No. 4 Smoothing Plane

A hand-fitted bench plane that works properly out of the box.

Lie-Nielsen sources its castings from New England foundries and its wood from Maine sawyers, then machines and hand-fits every tool in its mid-coast Maine shop. The body is ductile iron, far tougher than the gray iron of old planes, and the A2 blade is cryogenically treated and tempered to Rc 60-62, thick enough that it doesn't chatter. Sharpen it and it keeps working; spare parts are still sold decades after purchase.