I'm after a large router plane and I have a few choices. My intended uses for this is fitting tenons, and cleaning up dados and grooves. I'm not convinced the large router will be useful for mortising smaller hinges, but it may get occasional use for larger hinges and such.
Here's my run down of the options.
- Vintage Stanley or similar. These will mostly come open throat with mediocre depth stop or closed throat with no depth stop. Clean complete sets are selling for upwards of $150. The remaining tools that are incomplete or rusted or both are still selling for $75 - $100. Even in perfect condition, these don't approach the precision and easy / repeatable adjustments of the new planes. Regardless, I could probably do anything I need with 1 cutter on the most basic model. At $50 I'm all over a vintage router plane but $100 for a user that will need some rehab is way too much.
- Lie Nielsen - $140 with a single 3/8" cutter and a fence. Comes open or closed throat but I'll take the closed. LN has taken the Stanley design and tried to prefect it. The only downside is getting other size cutters. With a $40 adapter, I can use the few irons from their small router plane ($35). The included fence is nice bit I'm not sure if I'll ever use it.
- Veritas from LV - $149 with a pair of 1/2" cutters but no fence. It's a unique closed throat design that doesn't borrow much from the Stanley lineage. For $10 nor or $15 later I can add a fence. They offer a number of different size cutters for under $15 each and no adapter is needed. Last but not least, the removable foot and included guide make this the easiest to sharpen. If they were all the same price, I'd choose this one.
The LN and Veritas are both beautiful, precision tools but $140+ is a lot to pay trim a tenon or clean out the bottom of a dado. I wan't to spend $50 or less. That extra $90 could go toward wood or other tools that I also need and that may get more use.
So, do I keep searching for the Unicorn router plane that costs $50 and can be cleaned up for use easily or do I spend 3x as much to get a premium tool that's probably too nice.