EXXO 5360 Bench Jack Plane No4

fix lots of bumps

There is not a plane that is great out of the box and this is no different. It will require honing the blade and flattening the bottom.But this one will require significantly more elbow grease than a higher priced one. I kind of regret rebevelling the blade to 25 degrees. It took hours by hand (it would be much faster with a grinder or belt sander). I'm guessing it was 30 or more. On the good side, that means it's made of pretty hard steel.The only part that is "poor quality" is the stamped metal piece in the blade depth adjustment. But mine operates fine. The rest is really solidly built and just requires some love to get to on-par with a high-end tool. They seem to have fixed the quality control issues you see on YouTube reviews.I'm pretty thrilled. Just having to do more honing of the parts you would have to on any plane and at a fraction of the price of anything I can find better. I get a lot of satisfaction doing that kind of work, it's mindless, repetitive, and soothing to me. Like some iPhone game, but with a physical reward at the end.

This is the foot of the plane after 2 hours of attempting to flatten on 150 grit sand paper.Surface is deeply gouged and cupped horrifically. Tool is not fit for service and beyond the skill of entry level carpenters.

Has some good weight to it. Need to sharpen blade. Adjustment work fine aver all nice plane

After deburring, polishing and sharpening, this plane will do the job as well as much more expensive units. Nothing to brag about, not as purty but just as functional. Will remove shavings almost thin enough to see through.

I really wanted to like this plane. It's solid, and seems well built. Unfortunately, first impressions can be deceiving.I expect to have to fettle a new hand tool before it's 100% ready to use. Unfortunately, the issues with this plane went beyond that.The sole was very far out of flat, with large hollows in the middle, including next to the mouth.Once that was corrected, I realized that the frog has an issue. The hollow which holds the chip breaker's set screw doesn't go far enough down the frog, meaning that if you set the chip breaker close to the edge of the blade, the blade can't be expended far enough to take a cut. If you set the breaker back a quarter inch, it works okay, but because of the blade chatter induced it will never work as a smoother.A lesser concern is the handle, which wants to rotate in your hand even when tightened completely. The front of the tote base has a recess which sits over a small bump in the plane body. Unfortunately, the bump is too short (or perhaps the recess is too shallow) for this to actually counteract the rotational forces.Still giving it a 3/5 because it will make a decent scrub plane, and the price isn't bad.

On the unit I received there's no way to fully retract the blade. With the frog as far back as possible and the blade fully retracted, the blade still protrudes from the bas and is too deep to do useful work. At this setting there's about 1/16 inch gap between the frog support and the lower half of the blade, providing no support whatsoever.I can only assume the vendor supplied the wrong chip breaker for this planer.Also, the unit comes with zero padding, just a plastic bag of loose parts, including the blade. Blade arrived horribly nicked and gouged, The wooden knob and handgrip were gouged in several places, presumably by the loose blade. The shoe plate was milled and had a trench in the center with mill marks still visible after about an hour of 100 grit lapping.I expect cosmetic issues and a fair amount of finish work when shopping in this price range, but I also expect a usable product when I'm done with the prep/setup. That's not the case here so it's going back.