Workshop Heaven - Clifton 4-1/2 vs the 'wood from hell'

Matthew Platt from Workshop Heaven (http://www.workshopheaven.com) takes on the 'wood from hell' with a back bevelled Clifton 4-1/2 bench plane (http://http://www.workshopheaven.com/tools/C....

Made in Sheffield using traditional methods and materials, Clifton planes are beautifully engineered tools.

Clifton plane castings are fully annealed - a process that introduces greater stability than weathering and introduces strength to the grey iron without any loss of stiffness - critical in an object that you want to remain as true as possible. After careful machining the bodies are precision ground and checked to 1.5 thou in order to ensure that they will be well within the British Standard of 3 thou by the time they get to the customer - wherever in the world they may be.

Each Clifton cutting iron is hand forged on a spring hammer from a huge bar of Sheffield carbon steel. The forgings are hot-struck with the makers mark, precision ground and carefully quenched and tempered to optimise the edge taking and retention qualities that hand forged Sheffield steel is famous for.