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.

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.

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!

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.

Like many others, I spent a lot of time and effort into flattening and adjusting all aspects of this plane, so that's expected. My main issues are things that you can't easily fix or requires more work than the plane is worth.The Y-adjuster, or yoke, is just to pieces of stamped sheet metal pieces riveted together. Half of the yoke on mine was very poorly stamped, as if the worker didn't align it correctly on the die. It still kind of works but there's so much slop to go from forward to reverse. I ended up replacing it with a solid adjuster. That alone can be worth almost a third of the cost of this plane.Every single thread on this plane is loose. There's so much backlash and slop. Some threads needed to be chased because they're damaged.After a lot of effort, I can take very fine shavings now. Compared to other cheap planes in the same price range, this plane is still better than most. Overall I knew what I was getting and I think it's worth the price.