# Does. Not. Work.



## Ocelot

My wife gave me several handplanes for Christmas one year. I have used some of them, but not all. I have this plane still in the box. I'll take note of your post and come ask questions when I actually use the thing.

I do agree that new tools should generally be usable out of the box. I have bought things, HF things, which I am pleased with, however, which didn't work at all out of the box but were so cheap that they were fine with me. But at $35, we are not quite there.

thanks for the heads up.

-Paul


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## RichardHillius

I recently found a Buck Bros. block plane and smoother plane in a box of misc stuff that I bought a long time ago. I ended up throwing them in the box and forgetting about them because of the bad experiences I had with them at the time. I have since spent a lot more time with much better hand tools both old and new so when I found them I spent a little time cleaning them up to see if they had any redeeming qualities at all.

The Block Plane is worthless. The mouth is just way to large to work for anything except scraping paint off wood and even than I think a scraper would work better.

The Smoother is slightly better. You can close up the mouth by shifting the frog forward even though the adjustment is a pain and once you flatten the iron and the chip breaker (No small tasks in themselves) it works ok. Like you I had shaving's catching between the chip breaker and iron until I flattened both parts where they meet (there was a hollow in the iron and the chip breaker was horribly out of flat) It's not a fine enough tool to be what I would call a smoothing plane but it would work ok as a short jack plane on pieces of lumber with a lot of grit in it that you don't want to take a good iron to. The steel really isn't strong enough to make them decent planes even at that. I found myself tempted to put a old Stanley or Hock iron/chip breaker in the plane but it's really not worth it.

Overall these kinds of items really give hand tools a bad name and I can understand why someone trying to use one of them would lean on power tools and only turn to these as a last resort. And honestly with a little hunting you can buy a much better vintage version of both these tools for the same price.


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## TheFridge

I got a buck bros smoothing plane for free. It is crap.

I bought a buck bros block plane before I know anything about planes. What a waste.


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## DaleM

I have this plane. Not the one in the picture, but the one you described. I like it now. I bought it to be used for rough work when I didn't want to abuse my vintage planes. It works fine for that now. Mine didn't work well right out of the box either. The only problem I had was the chip breaker, but I didn't spend hours tuning it. I spent a few minutes flattening it on the belt sander. Like I said, I bought it for rough work. My chipbreaker was warped and ground off center so it didn't lay flat on one side. It's cheap and fairly ductile, so I was able to bend it a little by hand to roughly the correct shape, then just hold it flat against the sander until it was the shape I wanted. Now that I did that, and sharpened it, it works okay. It has good weight, the sole was flat and the iron holds an edge for a while anyway. I think it was worth the money for me.


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## japie

DaleM, I'm glad to hear that it really is just the chip breaker. Since I wasn't sure exactly what was going wrong, I just tweaked and ground and flattened everything that seemed like it could use some help, and at some point it started to work. In the end, when I got it to work, my suspicion was that the crucial improvement was the chip breaker, but how am I to know for sure without buying yet another one of these that it wasn't e.g. the paint on the inside of the mouth that was the culprit? That's why I'm glad to hear you got it to work just fixing the chip breaker and not other things. If I ever cross paths with one of these again, I'll know what to try first.


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## japie

Ocelot: I completely agree with you about HF. They're not all bad. You just have to approach HF with the same mindset you approach buying used tools with: just because a tool has the same name as something that will do the job does not mean you can assume somebody else has gotten paid to double-check that it will indeed do the job. Instead, you have to keep your eyes open. But if you do, you can get awesome stuff for cheap, both used and at HF.


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## Airframer

Any handtool with a blade (Chisel, Plane etc.) should never be expected to perform without an initial sharpening. Even some LN's require some final honing out of the box.

If you are expecting a $35 HD special to perform out of the box you haven't really set the bar that low. I am not defending these abominations but simply saying for the price… you are getting what you paid for.


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## Laban

Airframer - I agree that you get what you pay for, but that being said I still expect for a tool to do what it is designed to do and what they are advertising that it does…. and if I spent $250+ for a LN plane and I still had to hone it in I would be furious. I would never expect a Ford to match the quality and performance of a Ferrari…but I still expect my new Ford to run like a new car and get me from point A to point B. If I bought a Ferrari and I had to go get an alignment straight off the lot I would be livid.


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## Verawood

I also purchased the plane from Home D. since the price was right and I'm just starting to learn about woodworking. It was really a learning experience! I found some helpful videos on you tube that helped since out of the box I wasn't able to do anything close to planing. While the blade looks sharp to a novice like me, it wasn't. I drove down to Rockler and picked up their Japanese water-stone kit. with a tool to hold the blade at the proper angle. The grinding process really took some time to get the blade in reasonable shape. After resetting the frog and chip-breaker as I had seen in the videos the first three strokes still seemed terrible, but then a miracle seemed to happen and I suddenly had these really nice long curls of wood appearing. So while I can't recommend the plane, it can be made to function ok, but you have to trade off how much time you want to spend to get the tool in passable shape. Next up will be some flea market shopping, followed up by a quick donation of this plane to Good Will.


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## michelletwo

I think for 35.00 you get a fixer -upper. Handtools rarely work right out of the box..they need sharpening..& fetteling. At 35.00 you are getting a parts kit, not a tool. Even chisels need sharpening & japanese ones need handles installed. If you want a tool that works out of the box, you must pay for the labor to get it to that state


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## palaswood

You have to ask yourself how much your time is worth?

If it takes you 5 hours of work to get an inferior quality tool into "decent" working shape, you likely have to admit its still not going to perform as well as a vintage stanley with 5 hours of work into it. Chances are the stanley would perform out of the box it arrived in better than the buck bros even after some honing. Other side of the coin is spending 8 times more on an LN or veritas. Seems to be a case of too high of expectations for a cheap tool.

I guess my point is, if you polish up a turd, you simply get shiny ********************.


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## lj61673

> Airframer - I agree that you get what you pay for, but that being said I still expect for a tool to do what it is designed to do and what they are advertising that it does…. and if I spent $250+ for a LN plane and I still had to hone it in I would be furious. I would never expect a Ford to match the quality and performance of a Ferrari…but I still expect my new Ford to run like a new car and get me from point A to point B. If I bought a Ferrari and I had to go get an alignment straight off the lot I would be livid.
> 
> - Joshua Oehler


It doesn't work that way. You are not paying premium prices for LN or LV to hone the blade for you. You are paying for premium materials and workmanship.

A $400 plane needs to be honed same as a $40 plane.


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## RichardHillius

> Airframer - I agree that you get what you pay for, but that being said I still expect for a tool to do what it is designed to do and what they are advertising that it does…. and if I spent $250+ for a LN plane and I still had to hone it in I would be furious. I would never expect a Ford to match the quality and performance of a Ferrari…but I still expect my new Ford to run like a new car and get me from point A to point B. If I bought a Ferrari and I had to go get an alignment straight off the lot I would be livid.
> 
> - Joshua Oehler
> 
> It doesn t work that way. You are not paying premium prices for LN or LV to hone the blade for you. You are paying for premium materials and workmanship.
> 
> A $400 plane needs to be honed same as a $40 plane.
> 
> - lj61673


A new LN or Veritas plane out of the box will take me about 10 minutes to get in operating shape. I wipe down the plane body and put a little paste wax on it take the iron and run it over a 8000 grit stone to polish the back a bit and sharpen the edge and it's ready to go.

Compare that to the Buck Bros. plane I spent 4 hours flattening the back of the iron and chip breaker before giving up on it because I realized the plane body itself needed probably another couple hours to flatten because it had a hollow down the length of the bed and they are no where near the same. Add on to that even if you do get that plane tuned up you still end up with a plane who's adjustment and precision is much rougher and less refined than the premium planes. A Buck Bros. plane will never operate as good as one of the more expensive planes no matter how much work you put into them.


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## Dedvw

All my high end hand planes require final honing out of the box. My out of box honing usually consists of sharpening the blade. Honing the back of the blade (to make the blade dead flat), this can take a lot of time, even on the most expensive planes. Honing the sole, another time consuming part and then flattening the chip breaker.

The high end planes are definitely better out of the box, but still can require a lot of set up (depending on how picky you are).


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## Oldtool

I too bought one of these from HD, in my initial start down the woodworking path, and the threaded rod that secures the rear handle stripped out the threads in the base. 
I've since decided it is a better investment to buy used Stanley planes, and now have 5 that are a joy to use. And, they were less costly than this Buck Bros.


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## Fettler

I had this experience with a Groz i purchased. There's probably days worth of fettling you'd have to do to that thing to get it to work and IMO you'd be better off with a rusted Stanley.

Pinnacle makes replacement Irons which are super thick and have an extender tab so the adjust still works. The idea is that the super thick blade takes out all the chatter from a poorly fit frog. This would at least save you from having to re-rivet the lateral adjuster so that you could flatten it. You'd still need to flatten and polish the sole, and chamfer the edges, which is the most time consuming part.


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## Fettler

Also, i find that ALL planes including LN need some fine tuning. E.g. chamfering the edges of the sole with a file so that if you ding it against another tool you're not leaving a groove in your piece.


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## fuigb

I'm curious, Japie: why did you buy this plane? By the sound of it you know what you're doing, and based upon that I'd assume that you already have a full arsenal of decent, tuned users.


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## webguy

I made the mistake of buying a Buck Bro. #5 hand plane. The first one I brought home had a stripped screw holding down the chip breaker. I returned it and the latest one had a loose frog ( no big deal) and I have not been able to get the blade as sharp as I need it. What a waste. I'm just beginning to delve into hand tools and this could cause one to reconsider that choice.


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## Smitty_Cabinetshop

A hand plane should work, out of the box, when purchased new. I don't care if it's $5 or $500. Why would anyone pay $35, get a piece of crap, and not take it back?

Why settle?

If a circular saw needed 'fettling' out of the box, forget it. Fridge not cold when it's plugged in, it goes back. HF or Buck, doesn't matter, if it's crap, take it back! I get flattening backs, but the tool didn't take shavings. Who should know, unless they're experienced enough to know not to by a Buck Bros. in the first place, that the tool wouldn't actually jack wood out of the box? Then label it…

Stepping down from soapbox.


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## japie

Airframer: this is not a matter of sharpening. The chip breaker is cannot possibly work as designed and needs to be reshaped completely.


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## Dreek

My two cents' worth on this: the OP is right in his indignation, given the effort that had to be expended. It is one thing to have to spend a modest amount of time doing a little honing and final adjusting, and quite another to have to spend hours completing the manufacturing process.

I was, and continue to be, appalled at some of the items that are sold as usable today. I don't accept any explanation like "that's just the way it is" in any context where honest human effort and honest dealings can better a situation. Too many modern manufacturers have take the notion that to require a wee bit of fettling is reasonable and have run with it as a blanket excuse for inexcusable lack of quality control in their processes.


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## Purrmaster

My first plane was the Buck Brothers block plane and it almost put me off woodworking completely, right at the start.


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## mspain77

I'm intrigued to read this. I am new to woodworking, but I know that as I grow my skills and complexity of projects (just started my first table yesterday), I will need to employ hand planes quite a bit, and Jay Bates mentions his cheap bench plane but says it does the job after a little fine tuning. I have the exact same 14" Buck Bros. jack plane mentioned above, but I only have it because I was walking the Home Depot aisle looking for good deals and it was on clearance from $34.94 to $8.83, so I figured 'why not'. Right out of the box the thins was excessively lubricated, and the wooden handles (which feel like balsa wood) were both chipped, so I had my reservations about the quality of Buck Bros. as whole, but for $8…
Are all Buck Bros. items of the same quality, or are the chisels at least some what decent?
Thanks for the heads up though guys.


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