Japanese Wood Block Plane KANNA 40mm Carenter's Tool Double Edge Senkichi

SUPERB!Excellent, perfect for smaller detailed work, chamfers, end grain etc. it excels on softer woods like pine, redwood, cedar.Bought this specificaly for trimming my patio furniture projects.If you're not used to setting up a japanese style plane, there are many you tube videos to show you how to do just that, and to do it properly, and you do need to tune them up BEFORE using!!!It does take time to set them up, so a little patience is necessary."The Kanna Smoothing Planes, Presented by The Japan Woodworker" is on you tube, & is a very good video to show you how to tune up your plane.There is also a video by Adrian Preda: "Setting Up an Inexepensive Japanese Plane" that is excellent!You may also enjoy "How To Set Up A Japanese Plane, 16 micron Shavings!" by the Samuri Carpenter also on you tube, his vid is excellent!They take a little getting used to, but....once you have it dialed in, they're fantastic!!Super thin shavings, smoothe finish, lightweight, doesn't get any better!!

Totally worth it.I've been a craftsman for over 30 years - I've had my own one man wood and metal fabrication shop since 2004. I make a lot of my own hand and power tools (wood lathe, table saw and belt sanders). I currently use the hell out of my little Stanley block plane and an imported Chinese jack plane similar to a Stanley number 4 in the construction of recurve, bamboo backed archery bows and knife handles for my hand forged knives.I've been meditating on building some hand planes out of some really hard maple scraps I have that are around 2"x2"x10. I'm thinking that they'll end up either Japanese style or modified Krenov style.When I saw this for under 10 bucks, I thought it would give me some ideas at the very least when I finally make my own.It arrived 3 days after my online purchase.It arrived SCARY sharp.Now, among other things, I make hand forged knives with a semi traditional Japanese charcoal pit forge (which, of course, I made myself). I know how to make and sharpen a knife so it will push cut through paper. The iron in this plane arrived as sharp as I could get it with my dead flat granite sharpening slab and sharpening up to 1200 grit sandpaper.The wood looks like Japanese white oak (shiroi kashi) but not as hard or high quality as my Japanese white oak bokken. That being said, there are no knots or imperfections that I can see. I can't dig my fingernail into my white oak bokken but I can, a little, with this plane.I've included some pics of the one I got. You can see in one of the pics where I dug my fingernail in.Overall, this little plane seems much more delicate than my antique Stanley block plane and, I think, will require a more delicate touch when using it. However, it seems to have a very high quality of craftsmanship in its construction and I suspect it will be replacing my old trusty block plane for most jobs.Bottom line: if you need a block plane, I recommend this one wholeheartedly. Get it, then increase your skill level if necessary and use a light touch when using it.

I tapped the blade in very lightly and used this to get paper thin wood curls. Leaves a glossy, smooth finish. Tap the hammer on the wood, not the metal to back it out. Here's the weird part: on my other anglo-german-american type plains I tape the other end of the plane (the wood) to seat the blade and make it stick out a little farther. On this plane (and I've seen tons of videos on Youtube of people doing it this way) I just LIGHTLY tapped the blade downward to get it to stick out more. This plane has no pins and no wedge: it's just the blade against the wood in a very tight fit. This is how an elderly Japanese woodworker on a Kotaro Tanaka video did it as well. You'll never hurt the blade by tapping the blunt end of it--then again you'll never crack the wood shoulders of a plane by tapping on the front or back of the plane, LOL.I own a bunch of planes now: various old metal, huge two-foot antique wood ones I restored, a Hock/Krenov kit I built years ago, and now this Japanese plane which produces curls as nicely as the others. You pull instead of push. It's very light weight and responsive.I tend to run planes more side to side, left to right on thinner pieces of wood as opposed to pushing straight away from my body and this allows that technique as well.It's just like the photo: sticker, single blade with no chip breaker and light wood. Really clean and simple. The sticker says to tap blade to extend and tap end of wood to retract. Tap SOFTLY: you won't hurt the blade, but you might theoretically, break the wood shoulders. Tape, test, tap, test, tap, test and I was making shavings. Nice shavings.The only way to get a better deal is to: buy old blades at garage sales and build your own (which is fun).Why use a plane? Because ALL sandpaper leaves scratches. It's true that finer and finer grades of sandpaper leaves finer and harder to see and feel scratched, but why not just swoosh the plane once and get a glossy, smooth, no tear-out, non-fuzzy, no scratch mirror finish! It's way faster, the curls smell nice as opposed to messy, unhealthy sawdust and the finish is easily proven to be smoother. Look at it! Feel it! Look at it with a magnifying glass! Glass smoothness instead of fuzzy matte sanded finish you have to put a THICK glossy chemical finish on to make look nice.Try this: run a plane across the edge of a board. It looks great! Now sand that glassy edge with the finest grade sandpaper you have handy: it'll make it look worse! Planer is faster, easier, cheaper, smoother cleaner than paper.Sawdust is for saws, not fine finishing tools. Sandpaper makes me sneeze, planes release the smell of the wood (even old wood). Nice!Mike from Detroit

I really want to like this kanna, and I believe a perfect version of it would work great as other reviews indicate. I'm new to woodworking in general, so when I inspected it when I first got it (December 2017) I didn't know the knot would be an issue or else I would have returned it right then and there.After a few uses (I got really nice shavings at first!) the blade no longer stays in position in the housing. So every time I run it over the wood the blade comes loose and backs out of housing. It practically comes out of the housing every run. I believe the this is due to the knot in the blade housing, I can see it breaking apart in there which is relieving the tension that holds the blade firm. Will post a picture when I get back to the shop.

This comes nice and sharp and worked well for a couple of immediate needs, however, when I tried to remove the blade to sharpen it further and tune the plane (for some more precise work), the blade would not come out. I had to rest it on its side on my concrete floor and hammer the blade from side to side to eventually "wiggle" it out. I think it is because unlike other Japanese hand planes, it does not have the chip breaker; it is just a blade wedged in a piece of wood, so cannot really be adjusted or tuned beyond what it is when it arrives. It is quite good as is though, so my advice would be not to try and tune this, but use it right away as is. It might suffice for your needs. My mistake early on was to tap the blade a little deeper, for slightly thicker shavings, but when I wanted to readjust for finer shavings, I could not do so.

Magnifique rabot japonais ! Quelques réglages sont nécessaires pour qu’il soit parfait.Mais en l’état et dès réception il fait déjà du très bon travail et quel bonheur à l’utilisation une fois les réglages effectués.Simple et rudement efficace pour cette gamme de prix !Je ne peut que le recommander vivement...