tier plane such as Lie-Nielson instead. If you are like me and have the tools and dont mind putting in a little work for great results and a fun tool to work with. Then this will be a great little block plane for you. I will say this. Buying yourself a good surface plate, precision straight edge and square, and a honing guide might cost more in the beginning. But will save you big when you start purchasing more planes, because it will allow you to purchase mid level planes and tune them to work like top tier planes and will allow you to purchase those beautiful turn of the century planes that every wood worker loves so much. Besides even if you purchase a top tier hand plane. You will still need the proper tools for honing and sharpening the blades. So why not just get it out the way now and at the same time opening the door for more options when it comes to buying planes.What I do not like about this plane. In order to remove the lever cap you have to turn the knob all the way back up. This can be a bit annoying but not a deal breaker, because its not like your removing the lever cap every time you use the plane. Either the tongue of the plane or the groves on the sole in which the plane slides into are not perfect. As adjust the tongue throws it out of flat with the sole. This also was not a deal breaker to me, because on a low angle block plane such as this one. I usually set the mouth opening and never mess with it again. So I set the mouth opening to the desired position before I flattened the sole. Now if you are someone that are always adjust the mouth opening due to the type of wood or the grain then you may want to opt for a different plane. I also do not like the inked engraving on the side. It just makes the plane look cheap. That is purely cosmetic though.Not the greatest block plane by any means, but a damn fine tool. Great plane for the jobsite when you don't want to use a cheap poor quality box store plane at work. But also don't want to carry a $200 plane just to be abused doing construction work. Workss well and shaves smoothly, but not so expensive you have to worry about it much. A good medium between cost and quality.I had been debating buying this plane for ~$75, but when I saw it recently for $57 I jumped on it. I'm really impressed with it at that price. It's heavy, 5 oz more than my Stanley Bailey 9 1/2. Casting and toe piece are very thick and substantial, as is the blade. The lever cap fits the hand better than the Bailey style. The finish machining is above average, but not in the same league as Veritas or LN. Tuning and performance detailed below:Finish - looks great to me. I buy tools to use, not look at. Butt ugly that works very well and costs substantially less gets my $. Flaky paint doesn't bother me (didn't have it here) since use will take a lot off anyway. I don't mind spending an hour or 2 cleaning up edges/tool marks for a tool I will use for years and save $50 or more over the major league stuff.Machining - everything is pretty square and straight, just lots of burrs/sharp edges left. Light filing and stoning with a soft Ark stone to beburr had all surfaces and edges in order. I did need to flatten the sole. I'm guessing .003", no big deal. It looks like Stanley corrected a lot of the previous QC issues. The blade requires just a bit of skew to take even shavings, probably .005-.007" across the width of the blade. This is only an issue if the toe/mouth plate is adjusted very small. The toe plate easily closes to the blade and adjusts very smoothly.Norris Adjuster - A bit strange at first, but I'm getting used to it. My plane had about 1-1/4 turn backlash for blade advance, and was fairly loose side to side. I have tightend this up by using aluminum foil duct tape around the pin that fits into the blade.Lever Cap - I've read a lot of fretting about the aluminum lever cap. I don't think it will be an issue. The cap just needs to be snugged down and you are not able to move the blade with the adjuster. Quite a bit of leverage and friction is developed by the design. The typical amount of cap tightening will damage the cap, I'm sure, but isn't needed.Blade - Excellent. 1/8" thick, plenty for a block plane. The factory edge was honed and would take whisper thin shavings on red oak. I have used it enough to require honing, and can say the blade is indeed good hard A2 steel. It holds an edge like A2 should. The back of the blade was ground flat.Performance - It takes thin, full width shavings with or across the grain. It only chattered after the blade was way too dull. It works very well on a shooting board, where its mass really comes in handy. Its mass is a bit much for light trimming/touch up. Blade projection adjustment is very good. Being a low angle plane (12°), more turns are required than a std block (20°) providing more resolution. The Norris adjustment mechanism was a bit frustrating for a while. Many times blade skew would move when I only wanted to change blade projection. I finally developed a feel for how much to back off the lever cap for projection changes vs skew changes. Keep in mind this is an issue with any plane having the Norris style adjuster, not just Stanleys. Using a small brass hammer to make lateral adjustments alleviates a lot of the frustration.Overall I'm very pleased with the performance of the plane. I do believe it is a tool I will be able to hand down to my son and grandson when I'm too old to work wood(a lot of years yet). For $57, it's one of the best hand plane deals I've come across. At ~$75 it's still a good buy, especially if you value function over looks or name.Shipped from Canada and received in 4 days. Very well packaged. No damage at all to the package or the plane. The factory box was nested in 2 heavy corrugated boxes and hermetically sealed in shrink wrap. Inside the factory box the plane was wrapped in heavy, oiled paper. The plane itself was coated in a heavy oil. Out of the box this plane is beautiful; no flaws in fit or finish. All parts fit together snugly as they should and all adjustments are easily done with no slop. The blade is flat. The soul is dead flat. The shoulders are perfectly square to the soul as checked with a Starrett machinist square. The blade edge is square to the shoulder of the blade. It is sharp enough, out of the box, to make pigtail shavings on red oak that was milled by my father when I was 6 years old 68 years ago, and they are thin enough to read through. Where was it manufactured? I don't care! It does what it is supposed to do and that is to make fine finish work sandpaper free with no scraper needed. Thank you Stanley!Comfortable fitGreat plane comfortable and solid very pleasedLlegó mucho antes de lo esperado, tienen una calidad muy pero muy buena, el cepillo o chancla para madera es pesada , se siente bastante robusta, todo en metal , nada plástico, de lo mejor que puede haber, la base ya está lista para usarse, sin bordes y muy lisa, solamente hay que afilar vine la navaja , ajustarla y manos a la obraHoy lunes , dos días después de recibir mi pedido , lo desarme para ajustarlo y ví muchas partículas de metal, la rosca del orificio donde se introduce el círculo de bronce que aprieta la navaja estaba muy desgastado, barrido,... Esto disminuye la vida útil de mi herramienta, haré el reporte para solicitar un cambio, ya que el cepillo es muy bueno de no haber sido por ese detalle, subo unas fotos donde se aprecia el problema, encerrado en círculo azul se aprecian unas particiculas de metal y la flecha azul muestra lo maltratada que se encuentra la rosca del orificio..después de hacer mi reclamo Amazon no me pudo ayudar en nada, me dijo que no me podía mandar otro en reemplazo al que recibí porque el sistema no se lo permitia, y que me podían hacer mi reembolso para volverlo a comprar, el problema es que ya subió de precio y tampoco me quieren respetar el precio original al que lo compréEl articulo llegó en tiempo y forma, en un buen producto. Esta hecho con mucha calidad.Todavía no tengo la oportunidad de probarlo para ver su desempeño, pero seguramente haré otro cometario al respecto, una vez que lo trabaje.Otro comentario que para mi es muy importante, es el corregir la dimensión de la longitud. En la descripción, se menciona que este cepillo tiene una longitud de 9 pulgadas y esto no es cierto. Para no confundir a nadie, sugiero se corrija esta longitud en la descripción.I purchased this Stanley mainly to satisfy my curiosity and to have a working plane for some of my on site jobs. I already use Lie-Nielsen block planes but wanted a less expensive plane to do some of the rough work. I was really surprised with the quality of this Stanley block plane. After honing the blade I tried it out on some maple and oak and found it to be a superb cutter, giving me super gossamer shavings and a finish so smooth that I found it a delight to use. The plane is large for a block plane and I like it even more because I can use it as a smoothing plane if need be. Its heavy but well worth the weight when I work the wood with ease.I recommend this tool wholeheartedly!Great little tool!After reading reviews about "short blade" issue I decided to go after "used" item. And here it is- it came with all original packaging as a brand new unit but with the settings that would not allow the blade to protrude above the base surface out of the box. To find out "why?" there is no another choice but break it apart. Easy to do... If you are savvy with the hand tools and/or just curious than you would find - this plane has lots of adjustments including the one which allows to adjust how far the blade can be moved....and if you overused the plane or re sharpened it too short - well there is another hole in the iron drilled for you where you could move the blade fixing knob as far as about a half inch down...Anyway, I'm happy to have such "used item" for the fraction of the cost with all high end features and quality. Base is perfectly flat, sides are at perfect 90. A little honing maybe polishing and you'll have a tool that most likely will overdo you and serve for generations.