cost of quality planes and the best cheaper alternative ?

[big soft moose]

I would always buy second hand planes from Ray Iles, with one of his O1 steel blades, which he would fit for you. All his bench planes have been reground, and work straight out of the box.

A Stanley no 5 / Record 05 would cost you £30 plus about £25 for the new blade, plus VAT and postage. Way under £100

that sounds like a plan - do you have contact details etc ? edit : doh i hand realised that ray iles and oldtools were one and the same - problem solved.

its not a great website tho - i think i'll leave it till monday and phone em

 

[big soft moose]

Nothing wrong with using machinery.

too true , but i need something to clean up the finish from the bandsaw and as i dont have a PT (tho i could borrow the dewalt 733 thicknesser from work for a big job), i am currently reduced to using my belt sander which is effective but noisy and messy. ( I also have a performance power handheld power planer but that rubbish, and only sees action flatening chainsawed faces on turning blanks)

Ive just bought a couple of the mujingfang planes, but i'm thinking that i want something like a number 5 for the bigger jobs also - I'll speak to ray iles on monday.

 

[Mikey R]

Ray Iles is at http://www.oldtools.free-online.co.uk/

its a different shop to http://www.oldtools.co.uk - that site is run by someone else, but I got a good saw from them.

 

[Karl]

but although loads of people have said that they are better , i still dont know what practical difference it makes to the job at hand.

To me it is like comparing a Perform planer thicknesser with a Jet. Both do a job - but the Jet does it better than the Perform.

Cheers

Karl

 

[OPJ]

Hi Pete,

I'd be inclined to buy some older second-hand planes and 'do them up' if necessary. Actually, the Ray Isles offer sounds very good. I think he has the right idea though - fitting a thicker blade to an older plane will improve the performance. I've just done this by treating my Stanley no.4 to a Clifton blade; edge retention is excellent, although I had to spend some time opening the mouth up with a file and there is an issue with the Yoke/Y-lever not being long enough... (That one will be resolved shortly! :wink Even upgrading only the cap iron will make some difference when working with hardwoods; mainly less chatter.

I admit to owning a couple of 'specialist' planes (Veritas/Lee Valley Bevel-Up Smoother and Scraping Plane... ) but, as far as the standard 'bench planes' go (no.4, no.5, no.6), I don't believe it's necessary to shell out over £100 for each in the beginning. My only except may be the Clifton no.7 - even the old ones tend to fetch well over £100 at auction... If I was looking for a plane that length, I'd probably save a bit more and go for a Clifton.

As far as fettling goes; sharpen the blade [oh, yes - you haven't considered how much you'll need to spend on sharpening gear yet!!! :twisted:] and try to cut a piece of hardwood - if it works well, leave it alone. If not then, you may need to start looking at flattening the sole (which isn't too tasking on shorter planes).

Next time we meet, I'd be happy to go through that mixed box of 'plane parts' and help you to see what's what. [I'm buying timber for the chest of drawers next week ~ finally!! :wink:]

 

[matt]

but although loads of people have said that they are better , i still dont know what practical difference it makes to the job at hand.

To me it is like comparing a Perform planer thicknesser with a Jet. Both do a job - but the Jet does it better than the Perform.

Cheers

Karl

I found myself trying to rationalise in a similar way but I'm not convinced. I get the impression that a mediocre plane can be fettled in to something far more competent, potentially negating the need to buy a ready-fettled expensive option. By contrast, you're pretty much stuck with the fundamentals of a power tool/machine - the important bits in any case.

 

[moz]

but what does that engineering mean to the job of planing?

thats what i was getting at , i have no doubt that the expensive planes are better made and from higher quality materials (tho to an extent we may also be paying for the name) but although loads of people have said that they are better , i still dont know what practical difference it makes to the job at hand.

I guess better quality steel in the blade will mean that it holds its edge longer , but whether thats a noticeably longer may be another question.

Apart from higher quality materials, flatness is a very expensive quality in engineering work; the closer to perfectly flat, the more something will cost. Check out any of the 'premium' planes on a surface plate or with an engineer's straight edge and you ought to find the soles finished to much higher tolerances than the bog standard and are, therefore, capable of more accurate and finer work straight out of the box. Of course, hours of mind-numbing tedium can produce the same results on a cheaper plane if you like metalwork.

John

 

[newt]

Of course you can make the Stanleys work for some jobs, one of DC's favorite planes is a Stanley although heavily modified. But consider this, I have a Veritas LA jack, It can joint, shoot, flatten and smooth and take one thou cuts in most woods when necessary. I can open or close the mouth in a few seconds, put in a steeper ground iron for really difficult woods. I know my Stanley no 4 is not as versatile or as accurate (sole to side not a right angle would require the removal of a lot of material). This is what you get for the money, it works first time straight out of the box. I have only ever sharpened the A2 blade. You never have to ask yourself is it me or the plane.

 

[Mikey R]

I started with a brand new Record 04. The frog wasnt machined straight, so that the blade didnt sit straight. In order to get it to work, I had to grind the blade into a slight skew. I spent many evening filing and fettling, trying to get the plane just to work. Really frustrating.

Ive also got two modern Record spoke shaves, and they are also rubbish. On the flat shave, the machining is all over the place, the blades are noticably twisted from the heat treament process, the threaded rods for the adjustments nuts are almost a mm out from where they should be and so that the blade doesnt sit on the bed, it perches on the edge of the mouth and ONE of the adjustment nuts. I gave up looking at the round one.

By Comparison, I got my Stanley no 4 from a guy on here, and added a Ron Hock blade. I got my no 7 from Ray Iles, and added one of his blades. When they dont work, I know that its me thats the problem, not the tool. They just dont misbehave for no reason.

So, yes, there is a world of a difference between a good plane and a Record boat anchor, probably more so than between two brands of machine tool.

Working with the new Records is no fun. Working with my vintage, fettled-by-pros Stanley no 4 and no7, and my Veritas shave, is.

 

[big soft moose]

Hi Pete,

I'd be inclined to buy some older second-hand planes and 'do them up' if necessary. Actually, the Ray Isles offer sounds very good. I think he has the right idea though - fitting a thicker blade to an older plane will improve the performance. I've just done this by treating my Stanley no.4 to a Clifton blade; edge retention is excellent, although I had to spend some time opening the mouth up with a file and there is an issue with the Yoke/Y-lever not being long enough... (That one will be resolved shortly! :wink Even upgrading only the cap iron will make some difference when working with hardwoods; mainly less chatter.

I admit to owning a couple of 'specialist' planes (Veritas/Lee Valley Bevel-Up Smoother and Scraping Plane... ) but, as far as the standard 'bench planes' go (no.4, no.5, no.6), I don't believe it's necessary to shell out over £100 for each in the beginning. My only except may be the Clifton no.7 - even the old ones tend to fetch well over £100 at auction... If I was looking for a plane that length, I'd probably save a bit more and go for a Clifton.

As far as fettling goes; sharpen the blade [oh, yes - you haven't considered how much you'll need to spend on sharpening gear yet!!! :twisted:] and try to cut a piece of hardwood - if it works well, leave it alone. If not then, you may need to start looking at flattening the sole (which isn't too tasking on shorter planes).

Next time we meet, I'd be happy to go through that mixed box of 'plane parts' and help you to see what's what. [I'm buying timber for the chest of drawers next week ~ finally!! :wink:]

cheers olly , i'll take you up on that ( btw on another subject we do have a spare engineers vice at work so i'll grab that for you to pick upat the same time)

re the sharpening i'd assumed i would use the same wide stone grinder, and/or chinese water stones / dmt diamond hone that i use on my turning gear - or am i going to need something else ?

Ive just spent circa two hours cleaning up some laminated oak strips ( i'm building a cd/hi fi cabinet entirely out of offcut and stuff found in skips) with first my performance power power planer then the ryobi belt sander and 40G belts - it worked okay but it was very noisy, extremly messy and very dusty - hand planing would have been a much more fun experience.

 

[MikeH]

I started out with the usual stanley (recent) models. When I progressed to a LN 5 1/2 I noticed a huge difference. It was even more noticeable with the block planes.

I would agree with Mikey R. Now, if I get problems planing I know it is me and not the tool. True, it may be the way I have adjusted/sharpened the tool but again that is me. I don't blame the tool and say nothing can be done about it, I work out what I am doing wrong and fix it. With the cheaper tools I don't think you can necessariy do that unless you have spent a huge amount of time fettling and have that confidence.

 

[OPJ]

re the sharpening i'd assumed i would use the same wide stone grinder, and/or chinese water stones / dmt diamond hone that i use on my turning gear - or am i going to need something else ?

Ive just spent circa two hours cleaning up some laminated oak strips ( i'm building a cd/hi fi cabinet entirely out of offcut and stuff found in skips) with first my performance power power planer then the ryobi belt sander and 40G belts - it worked okay but it was very noisy, extremly messy and very dusty - hand planing would have been a much more fun experience.

Yes, you could still use your bench grinder for primary bevels and re-grinding. As for honing the secondary bevel, again yes, either of those (diamond or water) would be fine... Well, all depending on what grades/grit you have? Oil, ceramic and Arkansas stones would be the other possibilities I can think of. Just remember: 25° for the primary bevel, 30° secondary. They don't need to be spot on but these are what you should be aiming for. :wink:

40g sounds very coarse, unless you're going for a rustic finish... :? I assume you'll be sanding up to 180g or240g though? Power planers can work well in some situations but, unlike a stationary machine, they won't easily straighten an edge but will generally follow any curve.

You will need some kind of workbench if you want get in to hand-planing hardwood boards... I don't recall seeing one buried beneath that big pile of oak...?

 

[DaveL]

You will need some kind of workbench if you want get in to hand-planing hardwood boards... I don't recall seeing one buried beneath that big pile of oak...?

But of course there could be one lurking in the pile of oak. :roll:

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

A good quality handplane by LN or LV or Clifton (and a couple of others in this price range) should essentially work pretty well out of the box. You should be able to tune them further, but this is the icing.

By contrast, the vintage Stanleys can be made to work well, but a LOT of time and effort is needed for most, but if you are lucky you might get away with just a little tuning. Still, the original blades will not last as long, and they lack the bling.

All this has been stated in one way or the other in this thread. But what has not been asked is what type of wood you work. This is pertinent since some of the new planes perform well because of aspects such as high cutting angles ... unless the wood you work is testing enough, you may never realise the potential performance that lies in your handplane.

If you work with straight grained soft- or medium hard woods, then all you may need in performance is a Stanley. Of course, the LN etc still have better adjustments, etc.

If you work "exotic" woods, then you will know the difference between planes. Yes, I recognise that our grandads did not have LNs and LVs ... but believe me they would have wanted them!

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[big soft moose]

You will need some kind of workbench if you want get in to hand-planing hardwood boards... I don't recall seeing one buried beneath that big pile of oak...?

But of course there could be one lurking in the pile of oak. :roll:

there could have been more or less anything lurking under that pile of oak - but you are both right there wasnt one when olly last visited , but i now have one - nothing fancy, I just knocked up an end frame from some of the seriously cupped bits of oak (which werent good for anything else) and screwed it to the wall - and i have a bit of 18mm MDF fixed with one end on that and one end on an old chest of drawers , but it servers my simple purposes.

 

[big soft moose]

40g sounds very coarse, unless you're going for a rustic finish... :? I assume you'll be sanding up to 180g or240g though? Power planers can work well in some situations but, unlike a stationary machine, they won't easily straighten an edge but will generally follow any curve.

40G is very coarse , but the intention was to flatten the boards ( that i have made up out of 1.5 ins strips cut on the bandsaw from the various off cut bits in that big pile. ) with the belt sander rather than finish them.

once ive got everything sized and the motices cut I'll be finishing them with the ROS sanding through the grades up to 240G

 

[big soft moose]

All this has been stated in one way or the other in this thread. But what has not been asked is what type of wood you work. This is pertinent since some of the new planes perform well because of aspects such as high cutting angles ... unless the wood you work is testing enough, you may never realise the potential performance that lies in your handplane.

If you work with straight grained soft- or medium hard woods, then all you may need in performance is a Stanley. Of course, the LN etc still have better adjustments, etc.

At the moment I am predominantly working in oak (actually thats not true, i'm predominantly working in mdf - but when i do use hardwoods it tends to be oak), principally because a nice man (malcom aka opener) gave me a load of offcuts

but that said as i tend to work with other peoples offcuts, and stuff from wood recycling projects, disasembled furniture from charity warehouses, and stuff i find in skips , I can wind up working with more or less anything.

I have concluded that i cant afford a LN, LV, or clifton at this stage , and that i'm going to buy a 3 and a 5 from either ray iles or old tools which will probably be second hand stanleys or records etc (plus the little mujingfangs from WH when they turn up) and see how i get on, plus i'm going to try and ressurect grandads two which turn out to both be 4s and block plane - i'll probably be back with stoopid questions about fettling in due course

 

[bugbear]

- I mean to take cars as an example ferarris are very very nice too , but if i want to go fast i can quite hapily do it in a MX5 for a fraction of the cost.

Trouble is, your Ferarris is more like a Hotley/Norris. The Clifton is like a good Toyota. The less than 100 quid cheapy is a Skoda or Lada.

Good analogy.

BugBear

 

[Pekka Huhta]

I just had 12 different smoothers on my bench for comparison: Anant, Anant Kamal, Clifton, HBS, Hira Kanna, Kunz, Lie-Nielsen, Mujinfang, Record, Stanley and Veritas, plus my own old SW-Stanley I use the most.

I have been doing my woodwork with old antique planes and have not thought to need anything better than that. My best smoothers have been an old Spiers and a self-made smoother with adjustable mouth. And I have gotten very good results with them.

Before testing I thought that the bad ones were pretty crappy and the good ones pretty good, but practically the worst performer (Stanley) could not be used as a plane without pretty extensive tuning and the best ones left a glass smooth surface without any kind of fiddling, just right out of the box. So the variation was even bigger than I could have expected.

I really do think that the extra cost can be justified, at least to a certain extent. OK, 300 € is a lot of money, but on the other hand the limitations of a standard Bailey are quite low. No matter how much you pimp it with replacement irons, float glass and sandpaper, there still is the limit.

To get back to cars: you can buy a Lada and add up as many spoilers, tires and chromed exhaust pipes, but you can't make even a Toyota out of it.

I can't believe saying this as my cabinets are full of old antique planes. I don't think that it would be possible to modify any of my old Stanley Bailey smoothers to be as good as the new Clifton, LN and LV. They are good, I have been able to do all of my work with them for years, but nevertheless they are not as good.

Pekka

 

[matt]

I just can't get with the comparisons to more complex machinery. We're talking about a lump of metal, with handles, for holding a blade in a fixed position to slice wood.

I expect for there to be differences but not the type quantified by Lada v. Ferrari.