Quangsheng No.62 low angle vs No.5 vs No.5 1/2?

[Joe1975]

Please help me decide.

There’s not a huge difference in price between these planes, but I can only afford one. I will purchase a low angle block plane as well, and already have an old Stanley No.4. The three planes will have to do for now.

I have a bandsaw, but no other machines, so will need to use the plane for dimensioning and smoothing all stock. I also will use it for shooting end grain.

I am new to woodworking and am intending to build freestanding contemporary furniture like modern chairs, coffee tables, boxes etc.

Please comment if you have experience with these planes

 

[Jacob]

No point in low angle planes (except little one hand user block planes) so I'd cross that off the list.
5 is much smaller than a 5 1/2. Perhaps 5 for furniture, 5 1/2 for joinery?
5 1/2 seems to be most favoured if you only have one. Thats what I'd go for, as you already have a 4 which is close to 5 in size.
Not the "bedrock" unless its same price as standard. Bedrock is another pointless design.
I'd prefer a 2nd hand Record 5 1/2, available at a fraction of the price!
You can "shoot" end grain with any plane, if it is nice and sharp and preferably with a slight camber

 

[D_W]

how much are you going to do with a plane and what will that be? Is that yet to be determined?

low angle planes are little more than a glorified block plane smoother and not good for much else, but people love them because they're simple. I've had offerings from LN and LV and have none of them - they are a hindrance to doing significant work...BUT, if all you intend to do is smoothing work, not that often, maybe with a little bit of shooting mixed in, you won't notice how limiting they are- or may not.

If you're looking at QS planes, which should be in pretty good working condition from the start, the 5 or 5 1/2 will do everything except imitate the low friction of a wooden plane in heavy work. You may not ever do heavy work to worry about it - just keep the wax handy.

The bevel up 62 type plane will never be good for heavy work, and it ultimately won't be as good really at anything, but it will allow you to get going quickly.

I never liked the low angle planes for shooting, but that's just me. I built a shooter and then found what I'd already known - shooting a lot with a hand plane is generally going to take longer than finding another way to solve the same problem with hand tools except for very very small work. After spending 80 hours building the best thing I could think of for a shooter, it sits dormant.

I haven't for a second missed the low angle planes, but remember that they seemed like the easy way to solve problems at the start. They're just the wrong way, and greatly advanced in terms of market share by advisors to LV who had no clue what they were doing and didn't know enough to know that they didn't have a clue, either.

 

[Bm101]

I don't pretend to the knowledge of either Jacob or Dw. They both have a lot to say about tools.
If you want the opinion of someone who has swam in the same sea as you're in right now then here's my tuppence worth. The QS62 is a valuable tool. We'll made. Precision engineering. If you are tackling various wood prone to tear out etc like exotics then it might show value. I have one. Like all the QS tools imported by reputable sellers it's impressive.

Now here is what I'd recommend. Buy a decent 4 / 5 1/2 vintage Stanley or record. Everyone is different.Learn to sharpen and use. In my case I have a 4 1/2 and a 5. How long is a piece of string!
What I'm trying to say is .... You can't throw money at a skill shortage.

Well actually you can. Often pitifully.
I promise.
You will see progress when you can set a plane,when you can sharpen the iron, when you develop an understanding of the medium you are cutting.
Save your money. I'm trying to say that buying tools doesn't boost skills or productivity. Skills and knowledge does that so you have to earn them bit by bit.
Concentrate on skills not tools.
Sorry mate.

Ps.
If you want I have an OLD 4 1/2 for sale. Working tool. Rosewood handles. Needs a new iron. Pm if you want. It's a good plane. I need a sale and I'll let it go for a great price.

 

[--Tom--]

Depends on what you’re doing but 5 1/2s are nice planes and secondhand hold value well enough.

 

[rogxwhit]

I'd favour a no.5. If I was to have just one plane, it would be a no.5. If I was to have two planes, they would be a no.5 and a no.601/2. A no.4 seems to be a kind of default, and I have a couple, but I could easily live without one.

I am new to woodworking and am intending to build freestanding contemporary furniture like modern chairs, coffee tables, boxes etc.

You have have a pretty big remit there. I hope that you enjoy the journey. Hold to the vision, stay grounded.

A no.51/2 is pointless ... over-heavy and over-wide.

 

[Bojam]

Hi Joe

I don’t have any Quangsheng planes but I do have a 5 1/2 (Axminster Rider) and a No.62 style low angle Jack (Veritas). The low angle Jack is a newish purchase but I already love it. So simple to set up and gives a lovely silky finish on the tropical hardwoods I work. I plan to repurpose the 5 1/2 as a fore plane.

Clearly there is a notable difference in build quality between the Veritas and the Axminster Rider. The latter is decent, easy enough to tune up and worked fine when I relied on it to flatten stock before I got a powered planer/thicknesser (PT). It is heavy and that heft helps power through hard dense stock. However there are elements of its construction that I dislike. It clearly doesn’t match Veritas construction and QC standards. Of course it was also a lot cheaper! Not sure where Quangsheng lie on the spectrum.

Looks like we’ll be relocating in the near future and I may be forced to lose my machines and work entirely with hand tools. In that event my plan is to clean up rough stock with the 5 1/2 converted as a fore plane (widened mouth, cambered iron). Then true it flat with a wooden jointer plane. Then smooth with the low angle jack. I also have an old Stanley No.4 for smoothing though it is a bit beat up and has a plastic handle (passed on to me from my Dad). The low angle jack is also going to be put to use on a shooting board as it is ideal for end grain work, esp on dense tropical woods.

I don’t profess to know anywhere near as much about planes as DW and Jacob, but I do know that there is a lot of love out there for 62’s; a lot of people who enjoy using them and prefer them over conventional jack planes. You’ll find loads of conflicting opinions so it quite possibly comes down to personal preference. Can you save yourself some money by trying out the different sizes and styles of Jack plane before committing to buying one?

 

[D_W]

When you move to move to a place without the use of power tools, keep the 5 1/2 set up for middle work - like camber only perhaps some large fraction of a hundredth of an inch like a try plane and find a wooden jack plane.

there is a lot of nonsense about suggesting using metal planes for initial rough work, but it's driven by either selling for "friends" or selves (gurus pushing tools made by people they like to hang out with or see at shows, etc), or by folks who are teaching courses and just want to see people showing up with newish tools that work vs. newish tools that will actually be fit for purpose.

There's no real substitute for doing the initial work, and really the trying work, too, with wooden planes until or unless wood is absolutely horrid.

Look up use of the cap iron on the 5 1/2 you have and you'll find it to leave the 62 in the dust fairly soon, but you mention what I was describing above - initial success draws people to them. When I first got mine as well as some other high angle planes, I was so pleased to be able to plane already flat boards more or less of mexican hardwoods, but once I tried to work with those planes in context with stock that wasn't yet flat, it was a no go.

You'll find out why planes that were popular.....were popular. Metal planes across the board pretty much take over once planing could be done in the shop.

What planing becomes once you go from rough to finish vs. what you'll enjoy just for pleasure when you start will be drastically different. But, don't worry - the pleasure of working wood from start to finish properly is 20x as physically satisfying, and it will teach you things you couldn't learn otherwise. Sawing joinery and other such things after doing all of that from rough will become reflexive.

 

[Tony Zaffuto]

I have all of the above (LN 62, though). My most used plane? My Millers Falls #5, then my Clifton #3. Discounting specialty planes, my least used is the BU 62. An exception for me is my LN bevel up #7 jointer, which I use mainly for long edge work.

 

[Joe1975]

Thank you all for your views so far.

You have helped to cross the BU 62 off the short list. They seem to have acquired popularity recently, if YouTube channels are anything to go by. I was concerned that they are not the silver bullet they are often made out to be. I would also like to be able to adjust depth of cut whilst planing as easily as possible and the 5 and 5 1/2 have an big advantage with regard to this.

Choosing between the 5 and the 5 1/2 is more difficult. My old 4 is seems too short for flattening boards and jointing work, and the adjustments are very clunky and imprecise, otherwise I would just carry on using that a bit longer. I’m concerned that buying another old plane would feel the same.

The 5 1/2 might be a bit big and heavy, maybe the 5 is the way to go?

 

[Bojam]

When you move to move to a place without the use of power tools, keep the 5 1/2 set up for middle work - like camber only perhaps some large fraction of a hundredth of an inch like a try plane and find a wooden jack plane.

[...]

There's no real substitute for doing the initial work, and really the trying work, too, with wooden planes until or unless wood is absolutely horrid.

Thanks for this DW. Interesting insight. So are you suggesting starting rough stock prep with something like one of these ECE wooden jack planes? Then refining with the slightly cambered Rider 5 1/2. Then getting true flat with the ECE wooden jointer plane (101S) I already have? Then smoothing with the Veritas BU jack or the old Stanley No.4?

What makes a wooden jack the go to for initial stock prep in your experience? Is it the weight and/or other things that make it ideal for this step?

 

[D_W]

Thank you all for your views so far.

You have helped to cross the BU 62 off the short list. They seem to have acquired popularity recently, if YouTube channels are anything to go by. I was concerned that they are not the silver bullet they are often made out to be. I would also like to be able to adjust depth of cut whilst planing as easily as possible and the 5 and 5 1/2 have an big advantage with regard to this.

Choosing between the 5 and the 5 1/2 is more difficult. My old 4 is seems too short for flattening boards and jointing work, and the adjustments are very clunky and imprecise, otherwise I would just carry on using that a bit longer. I’m concerned that buying another old plane would feel the same.

The 5 1/2 might be a bit big and heavy, maybe the 5 is the way to go?

Lee Valley managed to convince people that the bevel up planes were swiss army knives. Their incompetent internal advisory group seems to have convinced most folks that cap irons are too hard to set. I guess they must be - it takes about 1 week to learn to do them, which is too much for folks? I don't know. It's just the wrong mindset in most of these companies that are obsessed with CNC type production and can't get a handle on trusting hand and eye. I've encountered the same thing on the knife forums "you can't heat treat in a forge and get reliable results!". It's kind of a shame - I get how it happens, but it's still a shame.

At any rate, several people pushed on LV's behalf along with the goofy "high bench" concept, which is completely detached from reality and body mechanics, but I get it if the bench is a staging area for chest height joinery - it's not a good thing for planing. Most of us bought and tried the planes - instant success is deceptive in that it doesn't communicate how poor the planes are for anything beyond smoothing and even at that, they're incapable compared to a stanley plane with a cap iron.

The pressure to make bevel up plane for LN, which appeared later, probably came from folks who said "I want a bevel up plane, but I want it to have stanley-ish aesthetics instead of LV aesthetics", and maybe some complaints about the handles.

The comment about using them if you're not going to do much planing isn't snark - most people don't do anything more than smoothing in any volume, and if that's the case, a 62 isn't as good as a 5 1/2, but success will be instant and maybe use will never be often enough with a 5 1/2 to really figure out how to get the most out of it.

 

[D_W]

Thanks for this DW. Interesting insight. So are you suggesting starting rough stock prep with something like one of these ECE wooden jack planes? Then refining with the slightly cambered Rider 5 1/2. Then getting true flat with the ECE wooden jointer plane (101S) I already have? Then smoothing with the Veritas BU jack or the old Stanley No.4?

What makes a wooden jack the go to for initial stock prep in your experience? Is it the weight and/or other things that make it ideal for this step?

The continental jacks like that work fine. I think it's better to use an english double iron jack and when it starts to make you tired on one hand, start learning to plane with the other (seriously, it takes very little time to be able to do rough and middle work with both hands and you'll appreciate the ability to do it when you don't want to constantly walk around a bench or move work around).

I like the English jack planes better probably more due to the fact that a 16-17 inch long jack will remove wood just as fast, but it'll be flatter and you can get much closer to the mark with it before switching to quick work with a try plane or heavier set 5 1/2 and then a smoothing that is finished in a wink.

I would guess that the difference in physical effort in a long session is about double for a metal jack plane - you end up leaning on it as you get tired, or as it dulls and it just isn't obvious how much it takes out of you until you do the same task with one plane and then the other.

The length of an english jack, though, will communicate issues with flatness to you by feel (you won't have to stop and check them) a lot better.

ECE does make longer continental types - the iron is farther back in them, which just is a different feel - that's all. More of a two-handed plane feel with the plane feeling more like it's back into you vs. being out at the end of your arm. I would guess the tradition is to do most work with two hands firmly on the plane, and the design reflects it. Nothing wrong with it, just different.

 

[Ttrees]

I'd not want just the one plane to do it all.
Even if you did end up with "clunky" adjustments, the only ones I can think of being
extra backlash, difficultly advancing cutter which David has mentioned recently on the newer Stanley's
or possibly a cap iron with a bend which creeps closer to the end than on some other planes, a square top iron I have does this,
I can't imagine backlash nor cap iron creeping when cinched would likely be problematic or importance and the other issue mentioned likely not the case for 99% of ebays...

I vote for a nice 5 1/2 as the five is something which can do it all but preferable for nothing, should the weight not be an issue, which might become noticable if going for a ductile iron plane, I've not held one of those.


.

 

[Bojam]

The continental jacks like that work fine. I think it's better to use an english double iron jack and when it starts to make you tired on one hand, start learning to plane with the other (seriously, it takes very little time to be able to do rough and middle work with both hands and you'll appreciate the ability to do it when you don't want to constantly walk around a bench or move work around).

I like the English jack planes better probably more due to the fact that a 16-17 inch long jack will remove wood just as fast, but it'll be flatter and you can get much closer to the mark with it before switching to quick work with a try plane or heavier set 5 1/2 and then a smoothing that is finished in a wink.

I would guess that the difference in physical effort in a long session is about double for a metal jack plane - you end up leaning on it as you get tired, or as it dulls and it just isn't obvious how much it takes out of you until you do the same task with one plane and then the other.

The length of an english jack, though, will communicate issues with flatness to you by feel (you won't have to stop and check them) a lot better.

ECE does make longer continental types - the iron is farther back in them, which just is a different feel - that's all. More of a two-handed plane feel with the plane feeling more like it's back into you vs. being out at the end of your arm. I would guess the tradition is to do most work with two hands firmly on the plane, and the design reflects it. Nothing wrong with it, just different.

Cool, I’ll have a look at English style wooden jacks. Any particular manufacturer you recommend?

I note that you don’t mention using a jointer plane at all. As I say, I already have the longer ECE wooden jointer. I bought this in anticipation of the day I lose my PT

Where, if anywhere, would this fit into your work as you progress from rough stock to fully prepped board?

 

[weigen369]

Quangsheng No.62 Available Veritas #4 Smooth Plane blade (please Flattening A Plane Sole)

 

[undergroundhunter]

I fell into the low angle trap, I bought a quangsheng 62 from workshop heaven thinking it would be a one stop planing shop, in all honesty I really don't like it, the adjustment is not great and impossible to make adjustments mid cut, I don't like the rear tote, there is nowhere to rest my index finger and I get more tearout than with a bevel down plane. If you have a machined surface and want to remove the tool marks then I guess it would be ok but personally I'd still reach for my 4, 4 1/2, 5 or 5 1/2. For serious stock removal a 62 is a no go.

I just purchased a record 5 1/2 from David Charlsworths workshop, complete with a hand written tag dating all the parts, all I've done is sharpen it and what a tool! It never ceases to amaze me how well an 80 odd year old tool works. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Matt

 

[Jameshow]

I fell into the low angle trap, I bought a quangsheng 62 from workshop heaven thinking it would be a one stop planing shop, in all honesty I really don't like it, the adjustment is not great and impossible to make adjustments mid cut, I don't like the rear tote, there is nowhere to rest my index finger and I get more tearout than with a bevel down plane. If you have a machined surface and want to remove the tool marks then I guess it would be ok but personally I'd still reach for my 4, 4 1/2, 5 or 5 1/2. For serious stock removal a 62 is a no go.

I just purchased a record 5 1/2 from David Charlsworths workshop, complete with a hand written tag dating all the parts, all I've done is sharpen it and what a tool! It never ceases to amaze me how well an 80 odd year old tool works. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Matt

Bit of history in that plane.

I would go for a no 51/2 just because you can do more with a 5 1/2 which you cannot with a 5 which is only a bit longer than a 4.
Also 5 are easy to pick up for less than £30.

I like planes set up to different depths ready for use including a no5 scrub plane.

 

[DougT]

I have 51/2 and 62 I like and use them both but I think buy 51/2 first

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I'd favour a no.5. If I was to have just one plane, it would be a no.5.

A no.51/2 is pointless ... over-heavy and over-wide.

I had every size from a No.3 to a No.8 (and duplicates of most) before I owned a No.5 - and that was only because I was given one.
My first plane 56 years ago was a No.5 1/2, and it's still my most used. I gave the No.5 away.