Bench Plane No. 5 - Iron Jack Plane - Fully Adjustable Wood Hand Planer, 14-Inches Long with 2-Inch Cutter, Includes 2 blades - Caliastro

I just received this plane. Like others have commented that everything is not perfect about the plane and you will have to do some tuning to get it to perform to your expectations. Each blade was not completely flat. The thin blade that was installed in plane was the worst. It probably took me 45 minutes to flatten the cutting edge with 400 grit diamond stone. The thicker blade only took a few minutes to flatten. I then sharpened the bevel with 400 and 1200 grit and polished with white diamond rouge which is hard bar material that I rub on to a piece of plywood to polish the edge (extra fine). Each blade is now uniform and extremely sharp. The adjustment knob that moves blade in and out has a small issue like stated in other reviews. You screw in to bring blade up. When that screw bottoms there is still blade proud in sole. To fix this the frog needs to be flush with sole, there are two screws to loosen and move frog forward to position correctly. The side to side lever works very well. I was able to make small adjustment with the lever to even blade side to side. The sole was dead flat, I used 180 grit on flat surface and did not get any high sides on sole. Overall I am happy with this jack plane. With a few adjustments it should perform very well. I was trying to find a jack plane on craiglist or Ebay. I was looking for a older stanely ect that in theory would be and probably is a better plane than this. However those kind of jack planes are hard to find in good condition for what I wanted to spend. I would have been spending as much or more tuning a plane off ebay than this plane not too mention its a number 5, most plane you find on craiglist/ebay are number 4. Just finished using on some hardwood bar stool seats. Worked very well but not out of the box without some adjusting and sharpening.

First off, I'm a beginner and by no means a professional on planes. I do realize that even high quality planes do usually need a bit of tuning and work when brand new before use. That being said, I'm familiar enough to spot a well made one. This...is not it. While the price is quite affordable, and because of that, I did expect to have a hefty amount of work to do on it and boy I sure wasn't let down. First thing on opening the package, I pulled out the spare blade. While sharp, it was rusted over quite a bit, even though it's in rust preventive oil and packing. Then I looked at the plane it self. In the email they sent me they said it doesn't need any work, just a few minutes to set it to my specifications...no. screws over tightened that they were damaged, chips and cut marks. Wood handles chipped. HEAVY mill marks on body. Blade in plane has to be ground down and a new bevel and edge put on it because the edge is so damaged. Blade seems light. But the worst, and by far most aggravating part, was that the bottom (sole?) Was in HORRIBLE condition. Aside from being terribly uneven, the mill marks were so deep, I could sink my finger nail into them. 5 and a half hours. Yup, that's right, 5 and a half hours, no breaks, just sanding. And sanding. And sanding. (And more sanding). But I finally got it completely flat, and to a near mirror finish. I only touched one blade so much as to make so it would work so I could test it and stop for the day. Still have more to do. But wouldn't you know it, once I got it all set up and tested it, the thing actually worked pretty good! Surprisingly well, in fact. Hence why I'm giving it 3 stars. I'm still unhappy with a few things, but this is a hobby, not a profession, and if I was doing this as a job, I'd spend 360 dollars on a top quality one, not 60 on a low quality one That being said, if you're strapped for cash and want to get one with some work needed, get this. It'll cost you a bit in sand paper, but it's cheap and WILL work good after you tune it. But I do wish I had spent 3 times the money on a mid-range plane. I have no idea on the longevity, but I expect to have to replace the blades very shortly and will be getting quality a2 steel blades. Update 12/24/19 While the product might need a bit of work, their customer service is quite good. They contacted me over the troubles I had and offered a replacement, sent me pictures of the new plane being fine tuned, etc. They were very very good about staying in contact and making me happy.

First thing I did was check flatness with a half-dozen steel rules; I could not see light - on the bottom or on the sides. Great, I thought; this is worth investing some time. I spent a day with the diamond stones ... flattening and polishing. I did the slide where the frog offers the blade, the cap iron edge, where it leans on the blade and the lever-cap lip where it leans on the cap-iron hump. I did the frog face and toes that sit on the base. Both blades were properly concave; the spare was even better than the installed blade; thank you VERY much. For blade polishing I went as far as chrome oxide on the leather strop, leaving a mirror finish across a nice flat blade. Would one HAVE to do that? Certainly not, this looks very nicely made and machined, right out of the box. Nice looking wood grips, too. Before buying, I became enthralled with the idea of restoring a used Stanley per YouTube videos. Most eBay offerings for less than $40 were missing parts and looking pretty sad and neglected. When I saw this for just a few bucks more, I thought, why not give it a try, instead? NO regrets on that choice. Now, after some relaxing work (and education), I have a REALLY nice No. 5 that can hog wood like a John Deere tractor OR skim see-through shavings and produce a finish finer than sand paper. Now, if whoever is making these for Caliastro would make a similarly nice rabbit plane, I'd try that, too.

Bought a new replacement blade direct from China, great machining and now the plane is finally useable. This has the makings of a great plane, good machining, sole and sides bang on 90°, sole itself flat and required only a light lapping. The rest of the parts are well machined and though a bit course in feel are quite good. I wanted to give this plane 5*,then I came to the highly touted blades. Whoever wrote the add copy has probably never used an edge tool let alone sharpened one. Instead of a blade "that cuts paper" both were coursely ground and wouldn't even slice through Jello. Hours of lapping and sharpening did produce a very sharp blade, but be prepared for hours of work. I'm hoping the blade steel proves to be up to the task. I didn't expect a finely honed blade but certainly did not expect such lack of basic fine surface grinding.

UPDATED: The owner reached out to me after I expressed my original review. It shows he was reading the feedback and taking it to heart. After going back and forth for a few e-mails, he willingly sent me a new plane which he personally hand inspected so that I would not be frustrated with issues regarding my original review. The plane I now have is rather good. It makes nice clean shavings. The only touch-up I want to do is hone the blade a little more. ORIGINAL: I really wanted to love this plane. Great for a budget. I figured I would just sharpen the blade a bit and hope the frog was square. While the sole was perfectly flat, the mouth, nor the frog was not square. Lateral adjustment was so finicky, I couldn't get it right. The biggest issue of them all was the depth adjustment. Since the hole in the chip breaker was milled too high up, you could not adjust for shallow passes. The shallowest I could get the whole thing to go was 1/32". That's way too deep if you want good, thin passes.

This plane is horrible. Don't waste your money. I thought it might be a worth-while project to rebuild to make a decent tool. It would take way too long to get it functional. 1. None of parts heve been deburred. dangerously sharp edges everywhere. 2. Body is no where near flat on bottom or sides. 3. Sides are not even close to being square with bottom. 4. Lever cap edge that mates with chip breaker is not flat. 5. Chip breaker (cap iron) not same width as iron about 3/32 in. wider. 6. Cap iron screw bottom is not flat. you can't tighten it down and keep the chip breaker centered over the iron. 7. Iron is convex. Will be very difficult to flatten. Iron is also bowed along the length. Bevel not ground square. 8. Lateral adjusting lever riveted so tight that it is very hard to adjust iron. 9. Depth adjustment has way too much backlash. Cause is the yoke and adjusting nut groove are poorly fitted. The yoke and pin fit is very sloppy. The yoke protrudes too far above the cap iron and prevents depth adjustment. 10. The frog and body mating surfaces are poorly machined. They are so rough that it makes throat adjustments difficult. 11. Powder coating flaking off. Edit: I contacted Caliastro Customer service. Thru their website contact link. I got a response next day. She asked me for some pics of the problems and said that they were committed to a quality product, and that it should only take about 30 minutes to tune. I spent 8+ hours trying to tune it. I sent her a detailed description of what I tried to do... lots of 8x10 glossy pictures with circles and arrows and paragraph on the back... (you can get anything you want at....) She offered to send me a replacement or give me my money back. The plane is no longer available on Amazon or Caliastro's website. Waiting on response... 2/2/2021

Have been using this plane for a couple months now. Conclusion: do the routine fettling as you would with any new plane and you end up with greatly satisfying performance for a ridiculously low cost. By the way the handles are made from Rosewood... Compare that to plastic or maple handles of other planes. I'll take the rosewood please. I honed both blades to a mirror finish on the microbevel, and the edge lasts and lasts. What other no.5 plane in the ballpark of $50 has rosewood handles and comes with two blades? Job well done Caliastro! Impressive quality and high end performance for an affordable price. I suspect this plane has 99.9% of the performance and quality of planes that cost several times more. The minus 0.1% is cosmetic ,the finish on the real wood handles could be more refined... But who cares? I could easily refinish the handles to my personal preference, though, I am too busy using the plane since it is such a pleasure Caliastro, could you please make some additional tools? Maybe a no. 4 plane and chisel set?

The bad news first: The sole was slightly concave along the length and significantly convex across the width. The mouth was slightly out of square. The sides were not square with the sole. The frog had two raised bumps near one of the corners. The overall finish of the metal parts appeared and felt rough and there was some small amount of paint chipping. The good news: It worked out of the box with no modifications or sharpening needed. It created long continuous thin shavings and had no problem taking deep shavings either. The blade remained sharp after removing a quarter inch of material from the edge of a 2 foot long pine 2x4. It came with a spare blade(it was not sharpened though). All of the adjustment mechanisms operated smoothly. The wood handles had a nice finish and felt comfortable in hand. I expected a better product because of the other reviews but the price was a better indicator of its quality. Update: I contacted Caliastro's customer support via their website and was was pleased to find that they are very quick and helpful. They offered two options, a refund or to ship a new plane that has been tested and quality checked with two more blades. I felt they were very determined to make sure my expectations were met so I am awaiting a replacement. They emailed photos of the replacement being tested and checked with a square prior to being shipped.

It did the job , well balanced easy to adjust and seems well made

Photos taken straight out of the box. Rust galore, every part has rusted badly, and the screw is corroded. However the base and sides are flat, so if you get a rust free plane.......you might have a decent low cost option to use provided you're willing to spend the time sharpening the extremely blunt blades.

I have put a secondary bevel on the blade and it works well on pine. Nice thin shavings. Performed well at the price point.