cambournepete
Established Member
Lots of lovely planes at the show:
Main point of this rare venture of mine into the hand tools forum is to report on the test Escudo (Tony), DaveS and I did on David Charlesworth's bench.
He had the new Holtey, a L-N 51/2 and a highly fettled Stanley* with Hock blade and L-N chip breaker.
We each tried all 3 on an already smooth piece of wood (dont know what it was).
We were all amazed how good the Stanley* was compared to the planes costing 3x and 30x as much - the difference was pretty subtle and really down to personal preference, they all worked really well.
Of the 3 I preferred the Lie-Nielsen as it had more weight than the Stanley and just felt more right to me. I could happily use the Stanley though*.
I didn't like the Holtey :shock: As a piece of engineering art and craftmanship it's faultless, I just didn't like it in use.
What does this completley unscientific test prove?
Nothing really I guess, but it does show that fine tuning of even relatively cheap planes and putting good blades in them elevates their performance.
We'd like to thank David for allowing us to discover this insight for ourselves. Given the price difference between car-boot planes and L-N a fettling week with David looks very good value.
*I think it was a Stanley, but it might have been a Record.
Also Veritas were showing some new very small (3" long or so) shoulder planes - they looked very cute
- Philly
Sauer&Steiner
Lie-Nielsen
Veritas
Clifton
Holtey
Stanley (I think)*
Main point of this rare venture of mine into the hand tools forum is to report on the test Escudo (Tony), DaveS and I did on David Charlesworth's bench.
He had the new Holtey, a L-N 51/2 and a highly fettled Stanley* with Hock blade and L-N chip breaker.
We each tried all 3 on an already smooth piece of wood (dont know what it was).
We were all amazed how good the Stanley* was compared to the planes costing 3x and 30x as much - the difference was pretty subtle and really down to personal preference, they all worked really well.
Of the 3 I preferred the Lie-Nielsen as it had more weight than the Stanley and just felt more right to me. I could happily use the Stanley though*.
I didn't like the Holtey :shock: As a piece of engineering art and craftmanship it's faultless, I just didn't like it in use.
What does this completley unscientific test prove?
Nothing really I guess, but it does show that fine tuning of even relatively cheap planes and putting good blades in them elevates their performance.
We'd like to thank David for allowing us to discover this insight for ourselves. Given the price difference between car-boot planes and L-N a fettling week with David looks very good value.
*I think it was a Stanley, but it might have been a Record.
Also Veritas were showing some new very small (3" long or so) shoulder planes - they looked very cute