Some of the Bedrock copies by Lie Nielsen and other
makers are a little heavier than the originals. The concentrated
mass helps them approach the quality of cut of the dense
old infill smoother, but at a lower cost of course.
In terms of performance a regular old Bedrock is only
marginally heavier than a Bailey, not enough to make
much difference in results. In practice the adjustable
mouth feature is just not very useful as usually we
just leave a plane set up for fine or coarse work. If you
only have one plane and need to switch the mouth
open, the big low-angle block jack planes offer this
feature much more conveniently. Some people love
the low angle planes. I don’t find them very useful
myself.
