Spear & Jackson CJP5 Carpenters No.5 Jack Plane

This plane is good value for the money. Real wood handles. Most important to know is that the plane won’t work as expected until it is correctly set up and the cutting iron sharpened. But once done you will have a plane with a big flat base and enough heft that it will swoosh through wood stock and produce curly ribbons of wood shavings. Very satisfying.

This S&J #5 jack plane would have earned 5 stars but for one simple flaw. On the version I purchased, the adjuster yoke (which advances/retracts the iron when you spin the adjustment wheel) is made of stamped steel rather than cast iron or bronze. It's very thin so there's a lot of movement (slop) before it actually advances or retracts the iron. I have to advance the wheel almost 4 turns before the iron moves.This plane is a beautiful one in all other aspects: the sole was almost dead flat, taking about 3-4 minutes to flatten. The chip breaker likewise took about 5 minutes to get the bevel flat against the iron. The iron itself really needed only a bit of honing to make it serviceable, but I went ahead and polished the back and the primary bevel as well before honing a secondary bevel.Another slight drawback was that all machines surfaces were coated with a film which required acetone to remove. I would have preferred a simple coating of oil instead.But otherwise, about 45-60 minutes of work to get this $35 plane performing like a $150-200 mid-level model. Impressive!

Not only did I read reviews prior to purchasing, I did general research on hand planers as I have never used one. The instructions said that this unit wasn’t “ready to go” and needed sharpening prior to use. I used it regardless and had absolutely no issues at all. Very simple and easy to use. I planed both sides of the table top I am currently working on and it came out great. I had very low expectations considering “top brand” hand planers are often over $200. It may be because of how new I am to woodworking, or my ignorance of how much better a $200 hand planer performs, but I am impressed with how great this experience has been so far with this product. I definitely recommend it.

The bottom is NOT flat when coming out of the box. But considering the rest of the plane, and the price, time spent flattening the bottom was well worth the effort.

The plane is built solidly, but the sole on all of the Spear & Jackson planes I have bought have been nowhere near flat. When viewed from upside down, the heel and toe of the plane is significantly higher than the rest of the sole. The sides of the sole have also been higher than the center of the sole near the mouth. The machining on the frogs on the planes I bought was really rough and required some filing and sanding. The blade edges have not been square to the sides on any of the three Spear & Jacson planes I have. The primary bevel edges on the plane are very concave and not a true 25 degrees and were not cut straight on any of my planes, both of the edges protrude from the mouth farther than the center of the blade and the blade was not flat on any of the planes I bought. I had to sand the chip breaker on my number 4 and number 5 planes so they would rest flat on the blade and reduce clogging. The blades need sharpening quite often as well. The depth adjustment on my number 4 and 5 planes is terrible, the yoke is too small for the depth adjustment knob so I have to make three to four full turns to engage the blade. I've actually had to buy a yoke for my number four since the one I got was junk, my number 5 is a little better. To make matters worse it can slip out of adjustment on all three of my Spear & Jackson planes once in a while, which starts the headache all over again. On the more positive side, once I did all of that work, I have been able to take consistent shavings as thin as 0.005 inch, but that is only with a very sharp blade. If you don't mind putting in the work, and figuring out how to troubleshoot problems, it can be a great plane. I really wish they would spend a little more time machining the parts smoother and fitting the parts to each other more carefully. They really need to work on their blades and/or use higher quality steel and find a better way to cut the primary bevel.

I bought the #4 and #5. Both came fast, well packed and covered with oil. Both needed setup which is expected with any hand tool. Both soles needed some flattening, but the dips were where all cast planes have them. This is the most tedious part of setup. Mouth was clean, the chip breakers and cap iron needed 5 mins of flattening. The only negative I find is that the lever that advances/retracts the iron is sheet metal and has a lot of slop (backlash) in the adjusting screw to engage retracting. Every bench plane has some backlash, but this guy has two full turns of the screw before it starts moving backward. Also, I like to retract the iron pretty far above the sole when storing. There's not enough thread to move it a good 3/16" into the base. It bottoms out just barely...like .005" into the mouth & I prefer deeper. The frog on both planes came installed too far back...simple adjustment to move it to correct alignment. Keep in mind you'll have to take this thing completely apart and can't use it right out of the box. Probably going to buy the #3 too. I think the totes are a little small for my hands.