Inferior planes, what to do with them?

[Brian Itzkin]

Recently I've been upgrading my not great planes to great planes and it's definitely worth it. The only problem is that now I have some decent quality and crappy quality planes that will never be used again and I have no idea what to do with them. I've considered selling the crappy ones, but they really aren't worth much of anything. What have other people done in this situation?

Crappy planes are on the left of the good planes

[dave d]

It's a great question Brian. I was in the same situation a few years ago. I should first of all say that you can do some tuning to a Stanley plane to make it nearly as good as a Lie-Nielsen or Veritas plane. Sometimes it's jst a matter of flattening the sole, maybe adding a higher quality blade, etc. so anyone who is on a budget but wants a plane that is very capable might be interested in doing that.

In my case, I kept a Stanley #4 plane and aggressively cambered the blade, so now it is my scrub plane. As the first plane to use on rough-cut lumber it works quite well. And then my Veritas planes come into the picture :)

I also had two other planes, a block and a jack, that I was going to sell, and then found a co-worker who wanted to buy them so that he could take them to give to carpenters in Haiti on a house-building mission. I just gave them to him for free, and when he returned from Haiti he gave me some photos of the people using them. That was worth wayyyy more to me than any amount of money I could have gotten by selling them.
cheers,
Dave

[Eric_K]

Woodcraft sells a blade/chipper upgrade for Stanley planes that helps a lot. Designed by Rob Cosman.
It's reasonably priced (compared to replacing the Stanley with a LN).

Eric

[Brian Itzkin]

It's a great question Brian. I was in the same situation a few years ago. I should first of all say that you can do some tuning to a Stanley plane to make it nearly as good as a Lie-Nielsen or Veritas plane. Sometimes it's jst a matter of flattening the sole, maybe adding a higher quality blade, etc. so anyone who is on a budget but wants a plane that is very capable might be interested in doing that.

I had flattened the sole and sharpened the blade of the stanley block, but even after that, the LN is just better. Perhaps it's the really cheap, thin blade that it came with. The other stanley was $15 from Home Depot and for lack of better words, it's a flaming pile of sh**. I'll probably keep the block plane as a spare, but the other one I'll try and give away (if anyone would take that pos).

[TonyinNYC]

With a sales pitch like that, it won't hang around for long!

[Kevin in California]

Just send all your inferior planes to me, freight prepaid, they may be better than what I'm using.....who knows?

Kevin

[hikermike]

My poor experience would indicate that what is important is 1) the quality of the blade, and 2) the abilty to hold it in place. (adjustibility).
I'm replacing my Stanley and old Record blades with Hock blades and they become great. I bought an Indian Jointer plane and it took 2 days
just to get 4 areas in plane! (Toe, heel, and infront and just behind blade) I'm only a Pediatrician so that's all I can afford but those of you more
affluent might find buying Lee Valley or Veritas more time efficient. (I can't complain as I needed the two day workout!).