High or Low: A beginner's conundrum...and other questions...

[D_W]

stay away from high angle single iron planes. they're a farce.

Your choice is between a bevel up plane or a common stanley pattern (or something similar) either at stanley bedded angle or perhaps norris (which is scarcely different despite all of the speculation of the advantage of "another 2 degrees").

I would recommend the stanley, but I'm sure that where you start (smoothing thickness shavings), 95% of newbies will find a bevel up plane easier to figure out. AS you progress, you'll find them to be slower to use than a stanley plane, but good results first, and speed with good results later.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

In actual billable hours It probably took me like 70-80 hours in research/trying out various things/learning the ways to sharpen it/shape it / etc...

Which comes as no surprise, as you take no notice of sound advice. :lol:

 

[Jacob]

........
All the old farts who have never actually tried a modern good 62 plane, please just don't comment nonsense.....

I've tried most of them fairly thoroughly - some borrowed others bought (including a 62 and various LV, LN, Quansheng etc).
In the end I couldn't see the point of having all that dosh tied up just in case I was wrong, and sold them all off. The last two to go were a Stanley SW 4 and a Clifton 4.
I've now just got nice collection of oldish Stanleys and Records from 3 to 7 and a few woodies.
Most expensive would be a USA made Stanley 7 which cost about £40, the others all a lot less.

 

[MrDavidRoberts]

In actual billable hours It probably took me like 70-80 hours in research/trying out various things/learning the ways to sharpen it/shape it / etc...

Which comes as no surprise, as you take no notice of sound advice. :lol:

Most of its given by people who just ramble about completely different things than asked or from people who thinks that Lidl tools are the pinnacle of engineering and haven't tried anything better... I rarely bother replying to posts here. Today I have some time to waste =D>
If I hadn't got an internet addiction I wouldn't visit this forum at all

 

[Jacob]

In actual billable hours It probably took me like 70-80 hours in research/trying out various things/learning the ways to sharpen it/shape it / etc...

Which comes as no surprise, as you take no notice of sound advice. :lol:

:lol: :lol:

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

stay away from high angle single iron planes. they're a farce...

David, I wish I could be there when you say this to Terry Gordon (HNT Gordon planes)!

Have you used any?

I suspect that you will say that they can only take thin shavings, and that this makes them inefficient. I think that is true to some extent (and I do not understand why his New Aussie Jack Plane is bedded at 55 degrees - that does not make sense to me either). On the other hand, my 60 degree trying plane and smoother are both superior - and, importantly, very reliable - performers. I can set them up for a tearout free performance without a test shaving. At the stage they are used, which is after my jack plane, they are refining surfaces. They do this very well.

The high angle bed planes I dislike are those with wide blades and/or high bodies. Wide blades and high angles are hard to push and all one can take are very fine shavings. High bodies create more downforce and add friction. Low planes, such as the HNT Gordons, convert energy better and are easier to push.

Regards from Perth

Derek

 

[MrDavidRoberts]

........
All the old farts who have never actually tried a modern good 62 plane, please just don't comment nonsense.....

I've tried most of them fairly thoroughly - some borrowed others bought (including a 62 and various LV, LN, Quansheng etc).
In the end I couldn't see the point of having all that dosh tied up just in case I was wrong, and sold them all off. The last two to go were a Stanley SW 4 and a Clifton 4.
I've now just got nice collection of oldish Stanleys and Records from 3 to 7 and a few woodies.
Most expensive would be a USA made Stanley 7 which cost about £40, the others all a lot less.

yes but have you priced up your time it took you to find all of them and to fix them up?

If you purchase a Super-cheap plane for £10 which needs 6hours of work to get it in tip-top shape+ another 2hours over a few days to find it ,and you value your free time at £15/hour , the actual super-cheap plane ends up costing you £10+ £120 , Or you can purchase the same NEW plane from a decent manufacturer for about £120 and it will require maybe 15mins of time..

When you Decided to sell them, you will be able to get maybe £25 back for that old ''cheap'' plane? So you end up Loosing £105 .
VS
You can sell the good plane for maybe £100 ( good planes hold their value extremely well) , so you end up loosing only £25..

Think about it Son....We have limited time after all,sometimes it's cheaper to purchase the ''expensive'' stuff.

 

[Jacob]

I'm thinking about it son.
Most of them I just sharpen and go. Sometimes scrape off a bit of rust. 30 minutes max. I bought Stayset irons for some and have tried a few of the super blades. Have flattened one or two soles - but the very quick wet 80 grit wet-n-dry way.
Time and money well spent, it's interesting and valuable to know how to do these things, rather than just relying on an expensive promise on the box from dodgy tool merchants!
And if you follow my advice you too could save a fortune!

PS the new ones don't hold their price so well nowadays - the bottoms dropped out of it.

 

[D_W]

........
All the old farts who have never actually tried a modern good 62 plane, please just don't comment nonsense.....

I've tried most of them fairly thoroughly - some borrowed others bought (including a 62 and various LV, LN, Quansheng etc).
In the end I couldn't see the point of having all that dosh tied up just in case I was wrong, and sold them all off. The last two to go were a Stanley SW 4 and a Clifton 4.
I've now just got nice collection of oldish Stanleys and Records from 3 to 7 and a few woodies.
Most expensive would be a USA made Stanley 7 which cost about £40, the others all a lot less.

yes but have you priced up your time it took you to find all of them and to fix them up?

If you purchase a Super-cheap plane for £10 which needs 6hours of work to get it in tip-top shape+ another 2hours over a few days to find it ,and you value your free time at £15/hour , the actual super-cheap plane ends up costing you £10+ £120 , Or you can purchase the same NEW plane from a decent manufacturer for about £120 and it will require maybe 15mins of time..

When you Decided to sell them, you will be able to get maybe £25 back for that old ''cheap'' plane? So you end up Loosing £105 .
VS
You can sell the good plane for maybe £100 ( good planes hold their value extremely well) , so you end up loosing only £25..

Think about it Son....We have limited time after all,sometimes it's cheaper to purchase the ''expensive'' stuff.

It takes about $30 and 15 minutes to set up a used stanley 4. If you got this "price your time" stuff from Chris Schwarz, you're taking directions from a dolt. Invest a bit of time in learning to set up a stanley 4. The only extra tooling you need is a glass shelf from a cabinet and a roll of PSA paper. If I'm being honest, I did spend maybe $5 more than $30.

I'm not aware of a single new premium that offers an economic benefit after time is accounted for. To buy them all and be ignorant about setting up or maintaining tools is nothing to boast about, either.

In the unlikely event you learn (in half an hour) what you should look for when buying a used plane and one out of 5 or so is unrecoverable, it's not exactly financially catastrophic.

There are other use-related benefits to the older tools. They create less friction on wood, take less time to grind (the irons), though that's not a particularly big deal. You will care less about surface rust if it occurs (and it will at some point), they are lighter (which you may not have the muscle control to see as an advantage until you have more skill), and generally at least as versatile - often more. Versatility is not the bag of tradeoffs where you have four specialized boutique tools and something like a stanley doesn't do what they do as well, it's really an issue of the specialty tools being one dimensional (try doing heavy work with a bevel up plane), and the versatile tools doing all of the things they do at least as well in the hands of an experienced user.

If you're coming into this as a beginner thinking you're going to figure out something new and outsmart all of the people who have hundreds or thousands more hours on plane handles, or who you don't think use a fine enough finish stone for fine work, you can learn the hard way (or not at all). Quoting blogs from writers is probably not a good way to go, though.

One of my favorite quotes came from Warren Mickley, and it applies here. Perhaps you think there is no economy in working with used tools because you can't be bothered with understanding what actually needs to be worked on before they're fully able to perform. However (quoting warren) "just because you can't do it doesn't mean that I can't" (that's paraphrased somewhat I'm sure). I think he's also said something like "don't confuse 'you can't do it' with 'it can't be done". They're not the same.

 

[nabs]

Chlad - if you have money burning a hole in your pocket the best advice on this thread was from Derek a few post up . Don't despair!

PS I have just calculated that I've used up approximately £150 of my time reading replies to MrDavidRoberts' complaints about the quality of various tools over the last couple of years - is there somewhere I can claim a refund?

 

[Bm101]

All the old farts who have never actually tried a modern good 62 plane, please just don't comment nonsense...
Btw, I funded my Good tools by purchasing cheap old planes from ebay, fixing/polishing them up and selling for 3-5x more.. I have gone through at least 25 of the older stanley/records, not 1 plane I received was in the state of ''use it out of the box for smooth results'' ,a newcomer will simply have no idea what's wrong with an used plane and what needs doing to it to get it perfect- again they don't even know what results you should be getting from a good one as they have nothing to compare against..

Yes it's a cheap way to get in to woodworking.. but it's a waste of your time..

As the OP of no less than three current threads asking advice on buying planes (if you count the one you duplicated previously) and one on buying a screwdriver for planes #-o , you seem to have had a Damascus moment overnight where you have made a decision and now all other options are wrong. Again.
It's a shocker to us all. Really.
It's not the first time by a long way you have asked for help and advice then outright ignored it or taken umbrage when it was given by people willing to share their knowledge, experience and opinions. It might be best though if you didn't offer advice to other beginners when you're asking it yourself then habitually disregarding it and deciding you know best.
Beginner myself. No shame in that, I'm the first to admit it. At least I realise the first step to learning is that there are no absolutes. Second step is realising just how much you have to learn. It's frightening that bit. Third step is not faltering, giving up and doing summat easier and choosing a pace, style and method that suits you. As long as you are getting some sort of joy out of it, some release you're doing okay I'd reckon.

Personally I only took it up as a hobby because I have lived a life of rather dubious virtue (always been nice to kids and kittens and nice people generally mind) and seeing as how Jesus' old man was a Carpenter and that I thought 'Won't hurt Chris. Just in Case you're wrong about all that stuff. It's not like you have to go to Church every week or 4 times if you're a Catholic.'
Don't mind a bit of sea fishing. Can't be doing with Carp and all that freshwater nonsense and I don't have the money for flyfishing.
They aren't gonna be letting you into Heaven because you made your Mrs go on a Carp fishing Holiday to some lake in France and anyway they all gave up that fishing lark when they became Disciples.

To the OP before the thread is derailed I'd urge just a little caution.
You never know who you are listening to on the internet.
Use the UKW search function, read a few of the older threads on this topic as well. Will give a good balance.
As with all things in life one mans meat is anothers poison.

When I very first started out I bought a few Ashley Iles chisels. Didn't make me better.Did make me realise what properly (F******G ) sharp could be and what a difference it made. Yeh they probably did tbh. That was actually a Damascus moment for me. Knowing a little more than I did then would I buy them now if starting out. No chance.
Do I regret spending the extra?
Noooooo. Not really.
(hammer)
I have some lovely chisels that will outlast me.
Didn't make me better though. Didn't increase my knowledge or skill set. Just made those few first steps a little easier. At a very early point you can fall from the shiny tool trap to the sharpening trap.

Wait till they are on sale then check for flatness before unwrapping

Get a bit of leather, some autosol to strop and you're off. And you'll have to hone (a lot more than you thought).

Guessing they managed this

without Bailey, LN or BU planes. There's a point where you have to stop asking the tools and know how to do it yourself I'd say.

 

[stoopiduk]

I don't know about your workshop, but as a beginner myself I'm glad I didn't buy one of the exotic hyper-planes. My Stanley number 4 from tooltique has been a perfect canary down the mine, warning me of the rust risk when tools are left in the workshop. I'd be annoyed if a more expensive plane had to suffer before I looked into properly caring for a plane.
I respect the advice of everyone on here, but you can spend too long looking for advice on forums. If you're like most of us, you'll probably end up choosing whatever you were leaning towards before you made this post. Do it. Go make wood into smaller bits of wood.

 

[Andy Kev.]

....t in terms of general use they are an equal alternative to BD with the added advantage of being mechanically simpler.

But with the added disadvantages of being much more expensive and much more difficult to sharpen and adjust. These are the strengths of the Bailey design and the reason for its phenomenal success over a very long period and particularly important to the very frequent/regular hand tool user

I just had a look at the Classic Hand Tools website and the Veritas LA Jack is 260 quid and the LN #5 is 320 quid. Of course a new BU plane is massively more expensive than a good second hand Bailey equivalent but if you buy new at the quality end, they're not too dear at all. The irons are as easy to sharpen but as they are much thicker they take a lot longer to grind (writes the bloke who two nights ago spent ages regrinding his LA Jack iron) but how often do we have to set aside a bit of time for the regrind? As for adjustment, in my experience the more you get to know the plane, the quicker the adjustment is and I certainly don't feel I waste valuable time getting it to just where I want it to be.

And just to be clear: I've got nothing at all against BD planes (I love my 4 1/2) but am simply saying that a BU Jack is ideal for the beginner working on his/her own and is in any case an excellent tool in its own right.

 

[profchris]

I don't have any view on whether bevel up or bevel down is better - I suspect much the same, outside special uses.

What I can say is how I found using both.

I have a Quangsheng 62, which is a BU jack, and it works very well. But it just doesn't suit me - I find the lateral adjustment is not enough, the Norris style advancer slow and fiddly, and the mouth is much too narrow for taking thicker shavings. So most of the time it's used as a weight when I'm glueing. I should probably sell it. Once it's set up for the job it works really well though. But it is heavy and tiring to use.

By contrast I have a Veritas bevel up apron block plane which is brilliant (although depth adjustment is still a little fiddly). For instrument making it does dozens of useful jobs.

For larger bits of wood I mostly use a second-hand Record no. 4. I was lucky - it needs no fettling apart from sharpening the iron. I also have a Stanley no. 7 bought from a car boot, which again worked from the off though would probably be even better with some fettling.

So if I were advising me when starting again, I'd tell myself to buy a decent no. 4. And to buy a new one, so it needed nothing more than sharpening to get going. But that's me.

The OP might be making bigger things than I do (those slabs could be worked with a no. 4 but a number 5 or 5 1/2 would make it easier I guess).

I have two Quangsheng planes, and they were both good, so I'd start there. The no. 4 is a little cheaper than the no. 62, the no. 5 1/2 a bit more. https://www.workshopheaven.com/quangsheng-no-4-bedrock-pattern-smoothing-plane.html

The four things which would make me choose a no. 4 (or no. 5) over a no. 62: lighter, more lateral adjustment for when I hone the iron out of square, easier depth adjustment, can take thicker shavings.

 

[MikeG.]

........All the old farts who have never actually tried a modern good 62 plane, please just don't comment nonsense.....

When did you earn the right to tell people what to post or not post? Did someone make you a moderator when no-one was looking?

 

[Jacob]

...........
I just had a look at the Classic Hand Tools website and the Veritas LA Jack is 260 quid and the LN #5 is 320 quid. Of course a new BU plane is massively more expensive than a good second hand Bailey equivalent but if you buy new at the quality end, they're not too dear at all. .....

Bloody expensive.
I just looked on ebay and a Record 5 1/2 tends to be about £30. We live in a post timber-industry world where there are thousands of hand tools available for very little. It won't last forever.

 

[D_W]

I just looked on ebay and a Record 5 1/2 tends to be about £30. We live in a post timber-industry world where there are thousands of hand tools available for very little. It won't last forever.

It sure is a luxury, though. To find out just how inexpensive those planes are, try and make one for the cost of materials.

It costs me about $100 to make a good try plane (from scratch, and purchasing a good little used taper double iron set - that part's not from scratch - usually). to buy a similar plane in the UK, I see you guys sometimes have nearly unused planes not sell for months for 30 pounds.

And the record planes for 20 pounds on ebay sometimes (let alone a few dollars). the lumber costs more these days, but the tools sure are cheaper in relative terms than they would've been in their production days.

 

[nabs]

I do enjoy these threads - largely good natured and I usually learn something new because of the debate.

It it is also an important outlet for MrDavidRobert's discontent, after all, if he was not busy on here telling us which tools not to buy he'd have more time on his hands to become e.g a local councillor or an MP. I don't think we want that on our conscience.

But I do worry about the effect on people just starting out - choices about tools,sharpening, bench design etc quickly become over complicated and the result must be that some people simply give up and take up a simpler hobby instead (I call these the 'knitting casualties') .

To the OP I hope you got some helpful advice here (you really can't go wrong if you follow Derek's advice earlier) but whatever you decide I hope you let us know how you get on. It really is an enjoyable hobby, honest!

 

[AndyT]

Well said Nabs. I am looking forward to seeing what David has made with all his carefully researched flatulence-free tools.
I'll keep watching the Projects section.

 

[Jacob]

.....
But I do worry about the effect on people just starting out - choices about tools,sharpening, bench design etc quickly become over complicated .....

I worry too!
That's why I keep referring back to basics. It's possible to do almost everything very effectively with some very simple tools and techniques - you may have to, if you haven't got the latest kit instantly accessible, so it's something everybody needs to know.
And I'd argue that many of the basic processes and tools are actually better and more effective than the pricy alternatives and the gadgets. There's a lot of marketing going on out there, to trap the unwary.