Spear & Jackson CSP4 No. 4 Smoothing Plane

This is an excellent tool considering the price. (I paid a bit less than $25.) The casting is good, handles are nice, and the blade, chip breaker and cap seem to be pretty well made. Straight out of the box, it was ready to take nice shavings from a piece of red cedar I had laying around. However, the plane needed quite a bit of work to get it to perform like a proper smoothing plane.I disassembled the plane and examined the components. The casting appeared to be well made with no gross defects. The sole of the plane was more-or-less flat, but it did require about 45 minutes to flatten properly. (Working from 80 grit sandpaper to 220.) The sides were perpendicular to the sole. The casting was nicely painted, although there was a bit of paint on the seating for the frog, which I scraped off with a razor blade. As is usual for new planes, the back of the blade needed to be flattened before sharpening. That took about 15 minutes, and sharpening the blade took about 5 more. I put the plane together, adjusted the frog, and made test cuts. Some debris was accumulating between the blade and the chip breaker, indicating a poor fit between the two. I flattened the end of the chip breaker on a stone so that it fit the blade correctly. That took about 10 minutes. Total time required to properly set this up as a smoothing plane was about 1 hr 15 minutes.After setting up the plane, it did indeed perform like a proper smoothing plane. On figured maple, the plane removed very fine shavings and left a glass-like surface. At this point, I am very happy with the plane and consider it to be a bargain despite the work needed for tune up. Thus my 5 star rating. My only real only real complaint is the excessive backlash on the wheel that adjusts the blade depth, but I expect that with an inexpensive plane and can live with it.

First of all, if you've seen the prices for vintage planes recently; you'll understand that these Spear and Jackson planes are a deal and a half. It's hard to find a vintage plane that doesn't need 10 times more work for 3 times the price. That said, you will need to do some work to true this tool up.By far the biggest issue is the grind of the blade. The back is nowhere near flat. And because the steel is relatively hard, flattening the back of the blade can take time. The bevel grind is also only fair at best. It's not hard to clean up the bevel with just a simple inexpensive diamond stone.The second biggest problem is the chip breaker. Even after you flatten and sharpen the blade, the chip breaker isn't going to be well fitted. Getting the correct angle and sharpening/polishing the top is a little tricky but not impossible.The bed does have a bit of a belly, as is to be expected of almost any modern cast iron part (the metal can continue to move for up to a year after casting). But flattening that out doesn't take long.My only other gripes are pretty minor. The over all finish of the tote and knob are inconsistent from one plane to the next. The number 5 I bought was great. The number 4 had some half hearted attempt to cover over a small spot of sap wood. The sap wood doesn't bother me. The big glob of obvious brown paint did. Still it only took a couple minutes to sand it off and re-apply varnish.Bottom line, these aren't "great" planes out of the box. But having restored a couple dozen vintage planes in the past few years...they can be made into really good planes with fairly minimal effort. I've been really happy with the Spear and Jackson tools I've bought recently. I wouldn't say any of them were work ready out of the box. But then again...they've all been less than a 3rd the price of other "inexpensive" options. And with a little attention, can be made in to really good user tools.

Excellent purchase. Well described. Great instructions on setting it up and adjusting.

For the price its fantastic I paid $21.76 including tax and shipping! I have been experimenting with these modern hand planes from India under various names Grizzly, Draper and Spear & Jackson.I think there is a larger degree of variability with many of these planes from India, some are better machined and made and require a little less work. This plane by S & J was one such plane? It required the least amount of work out the 3 recent planes I have gotten. They all require flattening the sole and this was no exception just that it was closer to flat to start with. The blade and chipbreaker weren't bad either and was able to flatten and sharpen them in short order. I did not check the side squareness to sole since I had not planned on using it on a shooting board. The handles were nicely finished a bit more like the handles from Grizzly they were nicely shaped and finished with only like light oil or wax finish which is the way I prefer them, you can actually feel the wood this way. I had to fuss with the plane a little to get the blade and mouth adjusted properly but then it would take nice shavings, I may convert the plane into a scrub plane with a convex sharpening of blade? Overall very worthwhile plane! and I might look and see about ordering other sizes of S&J?