Melbourne Tool Company Round Sole Spokeshave

I have been looking at the MTC spokehaves for a few months before my purchase. I wanted to upgrade from a set I bought online a couple of years ago because I wanted to know how this type of tool functions. Once I really worked with the initial tool and understood its use with grain, I decided to upgrade. The initial pair of spokeshaves were cheap in price and quality, but they let me learn what I needed to know about tuning up this type of tool in order to get it to work correctly, which took a few hours because of the lack of quality in those tools. When I saw MTC had a sale, I bought both the round and flat sole. The price was decent, no shipping cost, that was a plus. They arrived in good shape and were packaged nicely. I opened the box and the paper wrapped tool, and was impressed with the tools heft when I picked it up. I took it apart, did a quick once over and noticed a few burrs from the machining process that I removed with a small file. I also noticed some swirl marks on the sole of the flat spokeshave (the round spokeshave didn't have them). I honed the blades on both which didn't take long as both came sharp out of the box. I tried out both and liked the feel in my hands. The cork on the handles is a nice touch to the tool also. When I got a notice to rate the tool. I took a closer look at surface of the finishing and saw these (as best as I can describe them) fissures throughout. I don't think it's the metal but more the finishing process. As a woodworking instructor I get to talk a lot about the pros and cons of equipment and tool usage. Now I have something else to say to them… here is a company that offers a very nice tool, that is used for a specific purpose, for a reasonable price.
The four stars rating is for my limited use of time with the spokeshaves.

blade needed some flattening on a diamond stone finished up on 6000. nice finish on the wood

The spokeshave worked great out of the box with minimal honing.

Round bottom spoke shave

The spokeshave has a great look and handle ergonomics are good. I hope the cork inserts last a long time. There are two big issues for me with this spokeshave, and I own and use numerous spokeshave at all price levels.. First the mouth in front of the blade is way too open, so delicate shavings are not possible easily. Second, the back of the blade had fairly prominent milling groves in it at a right angle to the blade's edge. This required 20 minutes of tedious flattening to get the back flat to the blade, before it could be sharpened. I have several, close up photos if you are interested. These two things need to be corrected before I could recommend this spokeshave. The same back flattening issue was present on the curved MT spokeshave's blade, but its mouth was considerably tighter which is good.