Taytools469614 Smoothing Bench Hand Plane #4, 9-3/4 Inch Sole, Ductile Cast Body, Lapped Sides and Bottom, Blade RHC 55-60, Sapele Handle and Tote

My TayTools #4 bench plane arrived in excellent condition. The plane worked right out of the box before I even sharpened the blade. Once I sharpened the blade it cut extremely well, and I was able to take shavings as thin as 0.0003 inches and as thick as 0.15 inches in consistent passes depending on how I adjusted it. It does have a little slop in the depth adjustment knob almost a full turn before it engages the blade in either direction, but that is far better than my last plane. The sole of the plane is mostly flat with a few minor imperfections that will come out with a little fine sanding. The tote was a little bit loose, but I fixed that with around 1/4 turn of the attachment bolt. The finish on the tote is a bit rough to the touch, but an application of wax will probably solve that.

This product was to replace a $20 Rikon No.4 smoothing plane whose frog lever broke on me. I spent around 16 hours tuning the Rikon plane and, though I expected better quality from a $90 Taytool plane, I still expected to spend a considerable amount of time tuning this new one. I am very happy to say I was wrong. Sole of the plane was quite true, started with 80 grit and only took about 3 minutes to flatten, another 5 minutes and I had the sole and left hand side flatten to 1000 grit. Spend 10 minutes rounding edges and deburring. Never touched the frog or handles. Bottom of blade took the most work but only about 15 minutes to flatten using diamond 400/1000 plate. In all had blade honed in 30 minutes.Now for the chip breaker... the one fault. My screw hole was tapped crooked so when I tighted down the chip breaker it lifted up on one side... not fixable. Also there is virtually no arc in the front end of chip breaker. This makes it very hard to flatten and there's almost no flex in the steel which is needed to make good contact with the blade when tightening down the screw. Summary... chip breaker is junk. Not only a defect but also a flawed design.Thankfully I was able to salvage the chipbreaker from my broken Rikon plane to use with no modification.In all I spent only about 1.5 hours tuning this Taytools No.4 smoothing plane. Which was a pleasant relief and why I think this plane is worth the $90. Chipbreaker is an issue... but everything else is worth it, 4 Stars. Taytools just needs to do a bit of redesign and quality checks on chipbreaker and this smoothing plane would be perfect.

I bought this plane for 65 bucks not expecting much. My #6 arrived recently and I figured if the #4 was as burly and well-made as the #6, then I had just scored a bargain and perhaps worst case, I might have to put an aftermarket blade in it. WRONG. It arrived as well packed and prepared as my #6. Also arrived fast. It goes without saying that they make sure you have a good purchasing experience on that end. On Saturday, I had spent the morning prepping the #6 and I set it down. I was not done and thought I was going to be buying a blade. See my #6 review for how that whole episode turned out. I started prepping the back of the blade and I thought, oh, this looks like its going to be bad. The concave actually cleaned up pretty quick as you see in the photos. Blade was good to go in a short period of time and I assembled the plane. The product of this plane against a piece of poplar was whispy-thin see-through shavings as you see in the pic. These planes are stated to be ground to 3 thousandths. Not saying I dont believe it but I am that guy that figures, if it is .003, I can get it to .001-.002. I put the plane on my marble block and ran it over some 320. As you can kinda see in the photo, it is taking material off to the right of the heel, at the toe, and it is starting to get the mill marks out on the left side of the throat. I am guessing it was .003 as stated and I will go through the extra effort to bring it a little closer. This plane is just incredible even without doing anything other than prepping the blade. I did check the chip breaker and ran a little chamfer around the sole of the plane but that's it other than the polishing job that I want to put on the sole. These planes are an incredible value.

For the price there was NO instructions or guidance at all, had to go to youtube to learn, Taytools needs to understand that not every customer who buys their product is an expereinced user, for a hundred bucks, some instruction should be provided

This plane looks and feels decent and the materials are mostly of acceptable quality. The sole is flat. However, that's about where the positives end. There are numerous deficiencies, including the following:-The iron. It itsn't even close to flat out of the box, requiring about an hour of work on a coarse diamond plate to fully clean up the back of the cutting edge. After sharpening, the iron does not hold an edge satisfactorily. You'll need to sharpen it after every 20 minutes or so of actual work.-The frog and the interfacing surfaces in the body are not machined accurately. The front contact points are at least .010" out of being coplanar. This means the frog does not mount solidly to the body nor support the blade firmly during use.-The retaining screw holes in the frog are drilled too far forward. As a result, the frog can not be advanced farther than the very back of the throat.-The casting is crude with lots of lumpy areas of scant and surplus material.In general decent materials can be the saving grace for an inexpensive plane, because some time spent properly setting up the tool can make it function well. However, in ths case of this one, there are defects in the machining that would be extremely difficult to correct by hand. Further, the quality of the iron is poor. You'll probably spend more time sharpening it than actually planing with it.Spend a little more and buy a better tool.

Minimal setup and fine tuning out of the box, feels like a much more expensive plane. Very comfortable to use. I highly recommend this plane.