Veritas Low Angle Smoothing Plane — and the Amazon Alternative

Veritas’s bevel-up range — the low-angle smoother, jack and jointer — is sold by Lee Valley direct and nowhere else that matters. If that specific plane is what you came for, leevalley.com ships it internationally and it is worth the wait.

What follows is about the nearest thing on Amazon and, more usefully, about whether a bevel-up plane is the right answer for you at all.

The bevel-up idea

In a normal bench plane the iron sits bevel-down on a 45-degree frog, and 45 degrees is the cutting angle, permanently. In a bevel-up plane the iron lies bevel-up on a low bed — 12 degrees here — so the effective cutting angle is 12 plus whatever bevel you grind.

Grind 25 degrees and you have a 37-degree cutting angle, which slices end grain beautifully. Grind 50 degrees and you have 62 degrees, a high-angle plane that will take figured maple without tearing out. Same plane, same body, different iron.

That flexibility is the whole argument for the design, and it only pays off if you actually buy the extra irons and grind them. One iron at one angle makes a bevel-up plane just a plane.

Jack versus smoother

The Stanley scored here is a No. 62 — a low-angle jack. The Veritas low-angle smoother is a shorter plane. That distinction matters: a smoother’s short sole rides into slight hollows and takes a fine shaving everywhere; a jack’s longer sole bridges them and flattens.

If you own one plane, the jack is the more versatile choice. If you already own a jack and want the last pass before finishing, you want a smoother, and the closest thing on Amazon is a No. 4, not this.

Expect to set it up

Flatten the back of the iron, hone the bevel properly, check the sole, and set the mouth. This line has never had consistent tolerances, and the difference between a poor review and a good one for the same plane is usually an hour of setup.