# Faithfull Planes



## ByronBlack (5 Sep 2005)

Hi

I recently bought a set of faithful planes, which includes a no.4 jack plane and a block plane.

I've not yet got to use or sharpen these. I paid £25 for them. Are they good planes when tuned, have been had, are they better than an old 70's record jack plane?

Any info is gratefully received.


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## Matt1245 (5 Sep 2005)

Hi Mr Black.

I have sold a few of the Faithfull planes, and have just bought a 601/2 block plane myself. They are very good value for money, and with a little fettling should provide quite reasonable results. I have not given the 601/2 any serious action yet, just honed the blade a little and give it a trial on some end grain pine, and i was quite pleased with the way it performed out of the box.

As for being better than a 70's record jack, i doubt it. Record planes didn't suffer the same drop in quality as the stanley's.

The faithfull have nicer handles than the modern record and stanley tho  

Matt.


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## bugbear (6 Sep 2005)

> Record planes didn't suffer the same drop in quality as the Stanley's.



They did eventually - but a little later. I think at any given point in time a Record "X" was normally better than a Stanley "X".

BugBear


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## Matt1245 (6 Sep 2005)

The X plane, very specialised :lol: .

Have you had a play with yet ByronBlack?

Matt.


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## ByronBlack (6 Sep 2005)

Aye, i've been trying out the block plane on a guitar that i'm building - really satisfying to use, although my sharpening skills are a bit rubbish (this will rectified by a course i'm attending in october).

Btw, for those who are interested in pictures and stuff, here is a photo set of my guitar building progress:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/byronblack/sets/775858/

Using the plane to remove the rough bandsaw marks:






i have to say it seems pretty accurate and quite responsive to small adjustments, got my wood almost as smooth as my bench jointer.

I've not tried the jack yet as I want to do a really good tune-up on it before I start hacking away.

I recently bought a book in hand-planes, didn't realise what a big subject it is, i can definitely see myself trawling the boot sales for old gems.


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## Pete W (7 Sep 2005)

Hi Byron,

Is that your first guitar? Looks as though you're making confident progress .

As I posted in this thread:
https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6239
I was given a Faithful block plane which has served me well over the last year after minimal fettling.

As part of the same gift, I got a Faithful No5 jack, which was much less promising. After flattening the blade back and sharpening, it seemed to cut okay to my inexperienced eye, but there was quite a bit of slop in the various adjustments and soon after I invested in a Lee Valley 51/4 wide jack, so the Faithful has sat, unloved and unappreciated, on the shelf (it may have a future as a franken-scrub!).

That said, I'm sure it could be developed into a reasonable user, depending on how much time, effort and money you want to invest.


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## bugbear (7 Sep 2005)

> although my sharpening skills are a bit rubbish (this will rectified by a course i'm attending in october).
> 
> ...got my wood almost as smooth as my bench jointer.



Yeah, you need to improve your sharpening skills 

BugBear


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## Alf (7 Sep 2005)

ByronBlack":2u9h35q3 said:


> I recently bought a book in hand-planes, didn't realise what a big subject it is, i can definitely see myself trawling the boot sales for old gems.


And another one bites the dust... Did no-one warn you, Byron? #-o  

Cheers, Alf


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## mahking51 (7 Sep 2005)

damn! More competition! :roll: 
Martin
As I said before, directions to Dorchester: Up M1, then keep going north....
  
Regards
martin


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## ByronBlack (7 Sep 2005)

Well my bench-jointer is not that great hence the statement that my rubbish sharpning skills are 'almost' as good - idealy, it should be better, but all in good time ;-)

Nobody warned about plane-itis and I never believed that a plane would be all that useful to me until I tried a well-tuned and sharpened one, very satisfying to use.

Pete - yes, that is my first guitar (been playing for 10+ years thought it time to make my own), and really my first real wood-working project (other than laying a laminate floor). It's going ok, although the picture that you see of the long neck-thru section is slightly misleading, I made a few major errors and have had to cut off the neck section from the neck-through and will be building a seperate 'set-neck' when I receive some mahogany, this move was down to my inability to create a good scarf-joint for the headstock.


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