Thread: Veritas Shooting Plane - Not Square = ok?

Hi Dom

I have never checked mine. I use it, and the result is perfect. Have you used yours yet? It is the result that counts.

Having said that, if the sides are outside the stated tolerances, contact Lee Valley. They have the best customer relationship in the world. Be aware, however, that using a square to measure tolerances is open to great inaccuracies. How accurate is your square?!

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by derekcohen

Hi Dom

I have never checked mine. I use it, and the result is perfect. Have you used yours yet? It is the result that counts.

Having said that, if the sides are outside the stated tolerances, contact Lee Valley. They have the best customer relationship in the world. Be aware, however, that using a square to measure tolerances is open to great inaccuracies. How accurate is your square?!

Regards from Perth

Derek

Hi Derek,

I contacted Veritas directly and got a response 2 weeks later with the advise stated in my first post; tolerance is 0.003" but try compensating with the lateral adjustment.

I haven't tried it yet as I figured I would wait to hear from them first.

My Starrett squares are more than accurate enough to measure that amount of error. I think specs are 0.0001" over 6" so an error in this application of less than a few percent. And both squares show the same so even less probability of an error in the square.

The plane is certainly not square (im confident i could mill more accurately on my hobby mill) but my question is should it be and will it make any noticeable or meaningful difference to its function in shooting? Basically, should i bother to fix it or just forget about it?

Cheers, Dom

I find with issues like this that a phone call sorts it out way quicker and with far less problems than continuous emails back and forth.

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

I find with issues like this that a phone call sorts it out way quicker and with far less problems than continuous emails back and forth.

Agreed, but calling Canada is not so easy or cheap. I didn't want to ask this question in a public forum but it seems that Veritas consider this ok or at least are not concerned so I felt ok asking the question. I didn't know if it was worth pursuing and if it really doesn't matter then I'm ok with it. But then why have a tolerance in the first place?

I would see how it performs on the shooting board first before making any big decisions. I think it is still valid to try something to see if it works before sending it back.
Perfect square is the ideal but many get good usable results from less than square planes. In my case I use 2 home made wood shooting planes. I did get then as square as I could when I made them but wood moves. So far I can still get square edges. When that is no longer the case then I'll have another look.
I would however like to know why they mill the body less than 90* on purpose.
Regards
John

Thanks John. I believe they meant theor tolerance is 90deg +0 -0.003".

Hi Dom,
I have very high praise for Lee Valley Customer Service. My first shooting plane when it arrived looked as though it at been thrown from the jet cargo hold on to the tarmac, nose first. There was a large ding right on the nose which caused the front to be way out of square. I contacted LV via email with a photo. I told them I could file it straight. They insisted I return it. (free post) . I received a new replacement about a week later. This time thrown on to the tarmac tail end first. Only a small ding this time and I filed it straight. My only gripe is poor packaging by them and rough handling by transporters. Just checked mine and it is spot on.
Regards,
Ross

Call me old fashioned, but I have a real problem with "see if you can work around it" as the customer service response on a tool costing $350 USD.

With that price tag I would expect to see something with infinitely more precision and quality control than a $40 piece of made in India. Not the opposite.

I agree. There is no such thing as "work around it". Who ever said that should be shot. However, there is also possibly no issue until the plane has been used. Keep in mind that the blade may be mis-adjusted more than the error in the sole. As I mentioned earlier, I have never bothered to check the accuracy of squareness in my Veritas, and in fact I have not done so with the LN #51 I have as well. Both worked perfectly out of the box. That was enough for me.

Regards from Perth

Derek

So I honed the blade and gave it a quick go. This is the amount of skew required to cut square. I'm not sure if this will give me issues on long-grain shooting due to not being able to close the mouth much?

20170819_141940.jpg

Thanks again. Dom.

Originally Posted by DomAU

Thanks John. I believe they meant theor tolerance is 90deg +0 -0.003".

Thanks. I was thinking it may have been some ancient lore on the mysteries of shooting edges
I do see your point in your last post re the cost of the tool and being outside the stated tolerances. I guess the only way as a less than satisfied customer is to have a bit more conversation with veritas. My last post was tempered by the $100 return shipping cost. Faced with that I could live with the plane provided it shot a square edge.
Regards
John

Hi Dom

Send it back. Assuming your grind is square (I am sure it is), then I could not live with that. I know Rob Lee would say that the customer must never feel anything but pleasure when using one of his tools. That set up will niggle you always. Just send it back. It is frustrating to have to do so, but they will put it right, and you will be happy each time you use it. That's the way it should be.

Regards from Perth

Derek

p.s. I am sure that Lee Valley will pick up the tab for shipping each way.

Originally Posted by DomAU

Agreed, but calling Canada is not so easy or cheap. I didn't want to ask this question in a public forum but it seems that Veritas consider this ok or at least are not concerned so I felt ok asking the question. I didn't know if it was worth pursuing and if it really doesn't matter then I'm ok with it. But then why have a tolerance in the first place?

It costs me 2 cents a minute for OS calls so I just pick up the phone. Granted the East coast time in the US/Canada can be a bit hard to deal with but that depends on summer/winter daylight savings in each country. I am sure that LV will see the problem and sort it out to your satisfaction.

Dom,

Ultimately, Derek is right. Lee Valley should QC to a higher standard than that. No one is really expecting any kind of flaw on a premium plane to be 7 thou out. That one obviously slipped through the cracks. I've actually had a couple of similar QC failures with Lee Valley. Two, to be exact. They fixed both very efficiently, effectively, and without any complaint, and that's when I was living in AU, so shipping was probably sky high (they used overnight).

With that said...

I've never seen the need to shoot long grain. The end grain is almost always shorter than the long grain, so why not just square the end grain perpendicular to the plane of the long grain? With that in mind, I don't think you will encounter problems with the setup you have. If you do, you can always grind a slight skew along the iron to realign it with your plane. I've been using the same Veritas plane you have (yes, I do own a couple of North American premium planes, as much as I tout the vintage Stanley range), and I always make a couple of test cuts and adjust accordingly after sharpening and reinserting the blade. It's honestly never occurred to me to check the squareness of the two faces of the plane. So what I'm trying to say is that if you don't want to send the plane back and deal with all that rigmarole, then you can certainly get a lifetime of use out of your plane without making more than what I'd consider to be minor adjustments.

But, as I said, they probably let this one slip through the cracks, and would probably replace it for free, so it's probably kind of like the kinked saw from a while back: More about how much it bothers you than how much it will effect the performance of the tool.

Good luck,
Luke