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

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

Kanna (Japanese planes) don't come ready to use. You have to "earn" the tool, so to speak. So it was with the one I received, which was ready for tuning. In particular, the blade was not fully seated and needed the blade "bed" to be carefully marked (by installing blade coated with pencil graphite) and scraped for both broad contact and proper blade depth/installation-force balance. YouTube has plenty of good videos on this, look for "prepare kanna" and you'll find them. I also flattened the base (avoid sandpaper) and hollowed the right spots and honed the blade.This is a great tool for the price and a good way to get some practice with kanna preparation and tuning before you start shelling out three-figures for a better one. And you can do some good work with this when you're done, handy on the bench like a block plane is.The blade is so-called "mono-steel", so not laminated, but takes and holds a good edge. Definitely a good buy for me at $12.

This is a decent little plane that gets used quite often. It is not super fancy, no laminated blade or anything like that, just a single piece of tool steel. It does, however, function quiet well right out of the box. It can be a little stiff to adjust at first, as the plane body grips the blade quite firmly. Certainly not disappointed. It is a simple, functional tool. Bought two so I could build a chamfer plane out of the second one.

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.