Hand Plane Review: Harbor Freight #4 

+Everette Hungerford I'm glad you found it useful. Thanks for watching, and for commenting. And happy woodworking!

If you want to build up your tool collection for cheap then you have to hit yard sales, and flea markets. You have to hit them early, and often too. Because plenty of folks are out there looking for cheap tools. Sometimes you even have to travel, in order to get to a good market. I go over two hours to get to one market. But whenever I go there I know I am going to find something. Because it is just that good.

+Kiki Lang Thanks for letting me know it was helpful. I hope your class goes well!

The old used plane will be of higher quality in all respects. The steel will be better. The blade iron will be hardened and tempered better. The screw threads will fit and hold their adjustment better. The bright parts will be finished better. The list goes on.

@@trackie1957 all of that may or may not be true. We certainly have better metallurgy now than was available in the past. Now whether that's used in a current product is another matter. The threads of old Stanley planes are particular garbage. Why they used the pitches they did is an ongoing mystery. That's been an issue for me several times refurbishing old planes. I have all of the standard taps and dies. I do not have 12-20 or 9/32-24 pitch tooling though.

Yeah, the screws that hold the handle are pretty coarse and sloppy on the old Stanleys. Maybe because the body was iron instead of steel. The adjuster knob and frog threads are much better than on the HF plane, though. With the HF plane it seems the manufacturer saved money on taps by drilling the holes way oversized. That saves on tap wear and breakage, but makes for very loose threads that require a lot of torque to hold well. The existence of high quality steels doesn’t mean a manufacturer of cheap tools will use them!

@@trackie1957 perhaps you should compare apples to apples? New vs old Stanley planes. Modern Stanley Sweetheart planes are pretty nice. Harbor Freight are low quality budget tools. So I would not use them as a reference for tool manufacturing today.

Thanks for watching, and for your comment. I still use the plane, with the new blade. Trying to get my money's worth out of it ;)

+Jerry Kolberg Thanks for the inquiry. I used "WoodRiver V3 Replacement Blade for No. 4/No. 5 Bench Plane, Item #153918" I'm still happy with it, fwiw.

I'm sure they were. Sears used to sell re-branded Stanley, Sargent, and Millers Falls planes. Never tried a plane made in Germany. Generally, though, country of origin has become hard to determine. The most "American" car sold in the US is a Honda minivan, for example. These days, many of the Sears-branded tools look to me like they have the same origin as the tools at Harbor Freight. Thanks for your comment!

I own three Sears planes from the 1970s; all are rebranded Stanleys, marked Made In England. They are superb.