Quangsheng No. 043 Plough Plane with 8 Blades Reviews

4 Rating 15 Reviews

Supplied complete with both metric blades in 3mm, 6mm, 9mm, and 12mm, plus 4 imperial blades in sizes ⅛", ¼", ⅜", ½". You also have the option of adding a kerfing saw blade at half price.
Investment cast stainless steel replaces cast iron in this redesign of the classic No. 043 plough plane.
The essence of the tool as a simple, fast, quiet way to create grooves for drawer bottoms, back panels, windowsills, picture frames etc is retained. But with better materials and a bit of lateral thinking, a few notable improvements have been made.
The greater strength of steel and a clever rethink of the rear fence rod hole has enabled Quangsheng to replace the stippled casting web of the original with a larger, more comfortable, open bow handle that you can really tuck your fingers into.
Most sheet material these days is metric, but the imperial cutters give you the option to choose a sliding fit to allow for expansion and contraction.
The other significant change is the addition of a clamping attachment so that a saw blade can be connected to the skate. This allows the plane to be used for cutting arrow straight starter kerfs for rip sawing boards to width and for cutting accurate stringing from the corner of a blank for inlaid work.
Rather than expecting you to make your own, a removable American Cherry sub-fence has been included with the tool, the larger contact area improves stability and accuracy. The fence is relieved so that you can still use a portion of a wide cutter to form a rebate on the edge of a board.
Like the original it also features the ultimate in state of the art airborne dust management - not producing any in the first place!
Please note that we are unable to ship Quangsheng products to North America due to retail exclusivity restrictions.

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“I was eying Veritas Plow Plane for quite some time. However, with the price:value ratio, I took the plunge and bought this little fella. The plane is finished to a high standard, I think I eased one edge so far and ran the cherry fence with some 0000 wool and was. Blades are nearly ready to use - it's a plough plane, so they work alright from the box, but a couple of mine haven't been ground to 90 degrees, so I took 10 minutes on two of them. Grooves are amazing, clean, crisp and easy to make. Fence on my piece is automatically parallel and slides effortlessly. The depth stop is, as mentioned by another reviewer, slightly out of parallel to the plane, but I think that's a feature: this way it doesn't accidentally mar the wood as it's a fraction of an inch higher in the front. I haven't tried the resaw blade yet, as I bought this plane for the ploughing, but it's a nice freebie. All in all? A fantastic plane for the price. Blades seem to hold their edge well, too. I'll be buying more of these planes in the future. Also, Matthew and his team are good, honest people with exceptional customer service. P.S.: given the fact how expensive the Veritas blades are and that many are currently unavailable in Europe for months to come, this plane is a no-brainer.”

Helpful Report

Posted 4 years ago

“First impressions, from a couple of hours play in the workshop following arrival of this plane. A precisely engineered item with well-fitting parts although slightly rough in the finish, with some careful smoothing of edges & corners with a fine file necessary here and there. The wooden fence is also unfinished and benefitted from a light sand with fine grit paper followed by an application of wax. A deeper and/or longer wooden fence of otherwise similar configuration could easily be made if required. The plane is small and requires the user (especially a big-handed user) to find the right grip. The trick is to use the loop handle less as a handle and more as a palm-fitting tote with which to push the plane, with the other hand on the fence to keep it in contact with the reference face of the workpiece. The blades are near-ready for use, requiring only five minutes or less each, with micro-grit papers on a glass plate, to establish a shiny face and a polished micro-bevel. They don't have any belly, twist or skew requiring a lot of correction. The primary bevels are a well-shaped and fairly smooth 25 degrees with only very fine grinding marks, so it's very quick to put on a 30 degree micro-bevel to obtain scary sharp performance. The faces of the blade can also have the fine manufacturer's grinding marks polished out in just a couple of minutes, for the last 2-3 cm up to the edge. The blade retention is via only a small shoe & it's screw pressing the blade to the cut-out in the skate about 2 cm from the tip of the bevel. The shoe is not retained in the plane body so care must be taken not to drop and lose it in the shavings under the bench. But the skate cut-out bed and the plane body sidewall are true, where they support the blade, so the blade stays in position even when quite thick shavings are being taken with a wider blade. Adjustment with a small plane hammer also works well if the blade retention shoe-bolt is tight but not fully-tight. One must learn the right degree of tap with the hammer; and have a plane hammer of suitable weight and shape for these small blades. The resaw blade seems to work best on the pull stroke, with the tote-hand having two fingers through the loop of the tote to pull the plane back towards the user. Pushing the resaw blade (like a Western handsaw) is more difficult because the teeth are very aggressive and can dig in. Reversing the blade to pull the teeth into the work rather than pushing sees a smoother and more controllable action. With the resaw blade mounted, the fence first fouls the blade-retention bolt-ends as the fence is moved in-board (towards the blade) but appropriate washers (spring washers work well) under the knurled knob end of these bolts moves the bolt-ends away from the fence so that it becomes possible to make a saw-kerf that leaves as thin a section as 4mm ready for the resawing saw. Spring washers under the resaw blade retention knobs also ensure that the resaw blade stays tightly mounted on the plane despite the vibration of the plane when sawing the kerf, due to the aggressive saw teeth. The resaw blade maximum depth of cut is 12mm before the knurled knobs hit the top of the workpiece. This is enough of a starter-kerf for any resawing saw but replacement of the 4mm threaded knurled knobs with some having smaller heads (e.g. allen bolt heads) would allow another 3mm depth of cut (15mm in total). The kerf of the supplied sawblade is 1.7mm. It may be possible to make a thinner-kerf blade from, say, a spare Japanese rip blade, cut and drilled to the same shape - especially if that blade was used with a pull stroke. The plane's skate and resaw mounting bar, along with a gentle sawing action, would probably keep such a thinner blade stiff enough make a straight and accurate thin kerf on smaller pieces, ready for resawing with a Japanese rather than a Western saw. I'll be trying that in due course. Overall * Very good functionality, even with manual blade-depth setting. My benchmark is a Veritas combination plane. * Decent engineering & finish even if the user must refine the odd rough edge. * Exceptional value - eight Veritas combination plane blades cost around £160 so with the Luban 043 + its eight blades you get a free plane and resaw blade, in comparison. :-) Long term? We'll see.”

1 Helpful Report

Posted 4 years ago

“I like it. It comes with a load of blades that are already sharp and the kerfing blade which is very useful. The grooves are clean and crisp. The kerfing blade gets a bit of getting used but once I got the hang of it, it works perfectly. I do however feel that a few things could be improved. 1. The depth stop. On mine, it's not perfectly horizontal, or aligned with the sole of the plane. It's slightly higher at the back. Also, however much I tighten it, when using the plane the depth stop rotates. Having a simple v-groove would put an end to this. 2. The fence. This one is really annoying but the fence is not parallel. There is about 1mm difference between the front and the back. It can be forced to be parallel but that is not ideal. It is of course possible that these issues only affect the one I have.”

1 Helpful Report

Posted 4 years ago

“The quality is very good all in all but I do have a couple of gripes , first off the saw blade can not be used with the depth stop as the saw blade retainer is thicker than the depth stop and if its switch to the other side the screws get in the way of the depth stop. The second thing is the the plane was not very well protected in the packaging the fence has dents and chips and the plane has some scratches and the corners some nicks , a shame it wasn't more protected because it seems to be well made.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“I bought this for the kerfing plane mode. It does the job nicely, although having used this for some time now, I would say the tool is on the small side. I don't think I have big hands, but I found it awkward to wrap my hands around the handle in any combination of fingers in the handle/out of handle that wouldn't leave some fingers vulnerable to hitting wood when using the tool. So can't work that fast with it and with prolonged use is tiring for the hands. Apart from that, a beautiful tool, with adjustable skate lending to versatility.”

Helpful Report

Posted 7 years ago

“I first tried this accidentally mounting the saw blade the wrong way round. How dull of me! Tried again after reassembling it the right way round, which was quick and easy. Adjusting the fence took a bit more time because of the need for accuracy. ( needed to resaw a piece of wood 1"+ thick to give me a piece 3/8" about 9.5mm). I need better lighting and maybe better glasses. The wood was quite soft and I made a trial on a cut off. This time the kerf was crisp and straight and made the job of resawing down to 10mm easy. The kerf was a bit wider than my Japanese rip saw, but deeper into the cut, the kerf held the saw straight and firm. A few passes with a smoothing plane brought the trial piece of wood down to 3/8" in no time at all. Excellent! My first attempt at hand resawing a satisfying experience and a success with this tool. Thank you to all at Workshop Heaven. In future I think I will buy another of these planes and keep one as a permanent kerfing plane and the other as a plough plane.”

Helpful Report

Posted 7 years ago