I have been jealously looking through the hand tools section of this forum for a while and drooling over the old plane finds (we don’t seem to have those kinds of things at garage sales out here).  One of the things I have been looking for for a long while is a Stanley No. 62 in good condition.

I was very happy to see that Lie Nielsen is making a reproduction of these and I ordered one hoping it would be as good as the Stanley I remember using.  Color me impressed.  It is every bit as good!  The build quality, finish, and iron are all arguably even better.

 

I needed to glue up some red oak tonight for a project and figured I would use it to prep the final surface.

Red oak is notorious for tear outs so i figured it would be a good test.  The floor is now covered in wispy little shavings, the block is glued and in the clamps and I am a happy kid. 

That is a beauty!

Sweet!!!

Congrats on the new addition to your tool family. Nice looking "young 'un"

I have had the opportunity to use this plane pretty seriously on the workbench build and have some additional thoughts.

I am really happy that this was my first serious bench plane purchase for a few reasons.  If someone told me that I could only have 1 bench plane, this would be it.  It’s not quite as long as a dedicated joiner but you can join with it. You can smooth with it.
You can run a cambered iron in it and it makes a great scrub plane, and as you can see from the workbench top, it does a great job of flattening and smoothing a surface.  At this point, I fully intend to get another iron at 50 degrees for more figured wood to further enhance it’s capabilities.  

As I progress in my handtool adventures I will likely accumulate some other bench planes but just starting out, I am very happy that this is what I started with and I would recommend it to anyone embarking on a similar journey as a solid starting point.