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Woodcraft Rosewood Plow Plane review (long)
Hi all:
In case anyone else is eyeing this item. I was going to illustrate this post with my own photos, but at the rate I was going, these would be sold out by the time I got around to it. The accompanying picture is from Woodcrafts website.
Hand Tool Review: Woodcraft Lu-Ban Rosewood Plow Plane
(Woodcraft Product Number: 143672)
Available from Woodcraft at the clearance price of $16.99, this plane is the only affordable alternative I could find to an expensive, user-condition vintage plow plane. Is it a good buy? It depends on your expectations.
While constructed of nicely polished rosewood, this plane is no compliment to the plane maker’s art. Ugly counter bored screw holes accommodate steel Philips head fasteners which are used to anchor the fence arms to the plane body, and to join the lower and upper portions of the fence assembly. The steel wing nuts used to tighten fence settings have a cheesy look and feel. At around seven inches long, the plow plane feels surprisingly tiny, even in my smaller-than-average hands.
In fact, my first impression was that I had bought a toy, not a real tool; something akin to those “model makers’” mortise gauges. Had I paid the regular price of $34.99, I think I would have been mildly under-whelmed.
The plane comes equipped with a single, ¼” blade. The throat is wide enough to accommodate an iron up to about 1/2”, which suggests some interesting possibilities to the ambitious Neanderthal willing to tackle a little metalsmithing.
The included plane iron is actually tapered in thickness, with the beefiest part right at the cutting edge. The iron has a distinctly hand-wrought look to it, which may add some cache in the eyes of some. A groove runs along the bottom (bevel side) of the iron and registers with the forward edge of the rear skate. This provides extra support for the iron by effectively making the rear skate an extension of the blade bed. Extending to within 1/4” of the bevel itself; I have to wonder if the groove will affect cutting performance as the blade wears down. I haven’t used the plane enough to assess its edge-holding performance, but the iron seems to take a sharp edge well enough.
The iron is affixed via a simple sloped rosewood wedge that locks it between the mortised bed and a steel cross pin. I found adjusting the plane iron with a wooden mallet no more difficult than any of my other wedged wooden planes.
Even with the steel wing nuts loosened, there is still a fair amount of friction between the fence and the two fence arms. I found this a good thing, as the friction holds the fence adjustments until they are locked down with the wing nuts. The plane doesn’t come with instructions, and my first attempts at adjusting the fence were strictly trial and error affairs. I was spending as much time adjusting the fence for parallelism as I was tuning the distance between the fence and the cutting iron.
Then I happened upon a very simple yet effective fence adjustment method. The end of the plane iron is easily visible by sighting down the generous throat in front of the wedge and cross pin. By marking the desired position of the groove on the workpiece, it’s a simple matter to place the plane on the wood, align the blade with the mark and then slide the fence into position.
If my fence adjustment “discovery” causes a collective urge in everyone to give me a dope slap (“Well duh, how else would anyone adjust the fence?”), then I apologize for stating the obvious.
Fortunately, once the iron and the fence are set, I found the plane did a very respectable job of cutting accurate grooves in both hardwood and softwood. With the latter, I could set the blade for a fairly aggressive cut and hog out wood rapidly. It only took a half a dozen passes over pine to plow down to about 5/16”, where the skate bottoms out.
Cutting grooves in hardwood required shallower cuts and many more passes, but otherwise produced good results. Happily, I found the fence stays put when locked in position; no drifting of the blade as I planed deeper.
And while small, there is nothing particularly flimsy about this plane; it feels solid enough in use and doesn’t seem like it is going to come apart in my hands.
This tool clearly has limitations however. It comes with only one 1/4" blade. It only cuts to approximately 5/16” depth, and lacks any depth stop mechanism to accurately cut shallower grooves.
And then there is the diminutive size and the aesthetics. This plane lacks the satisfying heft and appealing construction details like brass fittings and carved or cast adornments that characterize my vintage tools. If part of the hand tool experience is the tactile satisfaction of using tools built for generations, then this will never be a prized tool.
On the other hand, it does accurately and efficiently plow accurate 1/4” grooves in wood. In that context, I suppose the $17.00 purchase price is something of a bargain. I bought this plane with one purpose in mind: drawer construction. Milling the grooves for bottom and back drawer panels is one of the last reasons I’m still wedded to my bench top table saw. I can report that the Woodcraft rosewood plow plane performs that function admirably, bringing me one step closer to power tool autonomy.
Now if only I could perfect my scraping technique, I might finally be rid of my random orbit sander . . . .
