A plane with a ready-to-use iron

[Patrick Chase]

I have found the holy grail: A handplane with an iron that's sufficiently sharp (by my standards) to use out of the box.

This unexpected pleasure came as part of a Tsunesaburo chamfer plane. The iron had obviously been hand-honed on very fine abrasives, and while not optimally sharp it's the best I've ever seen with a new tool from any maker.

Of course the plane body required a small amount of adjustment with chisel and float, to remove a small amount of tilt. There's no free lunch.

BTW the Tsunesaburo chamfer plane is a great tool. The cap iron makes a world of difference in difficult wood. I've been running around chamfering every difficult-looking scrap I can find against the grain and marveling at the results.

[Normand Leblanc]

As far as I understand, that plane can work right to left or left to right and I don't see why I would use it going against the grain. The only times where the cap iron could be required is if you have changing grain directions. Am I missing something?

I've never seen a sharp plane out of the box but I've hear that here in Canada, when you order from Rob Cosman, he sharpen all blades before shipping.

[Patrick Chase]

As far as I understand, that plane can work right to left or left to right and I don't see why I would use it going against the grain. The only times where the cap iron could be required is if you have changing grain directions. Am I missing something?

I've never seen a sharp plane out of the box but I've hear that here in Canada, when you order from Rob Cosman, he sharpen all blades before shipping.

Yes, that's right. You only need the cap iron for reversing grain. I've been testing it against the grain mostly to see how it does, not because that's how I would actually chamfer a workpiece.