"New" Stanley Sweet Heart #60 1/2 Low Angle Block Plane Mini Review

Stuart Ablett

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Tokyo Japan
First off this was just a 15 or 20 minute look at this plane, not much more than that, but I think I got most of the info one would need to figure this plane out.

Stanley_SW_60_half_LA.jpg
This is the plane in question.

My friend Sugita San brought it by the Dungeon, it is not his plane, a friend of his bought the plane and then could not make it work, and asked Sugita San to have a look at it. Sugita San was also left scratching his head, so he came to me looking for a second opinion and some advice.

Let me show you what we found.....

stanely_sweetheart_60_half_shavings.JPG
I could make a decent shaving, but, as you will see, something is amiss :huh:

stanely_sweetheart_60_half_2.JPG
Looking down the bottom of the plane, you can just see the edge of the blade, it is even and does pull a decent shaving, every thing looks OK.... right?

Well wait a minute, now looking down into the mouth, from the bottom of the plane.....
stanely_sweetheart_60_half_1.JPG
..... something don't look right here :eek:

I tell you, it was like a "Skew Plane" :doh:

That is how much I had to skew the blade to get it coplanar with the bottom of the plane, so forget adjusting the adjustable mouth nice and tight to get rid of any tear-out :(

Looking at the bed of the frog, it looks to me like it is not straight......

stanely_sweetheart_60_half_bed1.JPG stanely_sweetheart_60_half_bed2.JPG
...... the machining is not as smooth as I would like it to be, not nearly as smooth as the machining on my Veritas DX60.

The other big disappointment was with the feed adjuster, the knob you turn to advance the blade forward, or pull it back in the body of the plane.

On Sugita San's Lie-Nielsen Low Angle Adjustable Mouth block plane, there is about 1/2 to 3/4 of a turn of play in the mechanism, from push out to pull back, on the Veritas Dx60 there is about 1/8 to 1/4 of a turn of play, on the Sweet Heart 60 1/2 there was 2 3/4 turns of play, yep, nearly THREE FULL TURNS of play in the mechanism :eek: :bang:

That is REALLY bad, you can see the threaded block is VERY loose on the threaded rod, VERY loose.

I have to say I was really disappointed in this plane , I was hoping these planes would be better, I mean for $99.99, if this plane was NOT messed up, I think it would be filling a lot of tool boxes. I'll hold out the hope that maybe we got a lemon, but man is it ever a lemon. :bang: :bang:

Some good points, the blade is nice and thick, looks like quality steel, and it was really sharp right out of the box. The plane itself is substantial, it has some heft to it, you would NOT want to carry this one around in your apron pocket all day! :D The castings look good and they are seriously thick. :thumb:

I really do hope that this is just a lemon, and this this is not indicative of the level of quality that will come from Stanley, I hope we got an exception, but man does it suck.

Sugita San's friend has no choice really he has to send it back, and I very much doubt that Woodcraft will cover the shipping, which means, in the end he will be out a fair chunk of change and have nothing to show for it, but disappointment.

This is one reason I very much like to order quality tools from overseas, you have a much better chance of NOT getting a lemon, and if you do get something with a flaw, the company will stand behind it.

I'm not piling on Woodcraft either, they have been nothing but good to me when ordering stuff overseas, lots of companies in the US don't bother.

Well there you go, a mini review, for what it is worth.

Stu
 
Thanks for the review, Stu. It's always a shame when a product doesn't live up to your expectations, whether it's just a bad unit, or if they're all like that.

BTW, really good photography in your posting. You seemed to be able to get very close to the element of interest and focus on just that.

Mike
 
That could be a bad unit, or is that Stanley is just continuing with the concept that made them fall from a reputed brand to a low one and almost dissapear from the bussines.

If the throat is not square that could be a bad unit in a batch, but the machining marks, and the play on the adjusting knob can't be considered an occasional flaw IMHO but just plain bad quality.

Besides if that unit passed their quality control process (if any) should have been discarded.

Thanks for the review Stu.
 
Thanks Stu,

Very disapointing news. Toni your point on qaulity control is a good one.

I would have thought that a simple go no go jig would have been used to catch the casting defect before machining. This is not a small error they have there.
 
Was the blade sharpened square? Or was the machining on the casting that bad off? Either one could cause that problem and I wonder if the blade was just off?

But this is why I really like the old ones better.
 
Thanks for the review, Stu. It's always a shame when a product doesn't live up to your expectations, whether it's just a bad unit, or if they're all like that.

BTW, really good photography in your posting. You seemed to be able to get very close to the element of interest and focus on just that.

Mike

Thanks Mike, those pics are with my cell phone camera yet :D

Actually, my cell phone is more of a camera than a cell phone, it is a Sony Cyber Shot cell phone, 5.4 mega pixels or whatever, it is 1 1/2 years old now, but when it came out, it was the cat's pajamas, and it takes great pics.

That could be a bad unit, or is that Stanley is just continuing with the concept that made them fall from a reputed brand to a low one and almost dissapear from the bussines.

If the throat is not square that could be a bad unit in a batch, but the machining marks, and the play on the adjusting knob can't be considered an occasional flaw IMHO but just plain bad quality.

Besides if that unit passed their quality control process (if any) should have been discarded.

Thanks for the review Stu.

I agree Toni, it does not lookg good for Stanely. These units are not made in China either.............. Mexico :dunno:

Thanks Stu,

Very disapointing news. Toni your point on qaulity control is a good one.

I would have thought that a simple go no go jig would have been used to catch the casting defect before machining. This is not a small error they have there.

Yep, if it is just one bad unit fine, but it is worrisome, I would not buy one, the shipping alone would kill the deal, the risk is not worth it. If I could walk into a store and take it out of the box and check it over, that would be very different.
 
That is bothersome but not too unexpected...

These are pretty much my sentiments too....which is really unfortunate when you think about it. It's so hard to fix a tarnished reputation, and things like this don't help. Hopefully it's just a bad one that slipped through the cracks. It's cool looking plane.

Thanks for posting Stu.
 
I have to say that I really did want to like this plane, I futzed around with it for a while to try to get it to work but :dunno:

Maybe they wanted to make a "Skew" plane :eek: :D
 
Was the blade sharpened square? Or was the machining on the casting that bad off? Either one could cause that problem and I wonder if the blade was just off?

But this is why I really like the old ones better.

I forgot to mention, that I did check the blade and it was square (nice catch Jeff) but I thought you could fix :rolleyes: the problem by sharpening the blade off square :eek: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
 
I forgot to mention, that I did check the blade and it was square (nice catch Jeff)

OK, I thought the machining looked off square but it is a casting and they are not precise so it wouldn't surprise me to see a casting looking like that after machining. But if it was that bad off and the with the machining looking that bad......... I will stick to restoring the old ones since I am not willing to pay for LN or Veritas.
 
Not really surprised

Stu,
While I'm bummed for him, I'm not really surprised that your friend got a dog of a plane. I've been reading some other reviews of the Stanley line of "Premium" planes and have been seeing the same complaints echoed throughout. I believe that Chris Schwarz had the same complaints about their low angle jack plane. Shoddy machining and bad QC. That is NOT a real recipe for success.

It's a darn shame too. I love my old Stanley planes and always wished I could go back in time and see that company (as wellas Disston!) in it's heyday. Having Stanley produce such low quality planes is a lot like the disspointment of meeting up with an old girlfriend and finding she's gained 200 lbs and sports a beard.:rofl:
 
I had a Record 60.5 plane that had similar issues. Could never get it to work as it should have. I don't mean to sound cynical, but I think companies like LV and LN have put out their products at the lowest prices they can. If another company sets out to beat that price by 30 or 40%, somewhere along the line, something will cost less. Is it labor in a country other than the USA or Canada? or is it other parts of the process?

I respect my old Stanleys. I'd like to see them do well today. I'd hate to see LV and LN suffer as a result. From this review [Thanks Stu] it doesn't look like they will, unless the marketing teams sell this to the masses of buyers with more disposable cash than woodworking acumen. No offense to any who have bought the new Stanleys.
 
...I think companies like LV and LN have put out their products at the lowest prices they can. If another company sets out to beat that price by 30 or 40%, somewhere along the line, something will cost less. Is it labor in a country other than the USA or Canada? or is it other parts of the process?...

I don't think it's a labor problem, regardless of where in the world they're made. Workers in China, Taiwan, India, etc. are very good - just like in the U.S. and Canada.

The problem likely lies in the design spec tolerances, and of course in quality control.

From a market point of view, I doubt that either LV or LN are really making a whole lot of money per plane. Theit machining/finishing tolerances, and their attention to quality and detail have to eat up a lot of time and money.

Sometimes, you just do get what you pay for...
 
It's a shame the quality is that poor. It looks like a good design is not executed well. Poor craftsmanship. Out of square machining is a fairly critical flaw.
That said, regrinding the blade at the proper angle, thougth it shouldn't be necessary, would fix that flaw. The plane should work just fine after that. As far as the excessive backlash in the depth adjustment, most of my old Stanleys suffered the same thing. There may be ways to fiddle with it to tighten things up - a little peening here, a bit of filing there. Again, it's a frustration to have to do it, but some of that is probably fixable.
After all, i wouldn't put this plane in the premium category, and the price certainly reflects that. My 15 year old Stanley 220 block plane cost me $35 new and needed no adjustment out of the box. I had to sharpen the blade - that was it. The machining is square, the blade seats well, and the adjustments are crisp. Sounds like the old basic line was better than the new premium line.
paulh
 
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