Best Lee Valley Veritas Custom #4 1/2 Smooth Plane

A new concept in plane design, Veritas custom bench planes can be customized to fit the work you do and the way you do it. To get planing right away, you can choose our standard configurations, such as the smooth plane offered here, or the planes can be customized with alternative parts and accessories to suit your needs; you choose the frog angle, the blade material, and even the size and style of the knob and tote, allowing a level of personalization previously limited to handmade planes. Each part of the plane is machined in our shop for accuracy and fit, ensuring that the plane functions as a unified whole no matter which parts you choose. To order a fully custom plane, please contact our customer service department.

This is the standard configuration of our custom #4 1/2 smooth plane. Slightly longer and wider than the #4, at 10″ x 3″, the #4 1/2 uses a 2 3/8″ wide blade that lets you take a wider cut to smooth a surface with fewer strokes. Its greater weight (5 lb) also helps maintain a smoother cut by increasing the plane’s inertia.

The body is made from fully stress-relieved ductile cast iron, and the sole is machined flat and square to the sides and has extra-large side wings for stable shooting. The Norris-style combined feed and lateral adjustment mechanism allows easy and accurate blade setting. Two set screws register the blade in the throat.

The movable toe plate allows quick mouth adjustments – loosening the front knob lets you close the mouth to a narrow slit for fine shavings and minimum tear-out or open it for heavier cuts. A stop screw in the throat retains mouth settings and prevents accidental contact with the blade. The cap iron registers on and attaches to a low-profile blade carrier attached to the blade, which allows you to easily restore the cap iron to the same position after removal for blade sharpening. Two tapped holes in either side allow the mounting of an optional fence, available separately.

The 2 3/8″ wide PM-V11 blade has a lapped face and is ground with a bevel that requires only final honing to 30° before use. Hardened to Rc61-63, it has a fine, consistent grain structure that provides significantly greater resistance to damage from both impact and wear than O1 steel, yet the edge can be quickly restored using water stones or other common sharpening methods.

The 45° frog offers a cutting angle that is suitable for most work. Also known as common pitch, it is the most frequently used bed angle for bevel-down planes.

The knob and tote are made using domestic torrefied maple – wood treated with a heating process that changes the structure of the wood at the cellular level, stabilizing it against the swelling and shrinkage caused by humidity changes.

The standard Veritas knob is the same found on most of our bench planes. It has a more spherical shape, standing 2 3/8″ tall with a maximum diameter of 1 3/4″. It provides a balance of features between the other two knobs, useful if you alter your grip depending on what kind of work you’re doing.

The standard Veritas tote is the one currently used on our line of bevel-up planes. It is a relatively vertical handle, designed to allow a comfortable grip that keeps your forearm closer to parallel with the plane’s sole. This allows you to bring more forward force to bear because it encourages you to push with the heel of your hand rather than the web of your thumb. The medium size is comfortable in most hands between 3 1/8″ and 3 7/8″ wide at the palm.

Other plane part options including custom frog angles, different sizes of knobs and totes, blades, slow adjusters and a plane fence are all available to order separately.

Patented. Made in Canada.