"doozer" wrote in message
...
Paul Mc Cann wrote:
In article , says...

In article ,
doozer wrote:

A Stanley knife blade simply isn't rigid enough for a serious plane.
Nor is it sharp enough.


I'm not saying your wrong but there was a lengthy demonstration which
seemed to indicate that the blade was easily sharp enough. I admit that
he may have sharpened it a little more before hand but I don't think so.

These demonstrations are always designed to show the product at its best.
So nothing to do with real life use. ;-)


As for it not being rigid enough it was pretty firmly held in place so
that only the blade portion was exposed. I would be surprised if
strength was an issue.

Well, just look at the average plane blade. It's supported as close to
the
cutting edge as possible. But is many, many times thicker than a Stanley
knife blade.



In the back, the very back, of my tool cupboard is a Stanley replaceable
blade rebate plane I bought many years ago. It never worked for me.
Chatter was the main problem, which is of course down to both the
thickness of the blade and the clamping system, frog etc.

Ok I'm convinced. I didn't buy one at the show simply because I have seen
other people buy "wonder tools" that turned out to just be rubbish. I am
of the opinion that after several hundred years of refinement the plane is
probably close n as good as it's going to get.

Anyway can someone point me in the direction of some decent planes at
affordable prices ;o) and perhaps tell me what to look for in a good
plane?

Thanks.



Haven't looked specifically for planes recently, but eBay used to be a
pretty good source for reasonably priced planes if you know what you're
looking for.

Patrick Leach's "blood and gore" webpages are a fairly good intro to Stanley
Bailey planes - history and model numbers.
http://www.supertool.com/StanleyBG/stan0a.html

For further reading, "The handplane book" by Garrett Hack has a lot of info
on tuning and what to look for when buying planes, it's also a very nice
coffee table book showing the beauty and diversity of hand planes. There is
also a lot of info on using planes in there.

Other than that, just google around a bit.
http://www.geocities.com/plybench/plane.html has a fairly useful collection
of links (tho if you're going to be reading around the subject you've really
got to get the terminology right - replace the word "blade" with "iron" when
reading this page!!!).


--
Richard Sampson

mail me at
richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk