First off, I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank my friend Dave Polaschek for inviting me to his shop, making this direct comparison possible for us. I do not own the Veritas Combination plane, so I wouldn’t have been able to compare them without his generosity letting me play with his new toy!

Second, I’m going to throw out the disclaimer that this was by no means a 100% exhaustive test. We did not do things like study edge retention, sharpening, and haven’t done any prolonged use/testing of the Veritas plane. It was largely just a comparison of the two on a visual, mechanical, and basic general use level. We only had the one standard Veritas iron, and spent about 4 hours messing around with the two planes. We didn’t try every single operation, or every single iron, so take that for what it’s worth.