Well I picked one of these up this week during a trip to town and I think it was the best $7.50 (with a 20% off coupon) I've ever spent on a tool. I bought the Stanley (they call it a #4) at Lowes a few weeks ago and this plane is better. I also just picked up a Type 18 Stanley (1946 maybe) #4 smoothing plane. This makes curls just as well if not better. I'm quite impressed with it. It's got the dual knobs (one for each side) that have to be fine tuned to get the blade to cut evenly on both sides. At first I thought I wouldn't like this, but I put a little vasoline on the threads and it's smooth as silk and easy to fine tune. Once I have it set to take just a fine see through shaving, I tighten the chipbreaker screw down tight and it's ready for use.
The sharpening out of the box wasn't nice (just rough) but with a quick secondary edge I had it making nice shavings. After I could see it'd work well, I spent a couple hours and tuned it. I put a nice polished sharpening on the blade (80-2500 grit then buffed), flattened the sole (the closest I've seen out of the box), polished the sole, and a few other minor preferential things. But all in all, I'm happy to say it's working great. I used it to smooth some surfaces out of the planer today and it works easily as good as my original vintage Stanley #4. I'd like to try a better iron in it eventually but really, it cuts nice as is so why not leave it be.
Also interesting is that the exact plane is sold in Lowes under the stanley name for $25 or so and this one has wood handles where the Stanley has plastic. Nothing wrong with that necessarily but one more little detail that I liked about this cheapy. I was quite surprised.
http://www.harborfreight.com/no-33-b...ane-97544.html