Thread: Making a Lie-Nielsen Plane from Start to Finish

Originally Posted by IanW

Hi Martin, yes, there aren't many things you can make a mould from that will take molten iron - good 'ol sand has been the go-to for a very long time for casting iron. The techniques were perfected in the 1800s, and it's capable of producing very fine products.

As to techniques like forging, I haven't enough knowledge to know how feasible it would be, or what the cost comparisons would be vs casting, but I would assume the way LN are doing it is their best alternative given the volume of production, etc. They do churn out a lot of planes, but I think they would still be considered 'boutique' makers compared with the really big players.

Hi Ian W

Having done the "Workshop Technology" course at Sydney Tech in 1974 and visited the Audi factory in Ingolstadt (Germany) around 2010 I can add some perspective.

Cold forging sheet metal to make an A3 Audi's roof involved [from memory] the use of 11 separate male and female die pairs -- so 22 dies in total. The pressing process was entirely automated, a roll of sheet metal went in one end and a completely formed roof came out the other. From memory, each die in the pair was about 40 cm thick. And that was using sheet metal. The whole pressing station sat on some sort of solid anvil -- I think the "anvil" was a block of concrete several metres thick.

For comparison, a LN plane sole -- after machining -- is around 6 mm thick, hot forging ductile iron that thick would require multiple dies -- while a "simple" low quality spanner can be made using a single die, higher quality spanners typically use 3 or 4 dies.
I shudder to think of the number of die pairs LN would require to make their entire line of iron planes -- #1, #2, #3, #4, #4.5, #5, #5.5, #6, #7, #8, #62, #164, #10.25, 6 block planes, 7 joinery planes, #40.5, #40B, #87, #212 -- just mentioning those iron planes in the current L-N catalogue.
Then there'd be the issue of allowing for distortion as the plane body cooled.

Overall, I strongly suspect that casting is far far less expensive than just providing the space required just to store all the dies required.

Originally Posted by MartinCH

Not sure how large a part they can make, but the capability exists.Impression Die Forging | Forging Services | Trenton

I wonder what the back story was with V&B, I never really read it.

Soderfors anvils, for example, came from a company that made a lot of hardened cast steel stuff and apparently they made anvils when they had almost nothing else to do.

I have a small one that came through columbian in the US (just rebadged here but below columbian it also says "soderfors"), and the top is near chisel hardness.

I think if they had to make just anvils, they could not have made them in the quality that the other tools probably footed the bill for.

but I think it becomes academic now with the advent of ductile cast. The making and remaking of forging dies would be astronomical due to what seems to be an extreme decline in forging here. the only curiosity would be to find out what type of cast LN uses (probably nodular little peacock shaped bits with carbon/graphite sequestered in the center like my anvil), and then what defines the hardness. My anvil is harder than LN's planes. You can hit the corner of an anvil by accident (not a great idea, but my kids have whacked this one) with a hardened hammer and it doesn't break - it just deforms a little.

The soderfors anvil is hard enough I wouldn't want to chance doing that without wearing a leather apron on the off chance something would fly off.

At any rate, I wonder if V&B arose due to metallurgy and the capability of die forging more complex shapes with steel that had an additive (vanadium, possibly) to allow the steel to partially air harden and be heated to a high heat with less grain growth.

I forgot to mention, one of the fun parts of the ad was their attestation that the iron is "vanadium steel" and they test the irons by cutting wires.

All plane irons would cut softened wires. One of my first bits of screwing around was to take a file knife (made from a file) and do something I saw online - hammer it through a nail. It went right through. eventually after doing it over and over with a steel hammer onto the anvil on the back of a vise, part of the edge broke out.

Originally Posted by MartinCH

They could drop forge a No 8 plane in 1922..
Vaughan & Bushnell No. 8 'Uncle Sam' Jointer Plane - V&B Planes

Might have been one or two production improvements since then,.

Perhaps not.

I haven't looked at the cost of similar sized cast iron Stanley planes vs those made by V&B, but I do note that the drop forged steel V&B planes were only made between 1919 and 1922. I also note that the company was making cast iron planes as late as 1935.

perhaps drop forging steel was so expensive relative to using cast iron that the perceived value of an "unbreakable" steel plane was outweighed by the realisation that a person could buy several cast iron planes for the cost of one steel plane.

Without intimate knowledge of the pros & cons & comparative costs of forging vs casting, we are just speculating, but there are a few 'givens' we can think about. For starters, you can bet your boots LN has done some homework & their current manufacturing methods are what they think are the most suitable for the volume & standard of products they make. They have some pretty stiff competition, so would need to be highly conscious of costs & margins, I think.

If drop-forging bodies was a cheaper way to go (seems unlikely from what ian says above!) or produced a superior product, then why didn't V&B prosper? Of course there could've been any number of reasons why they didn't take the world by storm, but it's interesting to me that V&B's steel planes went quietly extinct while their cast bodies soldiered on.

And what David mentioned about steel-soled planes having more friction than cast iron is worth noting. I had read something along those lines many years ago but was always skeptical anyone would be able to notice this with the small area of a sole, until I built my first infill. Apart from its mild-steel sole, that plane has a 55* bed angle, so at first I put the noticeable extra resistance down to that alone, but subsequent planes pitched at bog-standard 45* are definitely a bit stickier than cast-iron equivalents. Using a steel #8 all day might have tested your manhood!

The couple of malleable-cast planes I have (Veritas) seem to be as slippery as old-fashioned 'non-ductile' cast iron planes & the couple of stainless steel-soled planes I've made are possibly the slipperiest of all, but I don't have anything to make a direct comparison with, so that may be entirely my imagination (& if you are planning to rush out & make a batch of SS-soled planes, be wary - it's a mongrel of a material to work with in that context!). In any case, such differences as exist between any of my planes are instantly negated by a few swipes of paraffin wax, so sole friction is a relatively minor worry, unless I run out of wax...

Cheers,

Comments - having a pedantic moment it seems

- Vaughan and Bushell where making drop forged planes up to 1935 (but not the 7 and 8 the stopped earlier) - which was in the middle of the Great Depression and likely had an effect sales - plus I assume powered planers where making there presence know - suggestive that future was not bright. Plus companies can have quite different ideas regarding suitable margins. The pain and cruelty of business.


Also, I know, starting the obvious, Lie Nelson is patently not building the most efficient possible planes, they have a different mission and have clearly supporters of that mission.

As for drop forged, after watching the video I was curious as how forged items are made industrially, they can be very cheap and sand casting did not look like a process that would support price ( unless your labour is next nothing and no one cared about dumping mountain of forging waste sand).



End pedantic moment .

PS - stainless is drop forgeable, easier than cutting

Originally Posted by MartinCH

...... PS - stainless is drop forgeable, easier than cutting....

Ah, so all I need to make SS planes is a drop-forge (plus the necessary furnace). Will I be able to squeeze them into my ~30 sq. M shed, do you think?

Seriously, I'm not suggesting V&B's eventual demise was anything to do with their drop-forged line, I have no knowledge of why they quit. The depression was undoubtedly a major factor, but there were probably other, complex issues in play. I'm just suggesting that any perceived advantages of drop-forged bodies were not sufficient to make them a winning gambit. As you imply with the LN comment, perceptions have a lot to do with the success or failure of any product.

Power tools may or may not have been part of the equation, but my impression is that powered hand tools were not a major factor until the 60s, at least. Three local companies making hand planes flourished here until the late 50s, so the demand for hand tools was still strong for a while post WW2. When I was an apprentice (radio tech) in the very early 60s I was often dragged out of the shop by the electricians to help on urgent jobs & very few house sites had any power available until all of the major building was over. Things are a little different now!

I'm certainly not knocking the idea of an indestructible plane body - as I get older & clumsier I fear for the life of my precious cast-iron Baileys, especially the older & thinner models. (I'm a little less worried about my dovetailed infills, one of which has had a trip to the floor ( ) which fortunately resulted in nothing more than a small 'bruise' on the front bun, but still try to be careful!). Apart from being a bit less slippery, another disadvantage of mild steel is that it's substantially more rust-prone than cast iron, so the thought of a drop-forged SS plane is a nice day-dream....

Cheers,

Originally Posted by IanW

Ah, so all I need to make SS planes is a drop-forge (plus the necessary furnace). Will I be able to squeeze them into my ~30 sq. M shed, do you think?

Nah I wouldnt use a drop forge
- something more like coil feed induction heated graphite coiled hot extruder. The plane would have t track slot or maybe a dovetail down the centre to attach nobs, frog , tote and some adjustment. This thing would be pouring out a c channel but the sides and mouth would be cut out by lasers. Hell the plane could be engraved at the same time at the side shop could be pretty fancy. Since the things hot could maybe fit a spray on hand use the body neat to cure.
I reckon all this stuff could be packed into 30m2 easy , might be some room to pack in a surfacer as well. If the thing had line speed of say 20mm/sec be making 180 plane bodies an hour untouched by human hands, at this point.

No idea what someone would do with 1400 planes a day- reckon it would need to shut down after 3 or 4 bodies...Ahh modern manufacturing, either really expensive of shockingly cheap..

I wonder what the power needs would be. I have a 15kw induction heater, which is really more like 8kw continuous input. Not sure how they're rated, but maybe the actual impulses are intermittent.

45kw would be nicer, and I recall reading that the typical factory induction coil, like what would be used to heat knife or chisel blanks from rod is more like 300kw. The old "how it's made" video for buck brothers showed a heat time for an entire chisel of about 6 seconds, though. That would be wonderful.

My little one is handy for hobby use, but it'd be sucking wind to try to make a coil long enough to heat an entire chisel at once without moving it back and forth through the coil. Let alone rod for a plane. I'd bet what LN is doing is still functionally the cheapest option casting, though. The operation that makes their planes is pretty small (page says they can heat up to 8000 pounds of cast per shift), but has been around a long time and as long as venture capital or private equity buyers don't come along and sweet talk the owners, they'll be fine.

Steel is enough different in terms of friction that I wouldn't buy a plane made out of steel, and I think word would probably get around from complainers who would say the same. I'm not even sure ductile iron doesn't have more friction than gray, but it could just be a matter of fresh machining.

David,
Ian has already specified stainless for low friction and corrosion. As for power I roughed the numbers and consumption looks to be in the region of 300kw. Good call. That a little more than most domestic housing has, so his meter box would need an upgrade.

Originally Posted by MartinCH

David,
Ian has already specified stainless for low friction and corrosion. As for power I roughed the numbers and consumption looks to be in the region of 300kw. Good call. That a lilies more than most domestic housing, so his meter box would need an upgrade.

It looks like the casting house already has 600kw induction heaters to heat the cast, so you could just convince them to shut one of their three pots off and put the equipment there!

I've never been able to find data on stainless steel on wood - I tried a while ago because certain steels at the blade have less planing resistance, but I would imagine it may not be stainless as much as it may be how the carbides present the edge.

For example, V11 is more coarse than 3V steel, but it is through the wood when it's freshly sharpened and when it's worn with less resistance than 3V (or CPM M4 -the latter notable because M4 has a slightly longer edge life, so it isn't just due to one wearing faster than another)

Friction data tends to be metal on metal, though. we are too lowly and I guess the wood industry itself probably has bigger fish to fry than wondering if their planer's tables would pull wood across more easily if the metal was something different.

That said, stainless planes would really appeal the gentlemen woodworkers who wouldn't care that much about the friction because they don't use a plane enough to notice. And that's probably 90% of the market for LN and LV - very light users. ...but bouncing back and forth, a lot of those folks like to see someone they think is credible say that "the old masters would've used stainless if it was available".

I'm not credible, but I would probably be caught on camera saying "I don't care for it, and I can't imagine a shop master or apprentice 140 years ago would've cared, but it's good for the people who like to think about and pretend because planes do rust if nobody is using them, and seeing rust on your plane is really hard on the pretending side of things. Nobody likes to look at a rusty plane and imagine that's their user of choice if the rust can't be made to look like legit daily handling patina".

maybe they could figure out a surface treatment for that.

My research into V+B planes seemed to indicate that the drop forged bodies were their premium line. They made cast bodies concurrently, and like Stanley (with Bedrock), stopped making them (as mentioned, although I didn't realise how brief this was - I feel lucky to own one). The company is still in business today (a few carpenters I know swear by Vaughan hammers).

We're beginning to oscillate wildly between fantasy & fact, here!

In a return to 'fact', I would like to point out that my impression of SS being more slippery than mild steel (as a plane sole) is just that, an impression which could be dead wrong (I've been known to be wrong occasionally ). A well-designed test might confirm or deny that, but I'm unlikely to get around to doing one, so I'll leave that to others. I have toyed with the idea of making an all-SS infill, the stuff polishes so nicely & would look very spiffy (until it gets scratched-up from use), but the idea passes very quickly whenever it pops into my head. It's just too much hard work for a hand-tool-only maker, every step, cutting out the pieces, cutting & fitting D/Ts, peening and cleaning up after, is just so much more work & chews up blades & files like nothing else!

To be honest, the sole friction issue is a bit of a dead rubber for me. The corrugated sole idea that was supposed to reduce friction had a brief life, so I suspect it wasn't a major issue for many others either. Regular waxing keeps my planes sliding nicely on most woods, it's the properties of the wood itself that can often be a bigger issue. If I spent my days planing only "sensible" woods, sole friction might become something I'd notice & resent more, but many of the eucalypts & acacias are both hard & 'sticky' and have a far bigger effect on effort than the sole material in my world. Forest red gum (E. tereticornis) is an absolute bear of a wood to plane, not only is it as hard as nails, it's gummy & the gum builds up quickly on the sole around the mouth, not only increasing friction exponentially, but stopping it from cutting at all! Waxing regularly slows the build-up, but doesn't prevent it entirely.

There are a few SS planes on the market (google brings up more than I expected), all understandably expensive, but if you live by the sea and are well-heeled perhaps worth considering. However, afaic, there are more important considerations when buying/making a plane than simple corrosion resistance, and if it is an issue, brass & bronze are equally good in that respect and a heck of a lot more fun to work with!

A few opinions on SS for planes here if you feel like pursuing the idea further....

Cheers,

no worries on the impressions, ian. I agree on the mild steel - it's at the top of the heap for sticky. Put it on something like poplar here and it's like a brake, but so is everything polished or reasonably fine ground - and it just rips the wax right off of a plane sole. It's hard to explain it - too open compared to harder woods and a lot of grip to it.

I can tell you from working stainless steels, mostly AEB-L and XHP (V11), they have different feels, so it would be hard to generalize. I haven't made a plane of AEB-L, though I have a lever cap and AEB-L to actually do it. i figure if it's a big bitch to work with a capital B in terms of cutting, I'll literally belt grind it do the mark for sides, etc. Cost won't be more than 8 or 15 bucks to do that.

AEB-L isn't a highly hardenable stainless like some others, though, and I don't run into the same issues as XHP where if you're dry cutting with XHP, you have to keep a portaband ahead of the cut before the cut point cools. if it does, it'll just rub the teeth tips right off and that's the end of a portablade.

Apparently, AEB-L can be plate hardened and forced air hardened, but I've always just oil quenched it making blades (which it tolerates without cracking).

Planing with it and planing with magnacut identifies that there is a pretty solid difference in cut feel between steels with large carbides and those with small (magnacut and AEB-L have carbides that barely show up in visible light - XHP/V11 looks like this

https://i.imgur.com/vGxX2OJ.jpg

those little "comets" are a neat array of 3 or so micron carbides with the wear matrix still left behind them.

There's just no replacement for trying, so there's no harm in all of us guessing. I never manage to guess things right, though. I thought the steel with the smallest carbides would remain the sharpest feeling and the easiest cutting in a push cut, but it's not the case.

And to make it even more confusing, different types of carbides and even the same type in different steels create edges that feel different. 52100, for example, has a pretty neat little array of 1-2 micron iron and chromium carbides, but V11 picks up a shaving better in a plane iron as it dulls. So does O1.

the perception we get with mild steel leaves us with a strong impression, though. for a little planing, no big deal. If someone says something about dovetailed infills, I always say "praise Jesus, they're pretty. Pass the wax, please".

I can't give good excuse as to why I want to make a panel infill out of AEB-L, but I'm also not in a big hurry to do it. it cuts and files OK without work/accidental heat hardening too much, but that doesn't answer whether or not it will work harden when peining.

Also, importantly, it drills predictably without creating a fast hardened layer like V11 (XHP). As soon as you accidentally harden an area of V11, you're done, because reheat it if you like to soften it, it'll just harden as it cools. I cut it with a hack saw when I use it, or grind it, to avoid the portaband issue. And it's not fast to hack saw.

What - no cheap hot extruded stainless steel planes? Just aliquard quad non sit.


Well looks like your avoided been wrong, again. But not necessarily right either. Looks similar- but when the wood has 30% moisture- steel is better

https://api.lib.kyushu-u.ac.jp/opac_...23785/p147.pdf

I found a reference on cast iron/ wood coffin as well but the coefficient was twice as resistant as the steel coefficient, presented above.

Coefficient of Friction Equation and Table Chart


Many variable's....