Right before Turkey day I got the Veritas medium shoulder plane. Finally got some time to use it and thus here is my review. It is also archived on my WW link
Veritas Medium Shoulder Plane Review
<!--StartFragment --> Fit and finish
First of all the medium shoulder plane was backordered, so I must have got mine fresh off of production. I was surprised at how well refined this plane was. The sole was perfectly square to the sides and the blade was perfectly ground to just barely hang over the edge of the rabbet hole. The blade was extremely easy to flatten and sharpen and I had the plane up and running in about 30 minutes after I protected the metal surfaces with Boesheild T9
Features
First of all, I have used both the medium and large shoulder plane, but I ultimately bought the medium shoulder plane because it is 0.70" wide, making it extremely versatile for cleaning up dadoes, cleaning up machine cut joints and trimming tennons to fit.
One really great feature of this plane is that you can turn 4 screws on each side of the plane to center the blade (and keep it there after sharpening). After 2 minutes of fiddling, I got the blade perfectly centered and every time I have replaced the blade after sharpening, is is dead on.
Another nice feature of the plane is that you can adjust the nose of the plane to adjust the mouth opening. This is a great feature especially if you use the plane enough that you need to reflatten the sole (a problem with many of the antique designs).
The medium shoulder plane comes with an A2 blade that holds a great edge. The blade only required about 5 minutes of flattening to remove the mill marks and another couple of minutes to hone the bevel. The only caveat to shoulder planes is that you must make sure that the bevel is perfectly square. Not a huge issue, but you just need to spend that extra minute or two making sure you have everything set perfectly in your honing jig.
A nice little brass knob on the handle tilts for differing types of work. This is a great feature, but my only complain is that there isn't a similar knob on the nose of the plane like on the large shoulder plane. This makes it a tad tricky to plane tennon shoulders (more in a second)
Crossgrain work
This plane does a surprisingly good job at planning down tennon cheeks. If you use machinery (especially a bandsaw) for making tennons, then this is the plane for you. I did a couple of quick and dirty tennons that turned out to no be squarely cut (purpose accident!). I used the med. shoulder plane to make the top cheek parallel to the bottom one and in a few swipes I removed the high spot and then a couple of more swipes and I made it perfectly parallel. The best part is that the finish of the wood was smoother than I have even seen with a table saw cheek cutting jig. This is mainly doe to the low angle of the blade and that I kept the bevel honed at 25 degrees. I was very happy to see such a great finish left on those cheeks that I now feel comfortable relying on this plane to bring down the width of a tennon to fit its mortise.
Another nice part is that this plane rabbets and because the blade is so hard is keeps a nice edge on the corners of the blade even when removing material in these areas. This is great for removing those mistakes when making tennons
End grain work
Every made tennons with some ugly cheeks? The medium shoulder plane can remove the mess quickly. I was pleasantly surprise at how well the plane took off end grain. This plane can also be set surprising aggressively and I accidentally took off too much off of a couple of test tennons.
My biggest problem with the plane lies in this type of work. Since a nose knob isn't provided it is a bit tricky to grab the nose and keep the plane on track when trimming shoulders. The grip I came up with is to put my thumb in the rabbet hole and fingers on the nose of the plane. This works fairly well, but the only problem is trying to keep adequate pressure on the plane.
With grain work
Even though the blade is set at a low angle, is does fairly well with the grain. I was able to make a shallow rabbet quickly and squarely. The only thing to remember it to keep that mouth tight so the plane doesn't bite into the wood.
Rabbet work
As noted above, this plane works well with the grain. As long as you do not need to clean up a stopped rabbet plane, the medium shoulder plane performs quite exceptionally.
Closing remarks
For $150 delivered, the Veritas medium shoulder plane is definitely a winner. I was very happy overall with the fit finish and performance of the plane. It is of no surprise that this plane has been flying off the shelves of Lee Valley. If you routinely do machine cut joinery and have always cursed when you had to just barely trim one of these joints, then you will find great value in the mediums shoulder plane. I found that this plane excelled at trimming all aspects of tennons making it extremely quick to fit tennons to a mortise. This plane sure beats trying to keep from taking off a finger while gently trimming tennons with a razor sharp chisel. Not only is it easier than a chisel, but since it is a plane you don't screw up flat surface that the machine established.
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