Mujingfang plow plane

[Harlan Barnhart]

Has anyone used one of these? I am considering a wooden plow to replace a 45 that I find to "fiddly". Japan woodworker has them for $63, about what I would expect to pay for the irons alone. Should I take my chances there or take my chances looking for a user on Ebay?

[David Weaver]

I am a fan of mujis, but I think this is a fairly small plane and there are a couple of things I would be concerned about, especially:
* do the arms lock well enough with the wing nuts to be as stable as a wedge lock or threaded plow plane
* what is the actual size of the irons...they might be metric and if they are, you will have to grind them some and you'll need to do it fairly accurately and leave a crisp edge with some taper
* It does look by the design like it might be designed to be pulled and not pushed. I can't see where you could put straight-on oomph behind it without having the web of your hand in the iron, which will be very uncomfortable.

I was almost sure that I had seen a mention of this plane before with some negatives, but I can't find it, and I could be wrong about that.

If the plane is decent and all you have to do is some accurate grinding, or even less, I could just be wrong about what I recall above. On the mujis I've had, I have needed to tinker with bits (just smoothers) for fit of the iron around the mouth, and tune the wedges a bit, but they are such a bargain and with good steel, that I couldn't find a dried blank to make one of their big planes as cheaply as the entire plane is sold.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I've got one. It does the job, nothing to write home about. I bought it because I needed a plough, and money was (is) tight, and nothing used was coming up locally.

It wish the pin for holding the wedge/iron assembly was a little larger - as it is, it compresses the wood of the wedge, making things a little difficult, particularly in retracting the iron. I need to make a new wedge at some point.

The irons as I received them seem to be rough approximations of english sizes - I received to that I think are the same size, although one's a hair under and ones a hair over. Easy enough to grind, so I left it be. I like that that the tips of the iron flare out - it helps in getting a cleaner cut, but it does mean that as you go through the iron, the width of cut changes shape. I wouldn't rely on the irons as is for getting perfectly sized grooves for sheet goods, (although if you're getting perfectly [and consistently] sized sheet goods these days, I'd like to know your lumber yard) but working in solid wood, I usually end up cutting an appropriate groove, and then thicknessing or rabbeting the stock to fit the groove.

One of the irons needed a bit of fettling to fit well - it was either slightly warped from heat treating, or ground poorly or something, so there was a bit of hump that made it sit poorly. I've never needed to do anything to the bed of the tool.

The irons seem to take longer to sharpen than many of my other tools, and I don't ever seem to be able to get quite as keen an edge on them as other blades, but this isn't a smoothing plane, and they seem to hold their edge a surprisingly long time - my first work with this was in splintery tough oak.

The wing nut thing works okay if you crank them down - they don't screw down into the fence, but rather pull up on some threaded rod that's bent into an "L" shape, pulling against the bottom of the arms. The wing nuts are uncomfortable to adjust, however.

The fence is difficult to adjust for parallelism, however - so rather than monkey with that, and take my chances on the fence holding (although really, I only had it slip once) I usually mill a small block with a lip and put it in between the body and the fence.
The fence is generally large enough, but at times I when starting a cut, I wish it was larger.

Lack of a depth stop can be annoying (although for much work, I just go until the tool bottoms out) but a little creativity with the block I use between the fence and body can be a passable one, or just double stick a small block of wood onto the bottom of the thing.

I haven't found the thing comfortable however, as was alluded to above. Pulling is more comfortable than pushing. The iron often seems to be in the way. But between the fence, the body and the rods, there's plenty of surfaces to figure something out. I usually get something workable at some point, but never can remember what worked well last time. Part of the issue is that I don't have a proper worksurface right now, so I'm often working in odd positions securing the work or whatever the work is clamped to with my body as well as holding the plane. When I've been working shorter pieces, and had them secured in a sticking board on the counter, things have been much easier.

Most of the discomfort, however, just comes from the sharp edges of the body of the tool, and well - it's wood. That's easily changed.

[Bob Strawn]

After tuning it, mine works fine. As said above, the initial tuning took a bit of time. Additionally, one of the blades had quite a bit of bow on it. I have been able to put very sharp edges on the blades, using sub micron diamond grit on a hard flat strop.


Bob

[Harlan Barnhart]

Thanks for the input guys. On further reflection, I think I want a depth stop.