Stanley 1-12-004 Smooth Plane Bailey No. 4, Multicolor

I've been reassembling my woodworking toolkit (don't ask!) and this little fellow will be the core of it. The Stanley #4 is THE classic plane. I'm planning on using it for some fine work, so I've done some tuning, as out of the box, while it's entirely usable, it responds well to having its sole flattening and a couple of other tiny tweaks. Hence the four stars for accuracy and for beginners. If you're willing to invest some effort and time into this gem, it'll be a tool for life.

First, this is a Bailey pattern Stanley #4. It is nice and heavy, the body is steel and the frog is well machined. The action is smooth and the iron and cap are of good quality. The finish, however, has definitely suffered over an "old school" Stanley. Handles are molded plastic, not wood. They are tight and comfortable, so that hopefully isn't an issue. Paint on the body is some sort of thick enamel that has already started to flake off while I was dressing the body. We might need to do something about that sooner rather than later. Everything is rough ground. The sheer amount of tool marking on the body is incredible. It took me almost 2 hours to flatten the sole and smooth the sides. I used an idiotic amount of sandpaper on my glass plate to flatten and smooth it. The lever cap is really, REALLY stiff out of the box. I drove out the roll pin that retains the cam and smoothed off the rough sand casting marks, there was a bit of rust there as well, and also found the hole which the roll pin passes is drilled a bit too snug. Opened that up just a hair with a round chainsaw file and lubricated it and it moved much smoother. The iron and cap iron (chip breaker to some) are of a nice heavy steel, and the edge was ground to a precise 25 degree rake, however it was ground with something like a 50 grit stone and left that way. The cutting edge was positively serrated. That took about 20 minutes to smooth, refine, and hone. The cap iron had the least amount of refining required, it is heavy and has a very true mating surface, no gaps to the iron. The only issue was the bevel wasn't ground all the way to the leading edge meaning there was a flat step where it meets the iron. A couple minutes on the diamond plates corrected that. I closed the mouth up a bit (the frog was factory set very far back like for a scrub plane). Once that all was done I reassembled it and tested it on some soft maple, finding beautiful, wispy, full width shavings with very little fiddling. If the steel holds an edge this will be a wonderful addition to my tool arsenal, and one I'm sure will be handed down to generations of woodworkers to come.

The frog and the sole of the plane itself came out of the box true and that’s about the best I can say about this plane. The iron itself came poorly sharpened and required significant tuning to get it sharpened to my desire, which can be seen as a moot point as planes should be tuned before use anyway. The chip breaker came out of the box rusty and not squared with the iron itself, it also regularly catches up to the plane iron and requires regular readjustment to keep it from gumming up as well as needing to be flattened to maintain its function. The handles are plastic and should be immediately changed if you make the mistake of buying this plane as they can snap under a moderate amount of pressure. My handle was also not drilled true to center which likely added to the lack of structural stability. The handles are also a poorly made plastic with sharp ridges that make them less than ergonomic. The plane itself got me going and now I know what I would like out of another model, but for the price point, I would have saved up a bit more and bought a better quality plane like a veritas. I do not recommend this tool at this price point, but it will work for softer woods.

Plane arrived with a broken tote. I made a quick replacement and it cut well without any tuning.

I tried hard to love this plane. The blade is good, though coated in plastic that makes it hard to initialize. Thought, like another reviewer said, that I'd get a half hour or so of flattening the sole and then be happy. Took two hours before I could even pretend to use it. Gave up at that point, with it far from being good. Sad what has happened to Stanley this century. Very sad.

Don't get this unless you are or plan to be a prosumer or better woodworker, also make sure you have your sharpening game on point as well. On top of that it works better on decent quality wood, try not to use it on cheap box store stuff. For me, well it's going to take me weeks of practice and trials to get decent at operating this guy.

this plane looked great until I removed the blade. And I might mention the blade looked like it was going to be excellent BUT after I took the blade out, the bottom of the frog fell of!! This is the second stanley I purchased in a week and they have both been sent back. Stanley use to have great quality but not latley.

The metal parts are fairly solid. The plastic handles squeaked/creaked at the first use, then the large tote broke in half in the middle of the 2nd use (first "real" use). Maybe the tote was already cracked when I received it? Somewhat wish I had bought another brand that was less expensive and already had wood handles, but searching and reading reveals that a broken tote on Stanley planes is pretty common.