Picked the $30 hand plane over the $80 one at the pawn shop and now I'm wondering

I was at Al's Pawn off Route 9 last Saturday looking for a used block plane to clean up some old door frames. The guy had a rusty Stanley for $30 and a newer one with plastic handles for $80. I grabbed the cheap one because I figured I could sharpen it up myself, but three hours of work later it still chatters on every pass. Would I have been better off spending the extra $50 or is this old iron just needing more patience? Anyone else go cheap on a tool and regret it or manage to make it work?

3 comments

3 Comments

faith_shah881mo ago

Is this really that deep? It's a $30 pawn shop plane, not a life decision. Either sharpen it more or just buy the $80 one and move on.

blake7921mo ago

nah man i've been there before. bought a beat up block plane at a garage sale for like $15 once and spent a whole weekend trying to get it to cut right. finally gave up and grabbed a new stanley for $50 on sale. sometimes you just gotta know when to cut your losses lol. if the blade's chipped or the sole is warped no amount of sharpening is gonna fix it.

reese_lee91mo ago

And honestly, that's the thing most people skip when they grab an old plane. You gotta check the sole for flatness first. Run a straightedge across it lengthwise and diagonally. If you can slide a piece of paper under it anywhere, walk away. Same with the blade - chips bigger than a grain of sand mean you're looking at a whole regrind job. That's not a weekend project, that's a full resto project. And for a $30 plane, you're better off just putting that toward something that works out of the box.