Overall, this might be good to learn to fettle a plane or if you already know how. A true beginner might be very frustrated with this tool. For the price, it is a good value as long as you know what you are getting into. I have to commend S&J for making a number 3 at this price, and compared to any other source of number 3 planes, this is a tremendous deal. But there were some quality control issues. The casting was dead flat on the sole and perfectly square on both sides. This was excellent. It is also a thick casting that feels very solid. The chip breaker is on the cheap side, but not too bad and doesn't need to be fancy to work. The blade and chipbreaker were ground well enough and didn't require much to make perfectly flat. The chipbreaker did have a rounded edge I didn't like, so I spent 30 min turning that into a bevel-type edge and ensuring it was flat against the blade. After using, I think the iron quality is basically fine, no obvious issues there. The wheel mechanism is OK, better than some other cheapo models. It is smooth, but it does have some slop. The pressed metal piece that links with the blade itself to advance it was too loose against its mounting pin. So I hammered a nail to remove that cross pin from the frog, and then hammered the eyelet openings the pin runs through to smush them a bit and make the fit tighter. No more slop there. The frog is the big problem. Mine had a casting that wasn't properly milled, as the factory left a wad of iron around the screw hole that interfered with the screw height. It raised the screw head against the blade until it made the blade ride above the frog bed! I used a drill and a thin HSS chisel to gouge that blob of iron out so that the blade would seat properly. A normal person would send it back rather than do this. There were also some small chips on the edges of the frog bed casting, but nothing that affects performance. The mouth had some extra iron near a corner that needed very careful filing out for the blade to seat properly on the mouth. The mouth is pretty open for a smoother, so I bought a thicker iron that's in the mail now. I used a hand file to go over the frog bed and other parts that needed to be flat. Overall except for the big stupid errors, the castings of the frog and body are quite good, if that makes sense...and especially compared to other planes in its class. It's as if nobody checked this one, quite strange. The handle will need some TLC to get it more comfortable. It's a nice wood and not sloppy at all but truly needs reshaping with files because some edges bit into the palm too much. After spending an afternoon getting everything as tuned as I could, I got decent 2-2.5 thou shavings and pretty good performance. I still think there's more fine tuning possible based on the results I'm getting so far. It doesn't feel as smooth as an old stanley 4, but I hope I can improve that. Overall, I'm happy to have a no 3 size for the price, and I'm treating it like a thrift store find, so I'm happy to put in work as its own project. In truth, nobody needs a number 3, so most people will regard this as a side project. For that, it is rewarding. I do wish the S&J markings were more than a light little etch on the side. But that's just me. A stamp on the iron would be a nice touch, for instance. A proper chipbreaker would also be fitting.
