Thread: Woodriver Planes

This thread reminds me of that great quote....

Opinions are like a**holes. Everyone's got one.



Just get in the shed and enjoy yourselves.

Originally Posted by monoman

A beginner has trouble planing because he/she is a beginner. Not because daddy's old stanley isn't flat to within 1/2 a micron per kilometre. I guarantee you the only difference a new $600 plane will make for them is that it will be sharp when they get it. The new plane doesn't come with an injection of experience and muscle memory.

That's not my experience.
Some years ago I had the opportunity to compare an out of the box LN #5 side by side with a new out of the box Stanley #6.
Both blades were given the same sharpening regime and as far as I could tell were equally sharp.
both planes were then used to dress a piece of rough sawn noname NSW north coast hardwood.
the result?
the Stanley didn't want to cut, no matter how much (or little) blade was exposed, the plane just skidded over the surface lifting shavings that would best be described as dust
the LN, however, easily made recognisable shavings

I've since attended a Traditional Tools Group plane fettling workshop where the Stanley's sole was flattened and the mouth and frog fettled. Since then I've got myself a ASW blade and reshaped the original Stanley blade for use as a scrub.
In performance terms, I'd now rate the fettled plane as roughly equivalent to my LN (if I had a LN#6 for comparison, I'd be prepared to vary the "roughly")
BTW I don't think my sharpening technique, post the plane fettling workshop, is much different to what it was before.

BUT the big advantage of the LN is that, being the bed rock design, the mouth opening can be varied without changing the blade setting or taking the plane apart. To my mind a big advantage if you only have one or two planes.

AND to put the cost into perspective, Patrick Leech in his July tool list has a
#604 1/2 Bed Rock oversized smoothing plane; a ca.1930 model that was rejapanned and has a UK Stanley iron in it; no damage, a bargain worker, usual dings here and there, though nothing fatal
Patrick wants USD$285, only USD$40 less than what Tom will sell you a new one for

You're not really comparing apples with apples there though, are you? A modern Stanley #6 vs a Lie Nielsen #5? We all know the modern Stanleys are inferior to the older ones. Nevertheless I find it hard to believe that the Stanley could not be made to cut at all. There must have been something wrong with the set up. All this fettling business is a hobbyist's pursuit and shouldn't be necessary to raise a shaving. If I had paid good money for a plane that was that bad, I would take it back and demand a refund.

Regarding the price of the #604, aren't they a collectors item? They seem to be harder to come by. You can buy a very good user #4 for under $100.

How on earth have I, and thousands of others over the years, managed to make what's termed 'fine furniture' with naff old $40.00 Stanley planes - and not even flattened the soles? I wonder if I bought a Lie Nielsen plane; would I make better furniture.

Originally Posted by Woodwould

How on earth have I, and thousands of others over the years, managed to make what's termed 'fine furniture' with naff old $40.00 Stanley planes - and not even flattened the soles? I wonder if I bought a Lie Nielsen plane; would I make better furniture.

This is a trick question, isn't it? Of course you would, and you wouldn't even have to use it.

Kinda reminds me of when I bought the Ducati I'm riding in my avatar. It was 3 years old and hadn't done 300km. Yet the previous owner could go into great detail describing the sheer magic of riding one, and the bikes ability to defy the laws of physics.

Now I'm not suggesting that forum members buy these tools and never use them. But virtually every LN tool I've seen on ebay is described as either BNIB, or as having taken a "test" cut. And you guessed it. They rave about how good they are.

Originally Posted by silentC

Regarding the price of the #604, aren't they a collectors item? They seem to be harder to come by. You can buy a very good user #4 for under $100.

bed rocks may be collectors items here in OZ, but they seem to be fairly common in the US.
4 years ago, in his July 2005 sale list, Patrick was asking USD$235 for a #603 and USD$145 for a #605. Which sort of equates with what little I know of their original popularity.
Although, as far as I know, Patrick has never been accused of underpricing a tool, I would expect a collector's quality tool to have a price tag several hundered dollars higher than what is asked for a user.

Originally Posted by monoman

This is a trick question, isn't it? Of course you would, and you wouldn't even have to use it.

Kinda reminds me of when I bought the Ducati I'm riding in my avatar. It was 3 years old and hadn't done 300km. Yet the previous owner could go into great detail describing the sheer magic of riding one, and the bikes ability to defy the laws of physics.

Now I'm not suggesting that forum members buy these tools and never use them. But virtually every LN tool I've seen on ebay is described as either BNIB, or as having taken a "test" cut. And you guessed it. They rave about how good they are.

a bit like the blokes who collect art for investment and keep them locked up?

Hi George

I am most curious about your Ducati ..... would you ride a Vespa instead?

And why do you use it as a avatar on a woodworking website?

Oh ... since you appear to believe everything written in eBay advertising, I have just the plane for you ....

Regards from Perth

Derek

My choice in bike or avatar is somehow relevant to this discussion?

Originally Posted by silentC

You're not really comparing apples with apples there though, are you? A modern Stanley #6 vs a Lie Nielsen #5? We all know the modern Stanleys are inferior to the older ones.

I could respond "but what is the core question at the heart of this thread?"
but I wont, I'll just report my experience

as far as I can work out, up till a few (5 to 10?) years ago there were two lines of Stanley planes.
the familar number series #3, #4, #5, #6, etc (I haven't seen any of these around lately)
and a "handyman" series with numbers like #12-05 or some such
the latter might best be described as junk, the former, well...

to date I've purchased a Stanley #3 and #6, a Record 10-1/2 (second hand) and a LN#5
my experience with the performance of both Stanley's, as they arrived, was very disappointing, especially in hard wood. But at the time I was a rank amateur, so what did I know different, although I could get a blade sharp enough to shave the hairs off your arm. (and this was well before I joined this forum)

at a subsequent TTTG plane workshop I found that both planes needed some fettling — sole flattening, chip breaker easing and a bit of fiddling to get the frog to sit properly. I've since fitted both with ASW blades and, apart from the slop in the adjusters, I'm happy with their performance.

the Record #10-1/2 is probably pre WWII
It too needed some fettling principally on the sole

out of the box, the LN needed it's blade sharpened, but apart from that it was ready to go. One of the nice things is how little slop there is in the adjuster.
In retrospect, I wish I had bought a least one LN before I bought a Stanley, then I would have known what to aim for when tuning the Stanley.

Originally Posted by silentC

Nevertheless I find it hard to believe that the Stanley could not be made to cut at all. There must have been something wrong with the set up.

I think the problem was related to a combination of rough sawn hardwood and a sole out of true. In softwood it didn't matter much, but the cutting resistance of the hardwood was enough to cause a problem.

I could respond "but what is the core question at the heart of this thread?"

I think we strayed from "would you buy a tool from a company that is clearly ripping off other's designs" to "companies like LN have made woodworking more accessible to the average woodworker", which is, correct me if I'm wrong, the assertion you are making. The assertion seems to be based on the assumption that an LN works so much better with Australian hardwoods than an old Stanley that it makes hitherto unusable timbers instantly tameable by mug punters and therefore the presence of LN et al has brought more woodworkers into the fold.

Is that or is that not what you are saying?

I think the problem was related to a combination of rough sawn hardwood and a sole out of true

Seriously? You believe that the plane just would not cut because the sole was not perfectly flat? I've got a #6 here which has not had it's sole lapped. It has a wear spot on the leading edge and several low spots here and there. Surprisingly enough, it still cuts, and I rarely ever use softwood. It is an old plane though, it belonged to my Grandfather, who was a joiner by trade.

In fact I'm sure I've read that having a perfectly flat sole is not required in the longer planes for them to serve their purpose, which is largely why I've never bothered flattening mine. As I said, all this fettling business is a hobbyist's pursuit. I'm damn sure my Grandfather would have looked at you as if you were peculiar if you suggested he had to spend hours lapping his planes to get them to work 'properly'.

Originally Posted by silentC

I think we strayed from "would you buy a tool from a company that is clearly ripping off other's designs" to "companies like LN have made woodworking more accessible to the average woodworker", which is, correct me if I'm wrong, the assertion you are making. The assertion seems to be based on the assumption that an LN works so much better with Australian hardwoods than an old Stanley that it makes hitherto unusable timbers instantly tameable by mug punters and therefore the presence of LN et al has brought more woodworkers into the fold.

Is that or is that not what you are saying?

no

what I'm asserting is that when you look at the development of Western bench planes, they essentially remain unchanged from Roman times through to around the end of the 18th century. From the late 1700s onwards, roughly in step with the wide introduction of tropical hardwoods into Western Europe (principally England and France) you see a gradual evolution in plane design and specification culminating in the high angle, high mass smoothers from Spiers and Norris and the Stanley Bed Rock frog. My basic assertion is that this development towards a more rigid higher angle plane was a response to the difficulty of working the harder, denser tropical (and Australian) timbers — not an exercise in marketing. In practice only successful cabinet makers could afford to purchase the tools necessary to work the more expensive timbers. (concurrent with the development of the Spiers smoother was the development of veneer work – but that's a different topic)

I'm not saying that no one ever built fine furniture from Australian timbers, but where "standard" planes were all that was available, there was a preference to using softer, more easily worked timbers, like Toona Australis (Australian Red Cedar), Kauri Pine (probably from New Zealand), and Oregon, rather than harder denser timbers like Sydney Blue Gum.

My personal observation, based on the furniture used by my grandfather (who was born in 1892) is that his early (pre 1930s) furniture was made from "soft" wood whilst items acquired in the late 1940s were made of straight grained Tassie Oak / Mountain Ash.
A timber like Sydney Blue Gum which I personally think is georgous and see quite a lot of these days, was when my father was young, considered only suitable for fence posts.
(It still makes my dad cry when he recalls that my great grandfather's pig pen consisted of two 4' diameter Red Cedar logs with a couple of sheets of tin across the top. Great Grandad was born in Germany arround 1850.)

So, my assertion is that the wider use for furniture of the harder, denser Australian timbers followed the introduction of carbide tipped tooling and power sanding for the smaller scale maker. That the availability of thicker tougher after market plane blades increased the feasibility of using hand tools to work these timbers. (I also think that the reason there are so many Swedish Berg chisels in Australia is that the US and Pommy chisels (and blades) didn't cut the mustard in Australian timbers — which might be the reason that many Turner planes were fitted with Berg blades.)

my earlier comments re Lie Nielsen and Lee Valley planes should be seen in this context.
That these planes, by their construction and "out of the box" preparation, make hand tool use more accessible, remembering that many people have a preference to new rather than 2nd hand tools.

Originally Posted by ian

no

what I'm asserting is that when you look at the development of Western bench planes, they essentially remain unchanged from Roman times through to around the end of the 18th century. From the late 1700s onwards, roughly in step with the wide introduction of tropical hardwoods into Western Europe (principally England and France) you see a gradual evolution in plane design and specification culminating in the high angle, high mass smoothers from Spiers and Norris and the Stanley Bed Rock frog. My basic assertion is that this development towards a more rigid higher angle plane was a response to the difficulty of working the harder, denser tropical (and Australian) timbers — not an exercise in marketing. In practice only successful cabinet makers could afford to purchase the tools necessary to work the more expensive timbers. (concurrent with the development of the Spiers smoother was the development of veneer work – but that's a different topic)...

Lignum Vitae and quite a number of other dense tropical hardwoods were in use in England and Europe at least a hundred years earlier than you suggest - at a time when joyners made their own wooden planes.

The plane evolution you talk of coincides exactly with the industrial revolution - precipitated by advancements in the mining of fossil fuel which was a huge improvement over traditional organic fuel for smelting and greater outputs of steel. Fossil fuel-fired kilns also made mass production of bricks possible which in turn lead to the building of huge factories and improvements in manufacturing processes in general.