New Swiss Plane??

Lee,

Is this the one you saw?

I work for a Swiss company and travel there once or twice a year. I've gone out looking for tools a few times but never came across any good shops. The company is sort of out in the sticks. I think someday I'll come across that set of chisels and be a very happy man.

Lee,

Is this the one you saw?

They appear to have block, smoothing, and rabbeting plane. They're not particularly inexpensive. The availablility of carbide blades is interesting though.

I noticed that the sides are fastened on with screws, making them impossible to use on a shooting board.

The handles are plastic, which offends me for some reason.

Chris

rali planes seem to review like this:

they work about as well as a moderately well tuned up stanley/bailey plane, but no better and not much you can do to improve things. if you buy rali's resharpenable blades and their sharpening jig you can get the blade sharper than the disposables, which does help a little. the big advantage to rali planes is the total simplicity of setting up, so if you don't mind the expensive consumables and have no intention of learning how to tune up/maintain planes and don't need really good performance it might be for you.

Rali, they've been around for years (10-20 ish).

IMHO, they're no use for woodworking or neandering at all. The blades are sharpened at the wrong angle and the planes aren't especially rigid at holding them. When I can buy a cast iron bodied plane for tuppence anyway, great new innovations in stamping it from sheetmetal just don't have much to offer.

One thing they're _possibly_ useful for is that they also offer a carbide blade, and this can make a useful block plane for work on some man-made laminates that are so abrasive a carbon steel iron doesn't last long in use against them.

First saw them some 7 years ago at the woodworking show(s) in chicago. Gave it a glance, moved on to the new, better, shinier, prettier, etc... stuff.

jc