Are Anant Kamal tools any good?

[Jim Visser]

Are Anant Kamal tools worth the effort, or are they merely junk-grade knockoffs. I would especially like to hear from those of you who own and use them.

By the way, many thanks for the fine comments I received about plow planes. I found them to be really helpful.:)

Jim

[Douglas Brummett]

Depends what you are talking about. Their vises seem to get good report. The hand planes can be decent users with a bit of tuning. But overall I would not recommend unless your budget mandated cheap tools. They are better than some and worse than some.

[Brian Kent]

Here's one review:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?referrerid=5960&t=55471

I have a couple of Anants - a 4 1/2 and a bullnose rabbett plane. Both took a very large amount of work. The 4 1/2 works pretty good now and the bullnose just fair. I got them 3 years ago just starting out and I don't intend to try that again.

I was really interested in the Anant Kamal reviews. I never saw a formal review. I think they were just barely better so Highland Woodworking didn't want to pump them up too much. (I had some correspondence with them about this and their final response was that they don't do reviews of any of their products.)

I offered to review one, or even to buy one, send in a review, and leave it to them whether they liked the review or not, but got no response.

[Joel Goodman]

A prewar WW2 Stanley is much better made and is a better bet.