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Front view of a Tsunesaburo Maboroshi 70mm smoothing plane showing a white oak dai body with a black-finished blade in the tsutsumi-bori mouth, and a printed Maboroshi label with uradashi-free notation affixed to the lower body.
Tsunesaburo 70mm Maboroshi Smoothing Plane
Tsunesaburo 70mm Maboroshi Smoothing Plane
Tsunesaburo 70mm Maboroshi Smoothing Plane
Tsunesaburo

Tsunesaburo 70mm Maboroshi Smoothing Plane

Sale price$399.00

Uradashi — the periodic tapping-out of a plane blade's hollow back — is among the more demanding aspects of maintaining a traditional Japanese hand plane, and the reason many craftsmen never fully commit to one. The Maboroshi, whose name translates as phantom or illusion, addresses this directly. Tsunesaburo engineered the blade with a gently curved back profile rather than a hollow ground one, so sharpening requires only flat whetting on the back face. No tapping. No special technique. The cutting steel itself is Aogami No. 1, a high-carbon blue paper steel valued for edge retention and its response to natural whetstones. The 70mm blade is bedded into a white oak dai at 38 degrees in the tsutsumi-bori style, with a cutting edge ground to 26 to 27 degrees. For a craftsman who wants a serious Tsunesaburo plane without the maintenance discipline a traditional hollow-back demands, the Maboroshi is the considered answer.
Front view of a Tsunesaburo Maboroshi 70mm smoothing plane showing a white oak dai body with a black-finished blade in the tsutsumi-bori mouth, and a printed Maboroshi label with uradashi-free notation affixed to the lower body.
Tsunesaburo 70mm Maboroshi Smoothing Plane Sale price$399.00

Meet the Artisan

Tsunesaburo

Tsunesaburo was founded in 1947 in Miki City, Hyogo Prefecture, when Uozumi Tsunemi, known as the original Tsunesaburo, established Tsunesaburo Kanna Manufacturing Studio after 28 years of study under his grandfather, a master plane-maker known as Fukusaburo Kanna. That grandfather had apprenticed at 13 to Kurokawa Utaro, a former sword smith, and absorbed the forging methods of Japanese swordcraft before redirecting them to plane blades. The lineage was built on that transfer. Uozumi Akio, the second generation, began learning at 13 alongside the studio's founding and spent 70 years at the forge, combining classical tempering with modern steel research into what the family holds as a guiding principle: that ancient and contemporary techniques are not in tension but in conversation. The current generation, led by Uozumi Toru as president, has extended that thinking into planes made from steels ranging from Meiji and early Showa period stock to modern high-speed alloys including HAP powder steel. For Tsunesaburo, the plane is inseparable from the Japanese built environment, and every blade that leaves the forge carries with it the expectation that a craftsman's work, and the spaces it produces, should be worthy of the steel.