Spear & Jackson CSP4 No. 4 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.

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

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. 😫

Out of the box it is almost useless. I spent a significant amount of time getting it ready to use. It appears to be well made until you try to adjust it. The frog adjustment screw would not turn. You can see in the picture that I needed to grind a clearance groove in the frog. When it was originally assembled, tightened down the frog actually bent the adjusting screw. I was able to straighten it and it works okay now with proper clearance. The chip breaker had such a curve in it that it actually was bending the blade causing it not to sit flat on the frog. The paint on the base is so thick in places that it prevents some parts from working correctly. Again, this caused an issue with the depth screw, preventing it from going in far enough to retract the iron fully. I was able to take care of all these problems. I understand that this is an inexpensive plane but, these are manufacturing flaws that can be easily corrected. With these issues taken care of, it is now a good working tool. A beginner would struggle to use this.

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!

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.

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.

Por el precio, está muy bien. Con una buela afilada y ajuste normal para una herramienta económica, trabaja súper bien!