Amazonbasics Woodworking Tools – Hand Plane Review
Amazonbasics Woodworking Tools – Hand Plane Review
Amazonbasics Hand Plane Review. In this video Rob Cosman reviews Amazon basics #4 hand plane. He starts from opening the box, initial impressions, sharpening, planing soft and hard wood, and the final evaluation.
00:00 Overview
01:06 Initial Impressions
12:03 Sharpening
16:38 Performance Test
22:38 Overall Evaluation
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Great evaluation – always wondered with those bargain planes if it was worth it or not. I’d rather use the time tuning up an old stanley. Thanks!
I found on ebay there is a brand called anant made in india that looks interesting. But the shipping from england is cost prohibitive. It would be interesting to see a review of that brand.
So, I value your opinion and I’m not buying junk. However, the Sergeant in me says "hey f%ckface what should I buy to plane this wood? End on a recommendation
I would submit that you are reviewing the wrong cheap plane. Get a Grizzly 10” smoother. The quality is much better than the Amazon, and approaches the. Stanley. The grizzly compares to the Wood River like the WR compares to the Lie Nelson. Just replace the blade with a WR blade and you have a high quality tool. I got one last week on sale for $25.. The 10” and 14” together were $75 shipped! So far they work as well as my Vintage Stanley’s. If you are truly interested in sourcing lower priced alternatives check them out.
50 bucks dang that looks worse than the the 15 dollar one I got at harbor freight which is now my scrub plane.
Thanks for the breakdown. Years ago I bought an old Stanley #4 on eBay for $40. I was in pretty good shape but did require some work (mostly cleaning) but I learned more about the plane in the process. I looked recently and the common price (with shipping) for a Stanley #4 and you can there are pages of them for $60-80 but you still can find them for $40 – especially if you can find them local and avoid the shipping. It seems like that is a better choice and buying an Amazonbasics plane.
Interesting, casting and machining finish is identical to the Kobalt No. 4 sold at Lowe’s.
Love this video, its tell people you get what you pay for. In this case you get headaches too
Wow, that thing is a screaming banshee, can’t imagine using that for any length of time.
That high pitched sound he talks about is the first thing I noticed. I didn’t think the reason was going to be vibration of the blade. I thought it would have been quality of the materials used in the plane.
I think if you are going to get into the area of making commercial videos, you should do a crash course on sound reproduction – placement of the mic for example – the sound of that plastic wrapping rattling as you turn the plane back and forth is louder than your voice!!! And guess which one we’d prefer to hear? And what’s going on with the flag on the wall and the two flags on your apron? Can’t remember where you are?
We need to start saying HELL NO to anything made in China. Period. Dependence on the Communist Chinese Party for our supply chain of pretty much everything will not serve us well when we are at war with them defending Taiwan.
Rob, couple of things:
1) of all your videos, you seem to be most proud of your video 32 seconds sharpening. You mention it in almost every video. You should be too, that video has changed my life!
2) the magic is in the hands of the craftsman. I got a similar plane and it took me at least 20 hours to get it to work as well as you got it to work in 10 minutes. It seems to me that at this point you can make fine furniture with a rock and a stick. On the other hand, I can’t won’t be able to do much even if I am in a lie Nielsen factory with all the tools available to me
Well spoken.
Better off buying an oldie but goodie
"I am somewhat of an experienced wood worker" Yeah, Rob. I think you might qualify. Who knows, maybe if you really put the time in, you might be able to say you are an enthusiast.
ME. 3500 YEARS AGO Egyptians made dovetails. 3000 years ago Romans used bone ivory and iron hand planes. Their buildings are still standing. Woodriver and Rob"s dovetail saws were not available. At least sharpen blade to 16000grit and apply techniques in your dvd on plane setup before condemning this plane
Why would anyone buy a new cheapo plane when there are so many older Stanley’s for the same price and your videos how to make them good enough to keep for a lifetime. But people do in their tens of thousands.
When you had difficulty on that cherry I thought the sole isn’t flat. Stick it on an edge sander before flattening it properly!!
I just checked, and that plane is selling today for $29.80. But, I still wouldn’t buy one.
Excellent video! These are fun to watch. One suggestion would be to take new planes out of the box and see how they operate with no tune-up. That would give you a benchmark for where it started, and you could see how much improvement can be made.
Good review Rob – thank you. It’s dispiriting to think of how many newcomers to woodworking may be put off when tools like this cannot be made to perform "like on YouTube". Matt Estlea here in the UK took this exact plane and by re-machining and spending a ton of time made it perform like a premium plane. Link here if anyone’s interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgIdcIzHG38
Spoiler alert: By the time it DID perform, in terms of time and materials, it was almost the cost of said premium plane!
I agree that these cheap Chinese imports are garbage. But let’s not forget the finest furniture ever made was fashioned long before the metal hand plane. Paul Sellers made a super rebate plane out of a block of wood and an old chisel. Just saying
Rob is one of the few people I can respect after he trashes my plane. I agree there is slop between when the blade is being pushed out and when it is being pulled back in making it difficult to get fine shavings. It’s nice to know that when it gets to the point where the plane is not capable of doing what is needed, I can improve it by maybe leveling the sole, the frog seat, and rounding the cap made with indeterminate lightweight material. Also, if I was saving up for something better, my money would be in crypto not the bank.
I love the review of a cheap tool. Please do more!
Or buy a good used Stanley, preferably before WWII
There’s nothing worse than a crappy hand tool. The reason you’re using a hand tool in the first place is because you take pride in your work. Hard to be proud when the tool is so severely compromised. I say save up the extra $150 and buy the Woodriver #4 or a bit more for the #5 1/2!
I cant help but think a lot of reviews like this are just nit picky. 15 years ago I bought a hand plane from harbor freight for $10. I still use it today over any of the expensive planes ive bought or inherited.
It will cost you a lot of time.
But if you can get it to work like a well made plane you would have learned all that there is to learn about hand planes.
Another way to look at it.
Hand tool woodworkers should know everything there is to know about their tools.
For €80 ($92) you’ll get a Stanley #4 in The Netherlands. I would save some more to buy a Stanley, tough?
I have the same plane (just Buck Bros instead of Amazon Basics) and have some things to add. I work with pine with knots in it, and since the blade isn’t well supported by the frog, when it hits knots it flexes and digs into the wood quite badly. Also, the sole of the plane was ground crooked so one side of the plane is at 87 degrees and the other at 93 degrees, rendering it useless on a shooting board. It is still my only plane, but whenever I use it I wish I had a better plane.
Rob, you got the blade sharp but the question is, how long did it stay sharp?
Looks like you almost ran out of lateral adjustment just to get a full width shaving. Have a Groz plane that doesn’t allow enough lateral adjustment to go full width. No amount of monkeying with the frog (or anything else) could save that thing.
I bought this plane from Amazon, and it’s an upgrade compared to the Groz planes I bought from Woodcraft.
Interesting you only polished to 1000 for a review of this plane…only takes a minute to bring it up to 16000
Didn’t wood River steal the Lee Nielson plane ? If that’s true you can’t be biased to a thief
This is a lottery winner’s plane – not something you buy after winning the lottery, but finding one that actually works well and has a reasonable ceiling is like winning the lottery.
The mexico stanley actually has potential for someone who can file or flatten a plane bottom -the light weight lever cap on that plane is no good – I had one made the same way, but marked "buck brothers" that was less than the cost of a blade, but threw it away, anyway. Swap the lever cap with one from a stanley, and it works fine. plane hardwood with the lightweight flexible lever cap and it lacks stability to plane hardwood – swap back to the stanley lever cap, and fine again.
So at the very least, you’re at 65-70 for adding a stanley lever cap so that it can smooth (but the rest of the plane is garbage and above the auction price for a used stanley plane).
None have been flat enough to do good smoothing work, either – either hollow in the length, or hollow in the width or both.
In the old days, manufacturers made products the best they could, and then priced them accordingly. This plane is the result of the opposite. Making a product to meet a price point.
good video , thanks. I’m saving my money for an upgrade.
Personally I think someone would be better of spending that 50$ on a couple Stanley hand planes at a local garage sale, or kijiji/eBay. They’re older tools, but at least its proven they will still work as good as new with some care.
I picked up a bin of 8 stanley hand planes for 75$ locally from a post on kijiji a while ago and they work great! A little maintenance and sharpening and they are good as new. I even got a cute little Stanley no.1 from that purchase lol!
Rob, I wish you would have taken a couple of passes on the cherry with your WoodRiver plane.
Get a rusty old plane record ss no4 of eBay and make it happen you’ll be a better woodworker for it 🤠
That frog looks like it was cut with a fly cutter, very crude machining I don’t think it is worth $ 50.00
This was the first plane I ever bought, took forever to get it set up correctly. Nothing was flat. The blade was not perfectly square, kept having the sides touch before the center. After a few days of work, was able to get it working. To me this makes a good training plane (since nothing is correct), to learn how to tune up a plane. Never did get the frog set up correctly.
Amazon has gone from "We sell everything." to "We’ll sell anything."
Great review…great teaching in the process. Lousy plane for sure. .
This is totally useless plane. This was my first planer and created doubt in me if I ever be able use a plane. After days of grinding , levelling and struggle I made it work.
Looks exactly like the Kobalt plane sold in the states in Lowes. Bought one just to try it out. It was horrible. Gotten a lot of old beat up planes to work couldn’t get that one.
For many fewer dollars you could buy a lovely old Stanly No 4 which would be a better plane and last your lifetime.
That top piece with the knob and logo might be zinc.
In Italy we say "the less you spend the more you spend"