As with most things, I imagine it depends.

As tenjin said above, I know they’re popular with collectors. I see them sell for $200+ near me.

I can see it being very useful for large tenons and bread board ends.

Not many carriage-makers working these days………. A good plane, but as Larry Gelb said, a little bit delicate – they don’t bounce if you drop ’em.

I had one some years ago that I used for defining the edges of a series of large, carved linen-fold panels that I was making. If it has my name on it, then it’s the one that I sold when that job came to an end!

However, it’s a useful piece of kit if you are doing wide rebates……. The older wooden version of this type of plane was known as a ‘Badger’ plane. It’s blade was mounted at a skew and can hog a serous amount of wood on door frame rebates, which is what they were principally used for.

If you are making wide rebates, go in first with your Record 044 and use it to define the rear wall of the rebate, then use the No: 10 to remove the waste.
The really expensive version was the Stanley 10-1/4 which had a swiveling handle and knob to stop your fingers getting trapped…… they go for silly money.

good luck!

If you hone the blade as a smoother it won’t function as well as a rebate plane.

For that purpose, the blade needs to be honed dead flat with no easing of the corners like any rebate or filletster plane.

That hing is a beauty. Good find.

Good plane. Judging by the box, it dates to the later years of production – they were discontinued in the early ’90s when record were going through various ownership changes.
Sadly the firm is now nowhere near the quality of the old Hampton days in terms of tool quality – in my opinion. They concentrate on site-based tools.

As Larry Gelb says, don’t dub the corners – it’s not intended for smoothing though it will work well on board edges.

The intended blade set-up on those planes was to hone and sharpen the blade dead straight across then hone and polish the back; next, in order to develop a pin sharp edge, (essential for accurate corners in rebates) the sides of new blades were honed flat at 90 degrees to the cutting edge ensuring pin-sharp corners. Thereafter these edges were just maintained to keep the corner crisp.
It’s important not to overdo this part because, it is intended that the blade on rebate planes overhang the side of the plane body that is in contact with the rebate side – about 1/2 mm. If you only use it right-handed, just concentrate on the RH side of the blade – if left-handed reverse that and do the LH side. This tiny gap is necessary for clearance of the plane body. Sometimes in the old days, users would flatten the side as you would the sole in order to ensure a good contact with both surfaces of the work, the base and side of the rebate.

Good luck