Treasures From the Far East

Hollows and Rounds...Made in China?Being a user, collector and lover of hand planes Im alchoices keeping my eye out for rare or unusual styles. When recently surfing around the Japan Woodworker Online Catalogue I discovered some wooden bodied, Hollows and Rounds that are being manufactured in China. China? I thought...Why not, every thing else is made there so I decided to take a closer look. Ive alchoices wanted a nice old set of hollows and rounds; Ive searched e-Bay, online and local antique tool dealers but alchoices found that most you come across are over priced old planes that youll need to spend a lot of time refurbishing to get them back to a user friendly state or are simply nice old tools for someone to put on a shelf and look at. I wanted something I could use and hopefully not have to spend a small fortune on.
After reading the description and studying the photos of these planes I decided to order a few select sizes. Theyre manufactured in China and arrived well-packaged in cardboard boxes with a borg logo on the side. (no Trek-ie affiliation as far as I could tell)
The description on the Japan Woodworker web-site said the planes have been manufactured in and around Hong Kong for the past 20 years by Mujingfang. They decided to begin producing these high quality Chinese Style Planes seeing that previously, it was a cottage industry with little or no quality control. Furniture makers in and around Hong Kong use hollowing and rounding planes to create moldings and for shaping pieces of furniture. The plane bodies are hand made from well aged Rosewood and are nicely contoured to fit the hand. They are 6-1/4" long and width varies according to size. The blades are high carbon steel and although needed honing and sharpening on arrival, the extremely reasonable price made it worth my while. They are sold as a set of one hollowing and one rounding plane for each width. I went with the 1/4", 1/2", 1" and 1 1/4" widths. After using these planes for the past six months Im very pleased with the quality and performance; as for the very-affordable prices all I can say is...Resistance is futile.

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