So I cracked and bought a 2nd hand Yari Ganna (spear plane) with which I hope to finally finish the timbers in our house (Note to self - although I think I may have mentioned this before - always plane / sand timbers before erecting the structure. Otherwise it gets a lot more time consuming).

It could perhaps do with a little sharpening work, and has something stamped on the tang, but since I have no knowledge of japanese, I can't see if it's the name of the smith, or just a snide comment about tool geeks. If I were to upload a photo of the mark, might there be someone here who was able to translate? And also does anyone have a video of one being sharpened. I'm fairly sure I understand how to, but I'd like to see it in action before I start playing around.