Effortlessly Smooth Surfaces With WoodRiver #4-1/2 Smoothing Plane Review

Very nice looking plane.but.I read where it's hit or miss whether you get a mostly flat back of the plane iron or not. Mine was a miss as I spent at least 3 hours trying to get the back decent enough just so I could do the famous "ruler trick". The blade was flattening as if were convex instead of concave.Once it was acceptable, the edge was honed to 8000 grit. Shavings were see through and full width once I dialed it in, but it seemed like I was adjusting every 2 passes or so. Also the

I wanted a #41/2 for a while because of the wide blade, this plane seemed to fill the bill for price and quality. I have purchased other planes before and spent numerous hours trueing and honing them. This plane was good to go out of the box with just a little honing of the blade. I spent no time trueing the bottom as that was dead flat. I am very pleased with the quality of the adjustments and the precision of the cap iron.

Got this mainly because of all the videos I’ve watched of Rob Cosman on YouTube. He made a lot of good selling points, but this has so far been borderline disappointing.First off, the blade came pretty chipped on both corners. Fine. no big deal, right? Just some extra work and grind it down.The problem is that as you continue to grind it (first on sandpaper, then moved to 300/1000 grit trend diamond stone), more chips start appearing on the edge. I have 4 other hand planes, and I’ve had no…

The item showed up with a damaged handle. This is a $200 high end plane that is meant to be durable and last a life time if properly maintained, but before I even got to use it there was visible damage. Because of this I will have to make a modification to the handle so it can be used without discomfort.