As of today this is my favorite plane. It is the second Japanese kanna I purchased, which I got as new old stock on ebay. I paid $315 plus tax and shipping.

Why was this plane never sold?

I always wonder why something is new old stock. What was the reason it was not sold originally? Of course we would like to think that it was just fortune for a shop to close or an item to be misplaced for all these years. That is a common story in the tea industry; where a sack of good tea was forgotten behind a stack and found years later in great condition. At first I was impressed when I opened the box. The plane was still in its orgiinal, yet aged and faded paper box. The plane block is beautiful, made from excellent quality oak. An additonal pleasant surprise was to find that the chip breaker is one of the best I have seen in my limted experience.

What was wrong? Well, as Chris Hall put it we have a “sori situation”. The blade was significantly curved on one side, several times more than I would have liked to see. What can I do? After some thinking I got the idea that I can bend it out.

I can’t advise that you do this to your plane blades, yet it did work for me. I clamped the blade firmly to a block of aluminum to prevent it bouncing sharply whe struck. I further padded the hard steel with cardboard to isolate the area that I planned to treat. Note that the cardboard leaves the exposed cutting edge free. I did not want to transmit any forces into the cuting edge.

A number of nerve wracking strikes later I managed to take enough curve out of that side of the blade to nearly equal the other side. I decided that was far enough to push my luck and continued preparing the blade in a conventional manner.

Next I used a strip of HDPE to elevate the back of the blade while I ground out the remaining curve from the back of the blade near the cutting edge. The result is in my opinion an entirely serviciable blade. It does not match the ideal paper thin legs joined by a thread of perfectly planer steel, yet it also does not look like a bridge or a gourd. I will call it a win.