Quangsheng No.1 Bailey Pattern Smoothing Plane Reviews

4.3 Rating 3 Reviews

Unlike its bigger brothers, and true to the Stanley original, the Quangsheng No.1 has a Bailey pattern frog and 'tap and try' lateral adjustment. All of the components are unique to this tool and are cast entirely in Bronze.Ideal for young woodworkers with small hands the No.1 is likely to become a collectable of the future. We don't expect to sell vast numbers of them, but if we can do anything to help young woodworkers persevere with the craft then it will be well worth a little investment.Specifications:
Precision ground, bronze casting. Tap and try lateral adjustment. Low profile cap iron. Bronze lever cap. Rosewood handles. Conforms to British Standard. Sole dimensions: 150mm x 40mm. Blade: 3mm thick 1-1/5inch (30mm) made from T10 carbon steel hardened to RC63.
Please note that we are unable to ship Quangsheng products to North America due to retail exclusivity restrictions.

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Helpful Report

Posted 1 year ago

“Caveat - I don’t have particularly large hands :) If you do then ymmv. This was a Father’s Day gift from my kids and I’ve been surprised how useful it is when used for the kind of task I’d usually bring out the block plane for (chamfers and breaking edges). But it’s also proving useful for spot smoothing, earning its money when dealing with alternating grain. I hold it by wrapping my whole palm around the tote, with fingers and thumbs resting outside the body. This works well for me. The lack of a lateral adjuster is no problem and given how relatively infrequently this will be used, adjusting with small taps from a hammer is fine. The only niggles are that - presumably due to the smaller component size - the depth adjustment is a little coarser than I expected making it somewhat harder to “dial in“ than its larger siblings. Also, the casting of the body was a little rough in places, but literally five mins with 400g sandpaper solved that. So. It looks super-cute, of course, but it’s destined to be used as much as admired in my shed.”

Helpful Report

Posted 1 year ago

“I bought this plane from Workshop Heaven because I had always wanted to own one since I was in the college library in 1977 when I discovered an entry in Alvin Sellens book ‘The Stanley Plane’, although the cost of owning a genuine version was always far too prohibitive for me. I also thought that it might be a useful bevel-down plane that was small enough to concentrate on areas of wild grain before resorting to scrapers The sole of the plane when I received it was gratifyingly flat, not like my first set of planes that took nearly two days of arduous hand lapping when I started at college. I chose to polish the sides of the plane to a mirror finish on the buffing wheel because I was not convinced that the supplied matt finish did the tool justice. I also polished out the rough machining/grinding marks on the edges of the plane and the front of the lever cap for the same reason. I liked the finish on the front and rear totes and was grateful that they had not been slathered with a coat of sticky gloss varnish/stain. The frog is well seated on the bed of the plane and is fairly easily adjusted despite there being no dedicated adjustment screw. I would have preferred the bronze lever cap to be slightly wider so that it fitted the body of the plane a little better (it is about 3mm narrower) but it seems to do its job adequately nevertheless. The generously thick iron came with a very flat back with only fine grinding marks so it took very little honing to get it into a respectably razor-sharp condition. The cap iron looks to be well made and is sufficiently well machined to prevent shavings becoming trapped between it and the iron. I do however think that it did not clamp down to the iron as rigidly as I would have liked without really tightening the cap screw. The bronze depth adjustment screw and stirrup do their job although I would have preferred there to be a closer tolerance on the brass threads which, to my mind are a little sloppy on my plane and this does not help the backlash situation. The other issue is that because the threads are so sloppy the depth adjustment can be lost unless the wheel is held whilst planning – in practice I found this easy enough to accomplish. I am used to adjusting classic English planes that do not have lateral adjustment levers so this aspect was no problem at all – just try to use brass hammer. I have seen several reviews where they are described as being unsuitable for those of us with larger hands. I have to say that I did not find it at all difficult to use two-handed although I did not find it quite as intuitive to use as a block plane one-handed. It is very easy to use for chamfering and applying a radius to the edges of timber and it seems to cope well with local areas of ‘difficult grain’. I experienced no trouble cleaning up some ‘pippy’ English oak and some swirly/wild English walnut. Obviously one would not choose to use this plane for hours on end but why would one want to do that anyway? Despite some of the reservations above, do I think that, apart from its undoubted good looks, it is a worthwhile addition to my workshop and is it good value for money? My answer to both those questions is unreservedly in the affirmative and as usual in these cases I just wish that I had had the use of one many years ago. In fact I suspect that not only is it better made and far better looking than the original Stanley version but it does not elicit the buyer’s remorse associated with owning the genuine article!”

Helpful Report

Posted 1 year ago