SUIZAN Kanna Japanese Wood Planer 1.7" - Professional Small Hand Block Plane Woodworking tools

Came packaged simply, little waste. Had a brand sticker on it, which i suppose is better than something permanent etched or embossed into the wood block. Little rubbing alcohol to get the residue off. It's really beautiful how simple it is in concept and execution. The block itself is very hard, very dense, very well worked. The blade came installed and fairly sharp and regular. Blade fits very snugly in the designated slot. Grasping the blade with pliers and tapping the back of the black with a wood hammer is a slow but effective way to adjust and remove the blade. Tapping the blade back in again with a wood hammer is also a slow and gentle process but allows you to fix the blade in place with only friction. I'm not sure if all of them come this tightly fit but it certainly suits me. I see that other reviews have had trouble with removing and adjusting the blade, which is unfortunate. With about 20 minutes of tinkering i was planing thin little ribbons off of fairly rough sawn surfaces and leaving very smooth flat finishes. Blade fits nicely in a sharpening jig. So far so good.

High quality Japanese hand plane with quality blade and plane bed. I look forward to using this regularly on my projects.

..at how I have been planing wood for decades and just now got a Japanese plane. I'd heard about them, seen them, wrote them off as an oddity and passed them by. This popped up on my suggestions list and since I was ordering some other tools, and this one is $20, it seemed cheap enough that there was nothing to Japanese planes, I wouldn't lose much.I took it to my bench and tried to figure it out. I couldn't decide how to get the iron out. It was stuck. No instructions in the plastic bag. I came back in to find a video and watched several. Back to the bench.None of the video solutions worked. I don't have the right kind of hammer, I thought. It looked fairly delicate and didn't want to do any permanent damage, so I finally, after half an hour, turned the thing sideways and pinched the iron into my drill press vise and gently, sort of, tapped the body (dai) off the iron with my smallest wooden mallet. It let go, slowly, and when I pulled the iron out to look, there was a stream of glue on the face (backside) of it. Apparently so the iron would not fall out during shipping halfway around the world. I scraped it off. I decided to not fool with it any further and just re-set the iron and see what it would do, no set-up, no tuning, no honing the iron. I was shocked. Really.I fiddled with that kanna (plane) for another hour with different kinds of wood. That is the best $20 I think I have ever spent on a finishing tool. I have high-dollar planes that are far more complicated, finicky, adjustable and put no better finish on softwoods than this kanna, out of the box, well, plastic bag.I have to believe it will do as well on hardwoods after I get a more serious edge on the iron, though I have to say, the factory edge is respectable . I put 2 tiny slices in my hand fooling with the iron in the beginning. I was treating it like the junk I suspected it to be.This tool is a small finishing plane. It is not a jack plane or jointer plane and will not do those jobs well I think, but for end and edge smoothing, I'd grab it as quickly as my $100 Stanly 9 1/2. And it isn't nearly as demanding or heavy.

Not perfect. But once teamed in an honed see through chips and less force than a Stanley #6 or small hand plane. Take you time setting up. An then even a kid could use it plenty of YouTube vids on how to tram in

The plane blade is about half the thickness of most block planes. This doesn't seem to make a difference but it was disappointing to see. since it was purchased as a gift.

Other than being smaller than expected, and that's my fault for not paying attention to measurements. It's as most of the reviews say. It came sharp, easy to adjust and ready to use. But after trying and watching multiple set up it was videos I couldn't get smooth consistent shavings. The only thing I'm missing is the chip breaker. Why doesn't the 42mm one doesn't come with a chip breaker? Is that my issue? Is it necessary or not on smaller planes? If you really want one & this brand just buy a bigger one. It may be less frustrating.

One of the best tools I got. High value for the price!

I recently bought a bunch of Suizan saws that I was really impressed with after using them. I saw this plane and figured I would give it a try since it costs a bunch less than some of the "contractor - grade" iron planes (which are generally junk unless you spend hours squaring, flattening, and sharpening them). My little amazon box showed up and I felt something fairly heavy inside. Upon opening the box, I found a beautiful chunk of white oak with a big hunk of steel sticking out of it. The iron and chip breaker were pretty snug in the Dai (that's what the block is called). Instructions were not provided so I searched around for instructions on how to set up a kana plane. Yep, it's going to need a little work to get it functioning but it goes pretty quick. The iron felt pretty sharp so I left it alone. I had to square up the chip breaker feet to fit it properly to the iron but it was very minimal - like 20 seconds on the stone to get it perfect. Next came fitting the iron and chip breaker to the Dai. Mine had a noticeable hump on the rear mating surface as though they had intentionally left extra material there for hand fitting the iron. So, I worked the hump down with a chisel and then worked on the rails and the chip breader slot. I probably spent 20 minutes total on fitting the iron, testing/chiseling/repeat ad nauseum. Finally, the iron cleared the face of the Dai and I could feel the edge ready to go. I grabbed a piece of poplar and immediate started ripping off beautiful paper thin curls of material. I am incredibly happy with this plane and look forward to using it on harder material.