Bosch Cordless Mini Plane – GHO 12V-20

Review and photo: Raf Nathan

This is a powered block plane and certainly packs a punch. It will plane up to 2mm in a pass with its 56mm wide blade and has a rebating function. Its well balanced to use and worked like I would expect any electric plane to work. Power is plentiful and at full depth you can push it hard through the wood. However, its not designed for that sort of work.

I liked it for cleaning up faces of strips and applying a clean chamfer on an edge. You can walk up to a board and check the grain, fit a door to an opening or clean up some small boards. It uses one reversible carbide cutter and has a tiny drawer in the base to store a spare included cutter. The switch has a thumb lever that has to be depressed before the trigger will work. This is for safety but it’s a bit fiddly in use, however I get the rationale. This is a great plane for site work.

For this tool you will need a charger at around $100 and ideally two batteries at around $120 for a 4 amp version.

Review tool from Bosch Australia

Raf Nathan is a Qld woodworker and tool designer, see www.interwoodshop.com.au