Review on 🪵 Woodstock D3831: High-Performance Adjustable Block Plane with 1-3/8-Inch Blade by Cesar Cook

Some people are quick to compare this plane to the high-end planes made by Veritas or Lie-Nielsen. This block plane is not made nearly as well as those, but it also costs only about half as much. If you're willing to put in the work to polish it, this gem will shine.First, the good. This plane is solid and heavy. They were generous with the iron and bronze when making these planes and that translates into good momentum and stability. The overall shape is comfortable in the hand. The adjusters work well and the blade bed was machined flat.Now for the bad. The sole was out of flat. There was a minor dish in the middle and a huge dip at the toe. It took over an hour of lapping to get the sole flat. Moving on to the sides, I saw that they weren't square to the sole. One side was so far off that it took some serious file work to get it close enough to start using my lapping plates. An hour or two of work on the sides. Checking the blade, the bevel was ground correctly but the back was very out of flat. Another hour on the lapping plate there.There was a big casting flaw just inside the mouth. Just a few minutes with the file fixed that, but you'd think that such an obvious defect would be caught by quality control before leaving the factory. Various parts inside had rough edges, plus there were rough milling marks on many surfaces. This did not affect the performance of the plane but it does prevent the adjustments from working as smoothly as they could.I'm not expecting perfection at this price, but I do expect a little better.After several hours of work, this plane is in great shape. I'm willing to bet it now performs just as well as one of those high-end planes. It was a lot of work to get there but I saved about $80 over the Lie-Nielsen. I think that's a fair trade.