Lie Nielsen tools

[Craig22]

I have three green Clifton planes (4 1/2, 5 1/2 and 7), bought when they were doing an offer at a woodworking show I went to donkey's years ago. I've retrofitted Ron Hock blades, and they are a joy to use. And they are bedrock, and I think the TF ones are too.

I have four LN planes, back in the day that you could just buy them from Axminster. That is the small and medium shoulder planes, the low angle block plane, and the skew plane.

Alas hand tools in general are in poor supply shape. I've ended up with a few Chinese LN knock-offs (Quangsheng) Search results for: 'shop by brand quangsheng' and I have to say are stunning. Every bit as good as LN, IMHO.

I am very unsympathetic to LN's whinge that they are a small company and playing catch up. Their initial and not unreasonable position two years ago was very low staff numbers as a result of Covid. But alas there is no evidence that they ever will catch up now. Their lack of ability to supply has plain and simple squandered customer loyalty, plain and simple. It certainly has done mine.

 

[Devmeister]

Very good replys guys. It is true what has been said about Maine. One reason I am considering moving there.
During the last few administrations we saw gun control become an issue. Ammunition sales went crazy and folks bought everything before it even hit the shelf.

Olin who makes ammunition said that the recent sales boom was artificial and they didn’t want expand production due to market demand drop out. This makes perfect sense. LN prior to COVID bought four new CNC machines. Also they deal with a small family run iron foundary. I personally agree with the arguments relating to fast expansion and bank loans.

On another note, the Clifton planes are based on a bed rock design.

 

[Devmeister]

What LN needs to do is release a video showing what is going on. Show the world the truth to sqash the speculation.

I will not buy from a company I cannot pronounce. China is communist and Chinese industry will short cut if you close one eye. I do not trust them.

Upon inspection of my new LN 5.5 I managed to get out of them in February, I must say it’s perfect.

First, the plane was shipped timely from the order and packaged extremely well.

Second, it was very clean but I did smell a slight smell of Valanite coolant Which is used in the CNC industry.

Third, I ran a clock across the plane mounted in my milling machine. Well within one thousandths flatness. The irons were perfect.

Fourth. The castings were perfect with no flaws. Not even a blemish or production nick! It was everything one expects from LN.

The only plane maker I have found to outdo LN is Carl Holtey and he is in a class of his own. CH is not a production shop.

 

[D_W]

Very good replys guys. It is true what has been said about Maine. One reason I am considering moving there.
During the last few administrations we saw gun control become an issue. Ammunition sales went crazy and folks bought everything before it even hit the shelf.

Olin who makes ammunition said that the recent sales boom was artificial and they didn’t want expand production due to market demand drop out. This makes perfect sense. LN prior to COVID bought four new CNC machines. Also they deal with a small family run iron foundary. I personally agree with the arguments relating to fast expansion and bank loans.

On another note, the Clifton planes are based on a bed rock design.

Foundry work is another good point. LN made planes and chisels out of O1 at one point, but they lost the heat treater who would do O1 or the one they have declined to continue to do it (probably due to thermal instability / warping). I think they (LN) would be opposed to widespread price increase to finance additional capacity both from a principles and risk standpoint.

What is absolutely the case is that anyone who wants to make a bedrock pattern plane in the US could start doing it. The average LN plane here is $300-$475, and I think that folks would suddenly find that seemingly cheap if they tried to make them to the same standard for that, ship them, and then provide customer service. LN's revenue is listed as something like $10MM a year. I'd bet most small to mid size law firms make that with little capital outlay and a margin far beyond what LN can make. It's just not the market that hobbyists think it is or someone would show up to fill it pretty quickly.

let's also be honest, and I'm saying this objectively, not as a swipe - the group of purchasers of the tools is generally incompetent. They'll send back a perfectly usable plane for almost any reason, including the smallest pin mark or whatever else they may dream up.

I got a #62 two years ago that was a little hollow in its length. It was probably right at spec (by my feelers) and it wouldn't plane a flat board. I flattened it to dead flat and when I was done with an experiment that I was doing with it, I sold it on. It was cosmetically fine - but I can imagine some would've returned it is you couldn't match plane a 20" joint with it. I guess you can also temper that with the fact that a lot of people buy the planes and then do nothing with them, too - those are probably safe from dimensional scrutiny (but not meaningless aesthetic scrutiny).

 

[Vann]

...There was a recent buyout of Clifton and I am not sure what that means...

I don't know that 2014 is "recent".

Clico sold their plane making "Clifton" division to Thomas Flynn in late 2014, and then folded about a month later. Under TF Clifton planes lost their two-piece (stay set) cap irons, changed away from blacksmith forged cutting irons, and changed the paint colour from green to charcoal.

TF added two (long planned and prototyped) block planes to the range and deleted the No.45 multi-plane.

And as mentioned, Clifton bench plares ARE Bedrock.

Cheers, Vann.

 

[Devmeister]

I will say this as someone who has done quite a bit of tool and die work making jigs and tools. I enjoy working with A2 anneal. It machines easy on the lathe and the mill. But is it an edge tool steel? It’s quite good at resisting wear in dies. My own experience in using it has found the keenness of the edge could be better. 01 does hold a pretty darn good edge. I am curious if 1095 can also work in plane blades but am sure. The concept of heat treat is simple. Turn the internal carbon particles into carbide. Tempering just allows some of the carbide to drift back to carbon. If A2 was the cats meow, wouldn’t all the knife makers be using it? A2 is functional but it’s not my first choice. Exactly how cryogenic treatment improves the blade is unclear. I think it may have an effect on grain alignment to improve edge retention but don’t quote me. While I own some LN chisels, I still prefer my older Sorby chisels.

I was unsure of when Clifton got bought out. 2014 is not that recent. The one Clifton bench plane I looked at was green. According to their website, the modern versions are machined from grey iron.While grey iron is pretty cool material, it’s not my first choice in making planes.

A major problem with any cast iron is warpage due to internal stresses set up during cooling. Modern practice is to thermally stress relieve the castings.

In the old days, Rolls Royce would dump castings outside and let them get rusty over a couple of years. Northfield did the same and called it Minnesota Stress relief.

High end machines built during the golden years used meehanite alloys. These unique ductile iron alloys got them the most stable castings possible.

Even so, companies like Hoffmann would put a casting in the planer and do a rough machine to cut the foundary crust. Then they shelved it for six months before doing the final cut. This was done to mitigate warpage.

Iron hand planes have had issues of bed warpage. Grind it flat and over time the bed warps. Using ductile alloys and following careful stress relief procedures helps. Over time the casting will settle out. The longer the plane, the greater the chance of warpage. I think any plane built during the COVID time frame needs to be checked for warpage.

LN stated at one time not to long ago that they made 20,000 tools per year. At an average price of 350 dollars, that amounts to about 7 million. My worst shop made 12 million. The margins were nothing to write home about.

Thomas Flinn posted a video called last man standing. It wasn’t a confidence builder. You have to love what you do as getting rich fast isn’t likely to happen.

Many smaller tool makers are virtually one operations. Some are retired people who like what they do. That is where I headed. It’s like bowel turners. After a while, the wife gets fed up with all the decorative bowls on every shelf and coffee table. You have to get rid of some of this stuff to make room for new stuff which is why you have the crazy hobby.

My new furnace can melt about 120 pounds of iron. I don’t like to fill the crucible to the brim as it’s quite a reaction when you add the inoculents prior to the pour. While I can make a few plane bodies I will never make 20,000 per year!!!!

So the cost of a LN plane is actually reasonable when you account for the work being done. Eventually the holding costs, labor costs and market demographics may redefine the functional business case. If LN outsources to China, they are done.

How big is this market? If you look at popular YouTube channels like vintage machinery, epic woodworking, etc. you see high end subscriber numbers of 100K to 150k. There is a channel featuring two pet otters with over a million subscribers. So unless there is a recruitment of new woodworkers, this market may be getting saturated.

I guess we can only take a look at what time holds as we get thru this COVID period.

 

[D_W]

your figures for revenue sound about right. They sell other accessories and I guess teach classes or something to get to the $9MM or so. With inflation the way it has been, they're in maine, which is a buffer from economic reality to some extent, but they're going to have to raise prices.

I have an answer for your 1095 question - yes, you can make a plane iron out of it. It has very high potential hardness, but relatively low toughness. O1 only has a little more toughness, but it also hardens in anything that's called oil (1095 is very lacking if not done in a high speed quench oil). AT 400F temper, my 1095 coupons sent to a metallurgist here were still 63.1 hardness average strike. That's very high. Both recent guitars that I made were made mostly with said iron - it's not like it can't be used, but it does chip a little more than O1 (actually, I'd say it chips about as much as V11 - it's lower toughness than V11 but finer grain by a mile, so the two things seem to just about even out - it's twice as easy to sharpen as V11 but lasts about twice as long, and so on).

O1 at same hardness as A2 is functionally about the same in edge life. Theoretical (and in my testing) edge life for A2 is about 25% longer, but the working condition of the edge is nearly intolerable and one would be far better off to resharpen - and it wears a lot slower on stones than O1 - so I see no point for it in tools other than that it's dimensionally stable in hardening and O1 is viewed in a modern lens as having a lot of movement.

There is hand finishing and fitting of things at LN to go along with an enormous amount of CNC work, but I can't imagine them liking O1 (nor their heat treater if the heat treater did the finish grinding, too), and 1095 would be out of the question. They did use W1 or something similar before A2, though. But they also had trouble with that and only hardened irons halfway up to the slot.

I've tested a bunch of things for blade steels, but I think what we have at this point is what we will practically see (O1, A2, D2, V11 (likely CTS XHP), and some specialty irons out of M2 or similar steels since M2 has a good grain structure without being PM). Overseas, you may see more of the CV series of steels, but they aren't used on the ground much here, and I can't get them reasonably in bar stock form to play with them. O1 with care to getting full quench hardness ends up around 62 at 400F temper and is awfully nice to use and is available in high quality here.

As far as knives? They went through their A2 thrill and then through D2, but the knife world needs something new all the time to convince the person who has 10 knives in a given pattern to get an 11th. The stainless patterns with vanadium (niobium will probably be the next popular thing) and without being stainless are popular right now due to the ability to have great toughness and good wear resistance or OK toughness and bonkers wear resistance.

1095 is often marketed in the US in knives, but there is a steel called 1095CV often used here that's just a 0.9 or 1% chrome vanadium steel that's really got no resemblance to 1095 and is probably far friendlier to use industrially.

 

[D_W]

LV got sort of lucky when they went looking for V11 because the knife people only sort of like XHP (chromium carbides are falling out of fashion with them), and the enormous number of chromium carbides makes the steels sharpenable on regular abrasives, even though they do still grind at a slow speed compared to low carbide steels.

Any move toward something with vanadium carbides will leave a bunch of people in the ditch trying to sharpen such stuff well with anything other than diamond grit (The vandium steels - 3V and above - sharpen wonderfully with diamonds, of course, but crappy with anything else -both incompletely and very slowly).

 

[Adam W.]

I don't know that 2014 is "recent".

Clico sold their plane making "Clifton" division to Thomas Flynn in late 2014, and then folded about a month later. Under TF Clifton planes lost their two-piece (stay set) cap irons, changed away from blacksmith forged cutting irons, and changed the paint colour from green to charcoal.

TF added two (long planned and prototyped) block planes to the range and deleted the No.45 multi-plane.

And as mentioned, Clifton bench plares ARE Bedrock.

Cheers, Vann.

Mate, I know you live on the other side of the planet....But the flag is still the wrong way up.

 

[MikeK]

Mate, I know you live on the other side of the planet....But the flag is still the wrong way up.

It could be intentional to signal distress.

 

[SMALMALEKI]

WOW
Such an amazing response. I am delighted with all the new information I learned
Has anybody got a spare LN 7 or 8 for rehousing?


https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/threads/lie-nielsen-jointer-plane.136182/

 

[D_W]

WOW
Such an amazing response. I am delighted with all the new information I learned
Has anybody got a spare LN 7 or 8 for rehousing?


https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/threads/lie-nielsen-jointer-plane.136182/

I did my part and sold off all of the LN stuff I don't use (which is everything but a pair of spokeshaves) in the last two years. to my shock (not knowing what was going on), straight up auctions on ebay yielded stupid prices (I thought someone was running up my auction bids on the first two things I listed only to refuse to pay - but that didn't happen).

 

[paulm]

Some of the old school Cliftons, from the limited anniversary run of 25 sets with walnut handles

Must get them out again, it's been a while !

 

[Valhalla]

Some of the old school Cliftons, from the limited anniversary run of 25 sets with walnut handles

Must get them out again, it's been a while !

Nice set......they look like they only come out at Christmas

 

[Sporky McGuffin]

Last Tuesday Axminster Basingstoke had a couple of LN bits on clearance - maybe 5-10% off. I was sorely tempted by the shoulder plane. There were a couple of chisels and one other plane too.

 

[D_W]

Exactly how cryogenic treatment improves the blade is unclear.

we had a long post on this (sorry if you posted in it - I didn't keep track of all of the responses). If not, the biggest gain that I can think of is a combination of:
* improving terminal hardness at a slight cost of toughness (A2 is tough enough - that's all that counts - too much toughness has caused problems in tool tests I've done as the edge won't let go but rather becomes a blunt foil and then propagates while making it difficult to get the edge into or through wood).
* increasing forgiveness at the top end of the austenizing ranges - instead of ending up with decreasing hardness in a lot of steels, cryo treatment allows for additional hardness or expansion of the top end of the heat schedule before quench

I've never used cryo, or even a furnace, but figure no matter how good someone claims to be at heat treat (as a firm, with a process, etc), more forgiving ranges combined with higher potential hardness is significant.

I've seen pictures of cryo that came along with either LN or Hock A2 that show smaller and more evenly distributed carbides, but it's hard to know for sure if that's just due to cryo since carbide and grain size is so dependent on stuff that happens prior to quenching.

For A2 and especially higher chromium lower carbon steels than that, it seems to do a great job getting full hardness, and at least looking at beach's page, hock's A2 (cryo) seems to have a finer grain structure than LV's A2 (not cryo, at least at the time of the test).

but if anyone is starting to look at the size of the grain, pretty much everything without much chromium has finer grain than A2 and D2 in the first place (non-PM D2 is terrible looking with carbides big enough to leave lines on wood as they break up and come out of the matrix - no edge damage needed).

I forgot one last consideration above - cost of the alloy and cost of follow-up grinding. A2 isn't that expensive - it's very expensive compared to 1084 and 1095, but otherwise not that expensive. V11 is expensive (but no clue how much it costs if you buy a whole melt yourself - for me to get barstock costs something like $30 a plane iron for XHP - and V11 may be different chemically some small way, but I can't see it in house made irons vs. V11 - still possible, but...).

last 1095 I got was something like $6 an iron more or less on average.

Other steels with more wear resistance than V11 with lower carbide volume are available, but they'd be both expensive to buy and very slow to machine after heat treat (and only sharpenable by diamonds).

 

[Devmeister]

The metalurgy post is very informative and goes to illustrate my argument of an arms race.

When I first began making tools, I started using A2 as everyone said it’s the cats meow. But did notice issues empiricaly as stated in DW post. I still have a few chunks laying about.

when I began making my own machine tool cutters like form tools etc. I went to using 01 in a pinch and then onto M2 and M42. Machine cutters cutting metal on machines can get a bit hot. The edge needed is no where as sharp as the one needed for wood.

when I began playing with side escarpment planes, the consensus was to use an 01 iron.

I was using new Irwin taps and I sure as hell have broke my share of them! They just snap as they are totally brittle.

often folks will buy tools but no sharpening kit. They tend to avoid it and slowly evolve into it as cheaply as possible. Everyone has a new process to sharpen. Even going as far as triple angles and a variety of plates including everything from translucent Arkansas to wet stones to tormeks. I think you should use what works for you and stay on it.

Personally I like 01 and M2. They are basic, cheap and readily available.Note that M2 is a high speed steel and I have it in my shop as I work metal as well.

I would like to know what those Sorby chisels were made of. They just say Sheffield Steel.

Ay the end of the day, a vintage Norris can keep up or out perform virtually any new plane. I have been quite happy with my LN planes and my smoother is a bedrock from the 1930s.

it will take a huge amount of convincing to prove to me that planes like the Veritas can take you to the next level.

 

[SMALMALEKI]

Some of the old school Cliftons, from the limited anniversary run of 25 sets with walnut handles

Must get them out again, it's been a while !

The collection looks amazing. Are they getting neglected in the box?

 

[SMALMALEKI]

Last Tuesday Axminster Basingstoke had a couple of LN bits on clearance - maybe 5-10% off. I was sorely tempted by the shoulder plane. There were a couple of chisels and one other plane too.

Thank you for the information. I’ll try to call them.

 

[Devmeister]

The collection looks amazing. Are they getting neglected in the box?

What a lovely set of planes. And that British racing green looks so juicy! Damm I Love It