2-pack of 2 Inch Wide Replacement Bench Plane Blades - for No. 4 & No. 5 Iron Bench Planes by all Major Brands - Caliastro

Well made, strong and straight. A little thicker than OEM, but that's a good thing.

I got these because I heard they were good for the price. I work rough cut lumber with hand tools for a lot of my projects. I wanted to re-grind them with a significant camber for surfacing/scrubbing rough boards. They were delivered promptly, and were in good shape with no rust. I sharpened one of them and installed it in one of my no. 5 planes.Pros: The blades sharpened up to a fine edge pretty quickly. The back of this first one had slight hollow, so polishing the edge on my diamond plates didn’t take too long. The blade is about as thick as the original, so no adjustment needed to the frog or the mouth. It took very fine shavings in walnut and left a very smooth surface.Cons: The machining is pretty rough on the back. Polishing those out along the edge will be necessary. No huge deal if you have diamond lapping plates, and it only took me about 15-20 minutes, including a final mirror polish on a Norton water stone. The blade was a little off square, which I corrected during the sharpening.The blade cut well without chatter, and left a glassy smooth surface. They don’t look as good, but my early assessment is that they compare favorably at this point to blades I paid a lot more for. You will have to spend some time getting them to working condition, so take that into account, especially if you don’t have a way of flattening and polishing the back. Pretty good though, when you consider the price per blade is about 1/8 to 1/10 that of premium blades like Hock, Veritas, and Lie-Nielsen. I use those blades, and I appreciate the high quality and toughness they have. Sometimes the extra thickness of those blades (not Hock) will necessitate adjusting the size of the mouth on a standard Bailey plane. That won’t be needed with these blades. I’m not saying these are “better” or even “just as good,” but they certainly aren’t trash.

The bevel was not even close to square. So only cosider if you don't care about squareness or if you have a bench grinder or some other powered tool to re grind the entire bevel.Even then, plan to put in several hours of flattening the back. Or do the ruler trick with a medium stone first, 1000 or even less.Some blades were even beyond that, with a corner so crooked you would need to grind off one cm (3/8 inch) off the blade to get past it.I gave up after one blade (the best of the pack). Would not buy again.

These are inexpensive blades and have the traits of such blades.They are reasonably well tempered. The grinding is VERY rough and two of the blades were/are significantly bellied on the back so flattening them is unlikely. These are slightly wider than a standard blade, as well. Good blades for practicing sharpening technique or grinding techniques. Overall, a 2-3 rating.Side note - the company is very easy to work with and get help from.

These are a little longer than old vintage irons so the cap iron screw will not fit with out some grinding to reduce the distance between the screw hole slot and the edge. Otherwise awesome!!

manin thing was four of the blades were rusted, pits on both sides

I am giving a five star just out of the box. Not sure of how sharpness will hold up. Iron needs to be flattened. Blades were square. Seems like it may not take long to turn it into usable condition. Being to my understanding for the price this is just an unfinished iron.

As seen in the photo, they shipped with rusty spots, even though wrapped in wax paper and plastic. There was no oil on them. However, they were not deeply pitted, as other reviews mentioned.I did work on one of the blades:I spent about 90 minutes flattening the back, the whole thing, not just the blade area. There were a few areas that I couldn't flatten, which can be seen in the photo. But I was able to get flattened about 5/8" from the edge, which will last me a long time.The edge was already 90 deg, so I did not need to grind square.After sharpening, I inserted it into my Stanley #4 type 7 (1890) with no issues, and was able to get good shavings. Only issue I found is that the lateral adjustment gap in the blade is a bit wide, thereby lateral adjustment is a bit sloppy and limited, but still workable.For the money I paid, I don't mind putting in a little fettle time to get it working. While working the blade, I did not get the impression I am working with cheap steel, or chrome-vanadium, as both tend to have a grittier feel while honing. I might be wrong. Time will tell if it holds an edge.