Faithfull FAIPLANE5 No.5 Bench Plane

Don't really get the hate comments in here. It's beautiful looking and way to many people overthink 'tuning' a new plane. It's a case of flattening the back of the blade and the front of the blade so they meet evenly at the cutting edge. Other than that the plane is fine. There's a few little manufacturing knicks and oddities, the frog mouth is a little out of square but it does not affect the performance of the plane if you know how to sharpen and keep it as flush as you can as you tighten the frog screws. If you're expecting this to cut out of the box it won't, no plane will. Some cheap eBay diamond stones will do the trick. If you don't know how to sharpen of course it won't work and if you want lie neilson manufacturing with no design faults you won't get that. However, once sharpened, this plane takes whisper thin shavings or thick curly ones, works for jointing boards, flattening stock and smoothing very well for the price. Performs just as well as my old Stanley number 4 once sharp, I just doubt it'll hold up as long term as of course, the materials used arent made to as high a quality but at the end of the day you get what you pay for! Would definitely recommend for beginners buying Thier first plane or people looking for a new plane on a budget.

I recently bought a Draper Expert Number 5 plane from Amazon as it was a bargain price and looked just like the classic Stanley No 5 plane that I wanted it to replace, but the build quality did not impress me enough to spend the amount of time it would have needed to sharpen it and tune it so I returned it today and took delivery of this Faithfull Number 5 plane instead. This plane costs almost half as much again as the Draper Expert ( even though it is still a very low cost tool at around £33) so I guess that needs to be taken into consideration when comparing them but this plane is easily worth the extra ten quid (or so) as its build quality is much better. The wooden box that this plane comes it is a nice feature too as it can be used to store and protect the plane when in transit or not in use and is a real bonus at such a low price. The large brass knob makes removal and adjustment of the blade assembly quick and easy - even if it does not look quite so elegant as the cam lever of the original Bailey design! Everything looks well made and finished and it should not take too long to tune this plane and hone the blade prior to setting it to work. The wooden grip and front knob give a nicer feel than the moulded plastic types that are to be found on most of the rival budget priced planes but the large grip on mine would benefit from a little smooth sanding to make it smoother so I may as well sand the front knob as well and give them both a nice oil finish - the build quality of this hand tool is exceptional for the cost and so I do not begrudge spending a little time on it to make it even better suited to its fussy new owner!

This is the 3rd Faithful plane I have bought, unfortunately it was the worst. The first two required minimal sole sanding, this jack plane required 4m of p80 abrasive paper and 3hours of hard work to flatten the sole. It's a lucky dip wether you get a decent one. On the whole, they are a better opinion ( Indian made ) then Chinese copies.

I bought a Faithfull No. 7 from Amazon a few years ago. After some minor tuning I am very happy with it and feel it's good value. So, I decided to get their No.5 plane It arrived via Prime on time however the presentation box has loose hinges, battered corners. The plane's blade has signs of chips along the bevel. Update: I ordered another from Amazon. That one arrived and appears to genuinely new (ie not an abused returned product). After about 1 hour of re grinding the primary bevel and adding a secondary bevel plus using a honing compound, I am pleased with the cutting result. The adjustment for blade depth is a bit sloppy but what I would expect at this price. This item is clearly a return item. It is going back for a refund

This is by far the best plane I have ever had for the money. It is all the way up there with a tricked out, upgraded Stanley plane. The sole was extremely flat out of the box when I checked it on a granit surface plate, with only a neglbie measly 2 thousands out of flat. Way better than most planes costing three times as much. The handles and weight are nice and well shaped both for small and big hands. I have skillet seized paws, but some of my students (11 yrs old) have only half the sizes hand I got. No problem. The cutting iron is made from good not too soft or hard steel and again the grind is perfect with just a wee hollow in the blade to make sharpening a breeze. In short - worth every penny.

This Faithfull plane No5 is a budget item so I would expect to have to do some work on it to make it useable. Straight out of the box I checked the flatness of the sole. It was so far out of true both on its length and diagonal that I would have returned it for this reason alone. I then looked at the frog seating and the lateral adjuster. The seating was very badly milled and the lateral adjuster pivot wasn't central, making it impossible to move the blade in one direction. I bought it because my perception from the reviews is read made me think Faithfull made quality items. I'm afraid I'll be steering well clear in future. The plane was returned the following day.

Build quality is excellent, sturdy, flat surface, chunky feel. After the initial set up and a little blade sharpen , this is a performer. It took me a little time to get the blade length just right as the mechanism to lock it down is a tad fiddly. Once i got used to the fittings it became a lot easier (I guess tool familiarity always helps anyway though) and i have used this a lot, further adjustments are easy and accurate. Highly recommend

Decent base, minor adjustment on base. Cleaned up residue on device and fine tuned plane. Very easy to set up and use. Blade holds sharpness, A decent wooden case for plane.

To jest solidnie wykonane narzędzie, które bedzie służyć przez wiele lat. Stary rzemieślnik

I bought this just to see if those positive reviews could really be true for such a cheap plane, and because.. well it's dirt cheap so nothing much to lose, right? Well, this is easily one of the best tool purchases I've ever made. The milling and finishing is decent enough, and as a bonus the sides were pretty square to the sole so not much play with the lateral adjuster is necessary to use the plane in a shooting board. Only the frog required serious attention with a file. Specifically, the opening for the fastener screws was too narrow, and the slot for the position adjuster needed to be lowered and widened. It took all of 10 minutes to fix. You will have to make the obligatory fixes; flattening the sole, flattening the surface of the frog, sharpening the blade and making the chipbreaker fit snugly. This is a sometimes listed as a negative point in reviews which just shows the reviewers ignorance, since every single hand plane needs that initial setup, regardless of brand and price point. For an absolute beginner, it may seem slightly daunting, but it's really not difficult, and there's a thousand videos and articles on the web that describes the process in detail. Just be aware that it needs to be done, a hand plane does *not* come ready for use, and neither does this one. A Lie-Nielsen or Veritas might only require 10 minutes of setup, but planes in this low end of the price-range tend to require hours, a new Stanley might take days. I spend 2-3 hours on this one, most of it in regrinding the blade and chipbreaker because they were quite skewed. Personally, the grinding is somewhat neutral to me, since I always re-grind new blades to a higher angle anyways, but if someone expected to use this right out of the box then it would have been a bad experience. After the initial setup, this is a very high-performing tool. I've been using it on a variety of hard and soft woods, end-grain and in a shooting board.. it just works! It takes deep shavings, see-through shavings and anything in between, leaving a silky-smooth surface. The blade holds the edge well, adjusters operate smoothly and the whole plane is just rock-solid and nice to use. I am truly amazed at how good this plane turned out to be. Planes in this price range, or even twice or thrice the price, rarely gets much better than decent, but this one is a good as anything I've ever tried. Now, the thing with budget tools is that you might get lucky and get an awesome piece, like I did, and you might get a poor specimen. This is the first Faithfull plane I owned, so I can't say how consistent the quality is, but this surely was a positive surprise. The only thing that struck me as "cheap" was the wooden box it came in. The chipbreaker isn't super either, as it is very flexible and moves when it's tightened to the blade, so setting it right requires a little practice. A couple of things could be better, though neither is critical; the tote is really small, I can only get two fingers on it, lest it squezees my little finger. You'll need very small hands to grip it fully, but it turns out that resting the back of the hand on metal bottom and holding like you would a wooden plane is actually quite comfortable, so no big deal. The frog position screw can only be operated if both the tote and the depth adjuster knob is removed completely, again not such a big deal since I can't remember having ever used it on any of the planes I've ever owned. Had it cost three times as much, I'd given it a four star because of the handle size and the little hiccups with the frog, but I'll give it a solid 5 just for the value-for-money. If you're willing to put in a couple of hours to set it up and prep it for first use, you get a hand plane that easily compares with tools that are twice or thrice as expensive. It's not just "good enough", it's really good!

Rien a redire,tres belle facture,belle finition ,agréable a l'utilisation,le fer de coupe est bien,les pièces sont propre bien usinée,semelle d'équerre,juste un tout petit écart sur les joues mais vraiment rien d'alarmant.Donc rapport qualité prix,ça en vaut la peine .

Not a bad plane for the price, the metal work is quite solid, with right angle sides, the sole is nearly flat, that can be achieved with a little tuning, there should be a little more attention paid to the finish of the wood pretty minor. The iron is on the thin side, but no different to the old Stanley planes, it is sharp and planed right out of the box. The box it came in is a nice touch, better than a lot of more expensive planes that come in a cardboard box. After polishing the iron, it cut hard wood with little effort, and that is the basic job of a plane, the experts may differ, but for my money it does just as good a job as more expensive versions, that I have tried.

I ordered one of these, but it had problems, so I ordered another one, thinking it might be a one defective item, but the second one was even worse. And the problems: Overall build quality is really poor. Lever cap thickness is not uniform. It is thicker on side than the other. And the blade, it is rust on several points, and has a big ump on the backside. The blade edge is not square to the side.