[soundtrack — The Be Good Tanyas - Littlest Birds ]
I bought this plane when visiting a friend in beautiful Vilnius, Lithuania a decade or so ago. It’s made in the Czech Republic, formerly known as Czechoslovakia when under communist rule and amalgamated with Slovakia. My Lithuanian friend, who was old enough to have grown up behind the Iron Curtain himself, assured me that ‘the Czechs make good tools’. He would’ve had limited access to goods made in the West, and besides … he was a scientist and no handyman, but the Czechs are known for brewing excellent beer so I took his word for it. You’ve got to base your prejudices on something, right?
As you will see the Narex plane differs in construction from the Stanley-type planes we are familiar with. Firstly, the frog (what speakers of a more sensible language would call the ‘chair’ :-) is integrated with the rear tote and ‘base’ so as to form a stiff, triangular unit that is held down onto the sole with a finger-screw. By loosening this finger-screw the whole assembly (carrying the iron & chip breaker) can be adjusted back and forth, thus opening and closing the plane’s mouth without need for dismantling. The depth- & lateral adjustment mechanisms are also built into this unit.
However, the Narex plane has this ‘integrated triangular’ design in common with Veritas’ ‘old’ range of bench planes. It makes for a stronger, more robust rear tote, and aren’t those traditional, cantilevered totes the parts we usually have to replace on old planes?
Apart from these structural features the Narex’s distinguishing characteristic is its light weight: It’s a full kilo (1000g / 35 oz) lighter than the Stanley Bed-rock types, and nearly the same difference compared to the ‘old’ Veritas #4. This is a result of 3 things: it’s slender sole, a cast aluminium triangular frog / chair and a plastic moulded tote / grip. A picture is worth a thousand words:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4defea5e-7688-43d9-9491-3645231574e7_4000x2672.jpeg)
Another noticeable feature of the Narex plane is it’s ‘gaping maw’. I really like this — it sheds any build-up of chips with a small flick of the wrist — and this plane is light enough to flick.
Sooo … how does it work ?
When I got it, it did not perform well at all. The fit between the various parts was so poor that it caused all manner of problems, chiefly vibrations / juddering. Tightening down the finger-screws to alleviate these problems did not work, but would warp the slender and thus quite flexible sole. (It’s amazing how bewildering an experience it is to try to plane with an un-true plane … the feedback seems nonsensical … it’s the woodworker’s equivalent of being seasick). I remember muttering “commie crap!” and putting the plane-shaped abomination at the back of a junk-drawer. But I couldn’t leave it at that, so I got out my metal-working tools. That’s a bastard file, a triangular file and a hack saw. I didn’t need the hack saw. But first I had to strip off the cheerful chrome yellow paint that adorned the carcass. Then I did my best to try to make the various surfaces fit better. After that I put the plane back together and (with blade retracted but moderately tensioned) gave the sole a good going over on 80-grit 3M-abrasive paper on my long flattening glass.
After this tough love and attention it behaved much better, but I never was able to get it to perform well as a smoothing plane. Then again, who said a smoothing plane is all there’s worth being?
Because I did not value it highly I had no compunctions about letting it rattle about at the bottom of my carpenter’s toolbox and taking it out on jobs. A spot of rust? Pfft! That’ll wear right off. On these jobs, when you need a plane, it’s not often you use it standing comfortably at bench height pushing it back and forth at your leisure, but rather at awkward angles and attitudes with yourself atop a ladder holding on with one hand and planing as best you can with the other … or lying on some scaffolding … with the other boys expectantly watching you … doing your thing, making it fit … that’s why you are there after all, dragged out of your peaceful workshop, to do what they can’t … with your prissy, fussy, but somehow slightly magical tools. And it’s then that it’s a godsend to hold a shitty but sharp, rough and ready, lightweight one-hander like your hand-fitted Narex #4.
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Coda: From American popular culture we’ve been gifted / poisoned (whether we like it or not) with the terms ‘nerd’ and ‘geek’ to describe people who make the shallow ones feel insecure. Personally, I prefer the British slur ‘anorak’. The Inuit are an admirably inventive and resilient people.