Shop Fox shoulder plane

[Brian Myers]

Anyone here have any experience with Shop Fox brand shoulder planes? Total garbage or useable? They are cheaply priced for a shoulder plane.

[Jim Koepke]

Brian,

I am always a bit skeptical when the seller does not list the country of origin. Looking at the ads for these made me a bit more skeptical with their wording.


Shop Fox planes offer real savings over their Stanley & Clifton counterparts. We’re pleased with their overall fit & nickel-plated finish. You can spend more & get more, but these planes work well & will leave some money to buy wood.

Especially the spend more and get more with my experience with Stanley shoulder planes. Getting a Stanley to be acceptable can be a bit of work. If that is what one is getting more of by spending more, then my suggestion would be to save a bit more and go for a shoulder plane from Lee Valley or Lie-Nielsen. I have known others to be disappointed by planes from Stanley and Clifton that needed some refinements to work. Something tells me the Shop Fox may need even more than those.

Of course, people do get lucky and you have to remember, I do not have any experience with The Shop Fox brand.

One thing I am an expert on is my opinion. This is just one of them and is subject to change.

jtk

[glenn bradley]

I find little as frustrating as trying to make a substandard hand tool usable.

[Brian Myers]

I find little as frustrating as trying to make a substandard hand tool usable.

You and me both. Thats why I asked. I get enough hand and elbow pain hand sharpening plane blades that I don`t need to spend a ton of effort to rework the plane body.



Brian

[David Weaver]

I haven't seen one, but they chose the stanley design (probably because it's free game for a dead copy of it).

There used to be a company on alibaba listed as "fortune extendables" that had a lot of the stuff that the woodcrafts, klingspors, rocklers etc of the world import, including knock-off planes and chisels.

For whatever reason, I can only see 20 items for them listed on alibaba now, so I don't know what distributor all of the tools are coming from - else you could find their origin.

Your best hope would be that they're coming from the same factory that is making the wood river planes. Worst case, they'd come from the same factory that's making the planes sold at HD, etc. I wouldn't trust them for a second to get the details right on a shoulder plane if that was the origin.

The shop fox stuff I have gotten has been kind of junky. I got an extra measuring gauge, and the wheel on it is very blunt compared to the veritas wheel gauge. Those little types of details don't matter so much on the marking gauge (I can refrain from using it where I want a laser sharp line), but they are important on a shoulder plane, and the last thing you want to do is be trying to figure out how to square one up.

Of course, if you can handle, check and use one in person, and it's OK, that blows all of the supposition out the door.

There's no way it's made above the rio grande in north america for $59.99, though.