Stanley 12-140 No.92 Shoulder and Chisel Plane

I am an experienced amateur woodworker, and I have a large woodworking project coming up (dining table and chairs) which will have at least 96 mortise-and tenon joints. Honestly I was dreading cleaning up all of the tenons with a chisel, so I decided to get a shoulder plane. Naturally I started reading reviews, etc. (here and elsewhere), and I’m in an area where I was able to go and actually see and touch Lie Nielsen, Veritas, Wood River planes as well as this one, the Woodstock shoulder plane, and a Shop Fox plane which looks like a knock-off copy of this one. But while I would have loved to get the Veritas I couldn’t really justify the cost, and the Wood River was just outside the top of my budget. So I ended up getting this one, the Stanley #92 shoulder plane.Now I had read the reviews and I know that some people have given it bad ratings for various reasons, but I realized that if I were to get one that “must have been made on a Friday,” I could return it and get another (and if that happened twice I’d bite the bullet and get the Wood River). In addition, looking at the ratio of good-to-bad reviews, I figured that my chances of getting one within specs in 2 tries was excellent. And it turned out I got a very good one to begin with.(Incidentally, for those of you who have asked are interested in the fact, this plan is made in Mexico.)It arrived on time (good job, Amazon) and I immediately took it down to the shop, opened it, disassembled it, and cleaned the grease off. While I had it apart I did remove a few small metal flakes/chips/(whatever they’re called) left over from the milling process, and I noticed that the underside of the top half of the base could stand to be filed smooth where the hold for the depth adjustment screw had been drilled and threaded. (But I did not do that at this point since I had just started evaluating the plane.)Next I reassembled it and started evaluating it.First off there were NO apparent defects on the plane: no bubbles (voids) in the metal, no visible structural flaws (such as wildly curved places that should be flat), no egregious scratches it its surface, no rust, etc. Additionally the only “finish” flaw that I could find was that the thumb screw could have had deeper ridges in its knurling and all of those ridges should probably have been deeper, but the problem wasn’t bad enough to worry about (especially since I would do any final tightening down with a screwdriver.Then I started measuring.First the plane’s throat is fully adjustable since the top half of the plan can be moved forward and backward, AND the front edge of that throat and the back edge are parallel (so throat will be the same width from side to side, and both are so close to a right angle to the plane’s body that they are essentially “perfect.” Next, the iron (the blade) is 0.7485" wide while the body is 0.7375", so that was just as anticipated. (Remember when cleaning up the a tenon, the blade is shifted so that on the side which touches the shoulder of the tenon, the blade is flush with the body of the plane.) So there were no “width” problems that I could tell. Finally the blade’s sides appear to be so close to 90° that I decided not to worry about deviation as (at that point) their deviations from square were so small as to be negligible. (I should probably have measured that in the lab later, but I didn’t think to at the time – sorry.)Now several people have complained about the sides of the plane not being at a right angle to the plane’s sole, and I measured that next. But my measurement was so close to <approximately perfect> that couldn’t measure the deviation from 90° accurately in my shop, and I ended up taking it to a lab at my office.Using laser measurements, I was able to determine the angle of the deviation (using trigonometry) using laser measurements to determine the height of the body and the “gap” measured at the top of the body, determining the angle that way, and the results were shockingly good. On one side the angle is 89° 51' 4.5" (or 89.8461173453°) while on the other it is 89° 50' 6.0" (or 89.8350004211°). While I’m not sure that the decimals on the fractions of a second of arc are really accurate, this is about as good as I would be likely to get even with one of the top-of-the-line planes. (Note: in both cases the plane’s sole was very slightly wider than the top of the body. But with angles so close to 90° I decided that the width difference would not be a problem, and for all I know it could be intentional.)Finally I measured the flatness of the plane’s sole. Here things were not quite as good and there was a slight rise toward the back of the plane making a “cup” effect, but it was “only” 0.007" and was able to take that out using sandpaper (150-220-330-500-1000-4000-8000 grit in that order) and a large, flat marble reference surface. It didn’t take me all that long to clean that up and after I did that, geometrically the plane was well with specs, so I tried cutting with it.Now the blade was very sharp to begin with and I could easily get shavings as thin as 0.045" thick, but I wanted that number to be closer to 0.001" if possible. Now I have both a Worksharp 3000 and a Veritas honing jig (a present from my wife years ago), so I started with the Worksharp and sharpened the blade on it down to a #4000 grit and then I shifted to the Veritas, getting down to an #8000 grit (water-stone), followed by polishing compound on leather until the blade looked like a mirror – and of course I also smoothed the back of the blade as well, finishing it off with my #8000 grit water-stone.Then I tried again and while I could easily get thin shavings even on end grain, I was only able to get a consistent “best” thickness of 0.002", or about twice what I wanted.Then I thought about smoothing out the upper surface of the cast-iron base where it contacts the plane directly behind the cutting edge. That did the trick (and it was all manual, making me worry that I could throw the blade out of “level” horizontally – but if I did I can’t tell it), and after doing that I was able to get shavings about 0.001", and I have to conclude that I got a VERY good plane – at least as good as what I paid for and probably a lot better than the average for this plane.All in all, my “cleanup” and measurement of this plane (excluding driving time to/from the office) was less than 3 hours, and that was far less time than I had expected to need to “tune it up” initially. I’m still going to go back and lightly ease the sharp corners on the plane’s body, but I probably won’t get around to doing that until I start on the project I mentioned, so I’ll set aside a couple of hours to take care of that. To me that isn’t an issue.Overall I am EXTREMELY satisfied with this plane, and even though I think I probably got VERY lucky, based on the one I got I would unhesitatingly recommend it to woodworking friends, family, and anyone else who does woodworking as a hobby. The plane fits in my hands well whether I’m working right- or left-handed, and if I’m wearing gloves the sharp edges don’t bother me at all.Are ALL of these planes as good as this one? From reading the reviews, obviously not. And if they were, then this plane would probably cost a good deal more. But if I needed another of these, I would not hesitate to buy this plane again (even though I realize that my chances of getting another one quite this good are pretty slim).DEFINITELY RECOMMENDED...Addendum 12 Sept 2018:The dining table build went really well, and this shoulder plane was a godsend for all of the mortise-and-tenon joints (which turned out to be 116, not 108). That being said, I recently downloaded the user manual from the ORIGINAL version of this plane, and it had a feature that this one is lacking, one that I wish it had. The original version of this plane had a screw to set the minimum throat depth, and until I figured out a solution I had minor problems getting the top set-screw to hold the front of the plane in place to limit the throat depth. This wasn't a show stopper and (a) I'd still buy this plane again, and (b) I won't change my review one bit (text or rating). It's just a narrow difference between getting the top thumb-screw tight enough to keep the throat depth from changing and tightening it TOO much so that the use runs the risk of breaking the screw. With practice this issue goes away, but when I first started figuring out just how much to tighten it, I was worried about the matter. While it turned out to be a non-issue in the long run, at first it looked like a potential problem.

I received my plane today. I read the reviews and was a little leery about the complaints this tool has gotten. I have been wood working, as a hobby, for almost 40 years. Over those years, I have acquired a considerable amount of power and hand tools, as well as above average skills. The plane I have used for many years is finally beyond practical use. The iron has been sharpened one too many times. I decided to treat myself with the Stanley 92.I examined it out of the box and the finish is very good. There are no uncomfortable edges that need to be addressed. I checked it for flatness and square. Using a small machinist square, I found it to be very good and does not need any milling. Bear in mind, holding a square to it and shining a light behind it, it does show a very slight gap between the square and the surface. I find it within my tolerance for wood working. After adjusting the blade depth, I was able to get the fine curl of shavings that I expected. I tried it on a test tenon, and it cleaned the cheeks and shoulders perfectly. I will, however hone the blade to my level of sharpness.This tool does the job intended. It cleans up tenons. I do not intend to use it to build watches. Anyone complaining about this tool either got a bad tool, which should be returned, or is expecting too much out of a hand tool. Use a good stacked dado blade and you clean up the joint with this plane. As my father once told me a very long time ago, "A tool is only as good as the person using it". If you want to achieve perfection, patience and practice is the key. Do not blame the tool for any imperfection which could be the users fault. Of course, if the tool is indeed defective or lacking in quality, you can not achieve good results, no matter what your level of skill is. We are, after all, woodticians, not magicians.The tipping point for buying this tool was the price. I paid $60.95 with the benefit of an recent Amazon promotion. I believe it was money well spent. If I can get 40 years out of this one, I'll have it made!I do not want anyone reading this to get the impression that I am criticizing anyones' skill or lack there of. I am merely stating, for the money, this is a fine tool and if you want real perfection, two other manufacturers of planes come to mind. For full disclosure, I do not work for Stanley Tool Works. I am just a humble hobbyist, in it for the pleasure of building furniture for people dear to me, not building spacecraft for Nasa.

Stanley 12-140 No.92 Shoulder and Chisel Plane I have been looking for the right tool for hand fitting tenons into mortises, and this is it. I cut tenon cheeks with a tenon jig onthe table saw. It does a good job, but it is difficult to remove that last bit without cutting away too much. Now I just make sure to leave them slightly oversize and use the shoulder plane to get a perfect fit. If necessary, I can even plane more off one side to perfectly match the faces of the jointed boards. Today, I dry-fitted a table and found a tongue and groove joint was sitting too high. A few strokes of the shoulder plane on the shoulders of the tongue part allowed it to set deeper in the groove, which lowered the spreader into a square, tight fit. I even used it to trim and square the shoulders on hand-cut dovetails. Most of these cuts were across the grain or end grain; the low angle blade handles that with no problems. I rarely cut a mortise more than 3/4" deep, so this size does almost everything I need. I sometimes haver to use a sharp chisel just for a final cleaning of the interior angles only.The tool came wrapped in oil paper and covered with grease of a gel consistency. I disassembled it and wiped it down with mineral spirits in a few seconds. I was pleasantly surprised to find the blade perfectly ground and already honed. The only problem was that the lateral adjustment of the blade needed to achieve a flat cut is very touchy. It took several adjustments and test cuts to get it right, but it has not drifted out of alignment yet. Looks like I will not have to do that again until I remove the blade to touch up the edge. I have heard some horror stories about the quality of new tools, but they do not apply here. No need to spend big bucks on those "prestige brands" for a shoulder plane. This one is good enough!

I know hand tools for woodworking are basically divided into two camps nowadays: cheap useless garbage and expensive and great tools.Sometimes you find a decently priced tool that does the job. I thought this would be it.I can probably get it to do what I need to with some grinding and lapping and some fiddling and tinkering but I don't think I should have to fight that much with a tool to get it to do the job it was made for.The major fault with Stanley's planes now are major quality control issues that are well documented. This one is just too rough and out of square to make me regret forking over my money for it.

This chisel made in chinaI bought from amazon.com.au No92 Shoulder Plane.When I opened the box, I was very surprised.The entire surface of the plane was scratched. Maybe before selling it dragged along the way.But the most interesting was in the future.This plane was simply not possible to use.All parts of the plane are made disgustingly. I think it was made in China, not in a factory, but in a shed. The one who made it did not know anything about manufacturing accuracy and workmanship.This plane is a disgrace to the Stanley brand for just $ 100.The blade had burrs and didn't work.The bed for the blade milling crooked. Therefore, the blade is not parallel to the base of the planer.This turned out to be the biggest problem for me. I eliminated it for several hours at home.Lever cap was not treated with burrs, the hole in it for the lever cap screw is not in the center of the lever cap. Dept Adjustment Nut is above the guides in "Precision machined Base". It hangs in the air because the hole for Depth Adjustment Screw is made at the wrong angle.therefore, when tightening Lever Cap Screw Depth Adjustment Screw defooms.Maybe this is the designer's intention?I could not eliminate this defect.Right side Cast Iron Base is not a continuation of Top Half of Base. This is not valid. I could not eliminate this defect.Amazon suggested that I return the plane to the United States and make a refund.If it were not for sending to the USA , I would agree. But the timing of this procedure did not suit me.This plane, I reordered, because my first order with it was partially lost. The package was not given to me, but the plane was in it.Now I think ... probably the thief saw the plane, was horrified by his appearance and did not take it ...If you want extreme, then buy a plane 92. Extreme costs only $ 100 and two weeks of waiting ...My opinion Stanley should be ashamed of this planemy review is not the only oneSee what they write in the US Amazonbut service support Stanley Australia says-we didn't sell it to you, we don't have it-probably need to contact the Chinese barn where under the guidance and supervision of Stanley make these wonderful not cheap planes

el cepillo trabaja bien, es buena opción el poder usarlo de dos formas distintas para trabajar, pero para ser de la linea premium le falta mejorar su acabado bajo el puente, es muy burdo y no esta pulido como los demas cepillos de la linea SW.

I have not used it yet but feel it well be good.

funciona muy bien, la hoja ya estaba afilada y solo requirio un poco de trabajo para hacerla mas eficiente todavia.si lo recomiendo