Reply by Tomcat1066

Just a general guideline for me, but if it’s made in India and I have any questions about the quality, I don’t buy it. Tools are one of those areas where you can buy quality and maybe cry once or you can by cheap and cry over and over again.

My own personal suggestion is to buy an old Stanley off of eBay. So long as it’s complete, it’ll serve the purpose here. Once you have it, restore it lovingly back to useable condition (assuming, of course, that it’s not useable when you buy it). Even if it’s still crap that was rusted because it was only good to use as a boat anchor, you still no how to restore these old tools.

Another option is to search for antique tool websites and look for “user” planes. These often don’t really need restoration for use, but aren’t collectible and therefore less expensive.

-- "Give me your poor tools, your tired steel, your huddled masses of rust." Yep, I ripped off the Statue of Liberty. That's how I roll!