New hand planes?

[D_W]

I'd imagine the frog is a manufacturing artifact. But if it improves the chance of having a good functioning plane, then that's a positive.

Most of the planes over here after single iron planes went nearly extinct are common pitch. They're that pitch for a reason, because it is more effective with a double iron than is 50 or 55 degrees, but you can still use it as a single iron if you like. It works a much wider range.

The shame of it is that nobody is building a stanley bailey type plane that is similar in spec to a stanley bailey type plane built 100 years ago (including the good fine grained and not overhard iron).

I've bought a lot of vintage woodies with double irons, and some with single irons, the double iron planes are much more capable and except for two smoothers I had (one was craftsman made and senselessly bedded at 55 degrees with a double iron, the other was a modern sorby plane bedded at 50), the rest have been common pitch, including a bunch of other smoothers, but all of the try and jack planes have been common pitch. My lone remaining single iron jointer of good quality (as opposed to a later budget option - it's an early 1800s plane) is bedded at 50. It's unfortunate, as pretty as the plane is itself, it's out of its league (by a wide margin) vs. a common pitch double iron plane in every single planing task - except if a user doesn't know how to set a cap iron.

I brought up the emmerich planes because some of the people retailing them in the US have some goofy list of all of the "improvements" that they make over the stanley type, but they neglect to mention that the blade is crappy steel and the attachment for the primus adjuster is a pain in the pee pee, especially if it grabs tight on the end of the rod that retains it.

I can't comment on most of the very modern stuff (;like 55 degree frogs from lie nielsen), though I have used a 50 degree frog on a friend's plane before learning to use a cap iron, and in comparing our two identical planes planing hard maple (mine common pitch) we weren't very happy with the extra effort that we could notice trying to take a heavy shaving. Fortunately for him, building things in straight lines combined with a sander and a spiral headed planer has pretty much eliminated his use of planes.

The bailey design is exceptional. Modern low-cost versions of it are not.

 

[JohnCee]

Clifton: I would not even think about getting a clifton any larger than a No.4, particularly when another £50 or so will get you a Lie Nielsen that will be perfect. .

The relative LN/Clifton pricing seems to have reversed recently. Just been pricing up 4-1'2's and Axminster do LN for around £250, whereas a Clifton is over £300.

 

[Rhyolith]

The bailey design is exceptional. Modern low-cost versions of it are not.

Comes back to what I was saying earlier, it costs to make a decent plane (just think for a second of all the design effort and materials needed). So if its cheap, then there will be a reason: i.e. it will be rubbish (most commonly bad steel these days). Its easy to say "just make a bailey well and that will fix everything" but thats not cheap, in fact I believe thats exactly what Lie Nielsen do...

Find what BB said interesting, about the frogs; it makes sense over a design purpose enhancing the functionality of the tool. One thing I find interesting about the new Stanley Sweetheart Planes is that their smoother is all one casting: image off google if your not familiar with this tool: http://assets.rockler.com/media/catalog ... 5-1000.jpg

 

[Rhyolith]

Clifton: I would not even think about getting a clifton any larger than a No.4, particularly when another £50 or so will get you a Lie Nielsen that will be perfect. .

The relative LN/Clifton pricing seems to have reversed recently. Just been pricing up 4-1'2's and Axminster do LN for around £250, whereas a Clifton is over £300.

I was speaking from experience about 2 years ago... I really was appalled by the quality control standards at clifton so went for Lie Neilsen for my big jointer. Their smaller planes do appear much better to be fair, but that might just be because the out of true soles matter less on small planes... everyone seems happy with their Clifton should planes (all of them) including myself, so i would recommend those.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

"The bailey design is exceptional. Modern low-cost versions of it are not." - D_W
I have a new No.4 (I picked it out of the scrap metal skip at the dump) - out of curiosity I measured the width of the mouth. It was exactly half as wide again as the mouth of my old No.6. - not really ideal.

 

[D_W]

The bailey design is exceptional. Modern low-cost versions of it are not.

Comes back to what I was saying earlier, it costs to make a decent plane (just think for a second of all the design effort and materials needed). So if its cheap, then there will be a reason: i.e. it will be rubbish (most commonly bad steel these days). Its easy to say "just make a bailey well and that will fix everything" but thats not cheap, in fact I believe thats exactly what Lie Nielsen do...

Find what BB said interesting, about the frogs; it makes sense over a design purpose enhancing the functionality of the tool. One thing I find interesting about the new Stanley Sweetheart Planes is that their smoother is all one casting: image off google if your not familiar with this tool: http://assets.rockler.com/media/catalog ... 5-1000.jpg

I figure 2/3rds of the ln cost is probably what it would cost to build a spec Stanley, but what would the market be?

The notion is to instead make the ln type and claim it's drastically better, which appeals to the types who believe the ideal iron is infinitely thick and slightly harder than pure carbide.

 

[Corneel]

I can't imagine that anything made in the last hundred years is a functional improvement over the bailey design for anyone other than the possible exception of beginners. 45 degrees makes for a better plane in the full range of coarse to fine planing tasks.

May I check please - functional improvement meaning works better? I can. And is it your opinion that 45 degrees makes for a better plane in the full range of coarse to fine planing tasks. I don't think that is a fact. That would render virtually all woodies, infills and others inferior. And what are the beginner planes you refer to please?

I accept what BB says re production process and cost driving the engineering design. But I would never accept that the separate frog improves the fundamental functionality - at very best it might just about not get worse. Re pitch, before the Bailey, 45 was not 'common pitch'. If you take away all planes designed for end grain, planes for face work are 48 - 55 degrees. I believe the 45 is a compromise. We should remind ourselves that mass-produced Baileys are just one type of plane, there are others and the Bailey does not define the category. It is no more than a decent mass-produced compromise.

Talking about facts, where did you get the "fact" that all planes were 48 to 55 degrees before Bailey? That is before 1870? Most any wooden plane after the invention of the double iron (about 1760 or so) was a 45 degree plane. Before 1760 it is going to be very hard to find any hard facts about bench planes. Some roman ones were very high pitch, others were 45. The Germans made some wooden smoothers at 49 degrees. Dutch single iron planes can be found at 50 degrees. But double iron planes were almost uniformly in the range of 45 to 47 1/2 degrees (Seaton chest for example). Infill planes, almost all of them double iron at 45 to 47 1/2 degreees.

 

[Rhyolith]

Infill planes, almost all of them double iron at 45 to 47 1/2 degreees.

I think my Norris 17" jointer is 50 degrees and thats a post war plane.

 

[BearTricks]

Okay, so while we're at it: British made or American made? All patriotism and nostalgia aside.

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

 

[Trafalgar]

Thought the majority of Norris were at 48*... they seemed to have known a little bit about plane making.

 

[iNewbie]

Okay, so while we're at it: British made or American made? All patriotism and nostalgia aside.

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

Clifton without a shadow of a doubt - my LN went bye byes...

 

[Rhyolith]

Okay, so while we're at it: British made or American made? All patriotism and nostalgia aside.

Old planes = British
Modern Planes = America (Apart from Clifton shoulder planes)

Clifton without a shadow of a doubt - my LN went bye byes...

What happened to your LN? Because I strongly disagree, clifton only matches Lie Nielsen in the shoulder plane department. Otherwise Lie Nielsen's are better in every functional capacity... though I will say that the Lie Nielsen Bronze planes are dum as hell (a LN salesman even told me they are just to "look pretty"), they brake so easily... the iron ones are though as anything though. I have been told that they bounce if you drop them on something hard rather than smash like Cliftons (and every other cast plane), evidently I don't want to test this with £400 of Jointer plane :?

Thought the majority of Norris were at 48*... they seemed to have known a little bit about plane making.

Mine probably is, I have not measured it accurately. Personally I feel as a working plane its beaten by the Lie Nielsen No.8, which leaves a much better finish (I assume the No.8 is at 45); that might be more to do with the mouth dimensions though. The Norris is defiantly the nicest plane ergonomically.

 

[sploo]

Clifton: I would not even think about getting a clifton any larger than a No.4, particularly when another £50 or so will get you a Lie Nielsen that will be perfect. .

The relative LN/Clifton pricing seems to have reversed recently. Just been pricing up 4-1'2's and Axminster do LN for around £250, whereas a Clifton is over £300.

I was speaking from experience about 2 years ago... I really was appalled by the quality control standards at clifton so went for Lie Neilsen for my big jointer. Their smaller planes do appear much better to be fair, but that might just be because the out of true soles matter less on small planes... everyone seems happy with their Clifton should planes (all of them) including myself, so i would recommend those.

Based on recent reading (no personal experience) Clifton may have improved in this area.

The thing I can't get my head round is: how would a LV, LN or Clifton be better in actual use. A fettled old Stanley cuts well for me, and feels good to use. Any problems are likely my lack of skill. So, other than looking better, and probably having a nicer finish to the plane, do they do the job "better"?

 

[Rhyolith]

The thing I can't get my head round is: how would a LV, LN or Clifton be better in actual use. A fettled old Stanley cuts well for me, and feels good to use. Any problems are likely my lack of skill. So, other than looking better, and probably having a nicer finish to the plane, do they do the job "better"?

Well in the case of LN they leave a substantially better finish on the wood and will perform better when your working with difficult wood/grain. A friend kept stealing my No.8 in the boatyard to use it on very large knotted oak keels, which no other plane (and he had access to plenty) would do neatly. Though my old Record No.4 very nearly matches it for finish quality, it does not fair as well in the rough grain situation (due to the thin blade I think). They are also easier to set up (all the adjustments are smoother and easier to use), though this is not true for the LN block plane, which is a nightmare to set up (but works great when it is).

Based on recent reading (no personal experience) Clifton may have improved in this area.

Good, its about time.

 

[D_W]

Okay, so while we're at it: British made or American made? All patriotism and nostalgia aside.

Sent from my LG-H815 using Tapatalk

English vintage wooden planes. American vintage metal planes.

 

[Jelly]

The bailey design is exceptional. Modern low-cost versions of it are not.

Comes back to what I was saying earlier, it costs to make a decent plane (just think for a second of all the design effort and materials needed). So if its cheap, then there will be a reason: i.e. it will be rubbish (most commonly bad steel these days). Its easy to say "just make a bailey well and that will fix everything" but thats not cheap, in fact I believe thats exactly what Lie Nielsen do...

I actually suspect the true issue is volume these days.

With modern understanding and modeling of casting stresses, the improvement in "near net shape" casting of increasingly large, complex items and CNC machining centres where you can actually get the machine to insert and remove the workpiece as well as, slot, mill and surface grind on one machine as a continuous sequence of operations it would be quite possible to create a production line which manufactured really excellent planes, at a low unit cost... only problem being there aren't enough users to buy them to support the scale of operation needed to make the product cheap.

Consider this example:

• 
  Jellies Ficticious Handplane Co. can make 300 planes a day for £8/each in materials and £10000/day fixed costs, giving a cost price of £42 per plane, which after £5 transport and a 33% margin split between JFHC and the retailer are covered comes to a very reasonable £70 each at Axi...
  
  But JFHC can only sell 50 planes each day, so their cost price still has to cover the fixed costs forcing them to charge £208 per plane to make ends meet, the transport cost remains fixed, but the margin is now much greater in cash terms too (indeed that 33% margin is now more than the original price of the plane) so the price is now £322 per plane.
  
  JFHC could reduce the margin at this point but due to decreased volumes, they're actually only making ⅔ what they were previously making when the sold more planes at a lower price.
  
  Eventually JFHC gives up making planes as being a silly idea and puts their investment in a high-tech foundry and machine shop to use making parts for Rolls Royce to sell to the Chinese to sell to the Japanese to re-establish the nuclear industry in the UK, so the French can run it.
  
  
  JFHC does much better now they've secured contracts to make in demand goods of high value.
  
  Somewhere on the internet their exit from the hand-plane sphere is bemoaned, but then someone else chimes in to say they were never any good anyway, as his friends, aunts, llama once bought one and it didn't jump out of the box to do a song and dance routine.

As you can see there is no real attraction for the companies that could do so to bring all the advances in technology to bear in order to supply cheap, good handplanes... The market for hand-planes is too small, and the market for their services in producing complicated castings, machined to close tolerances is tentatively still growing and supports a much larger cost price per item.

 

[D_W]

I'm sure you're right, and I think most folks would be worn out by selling to an uneducated clientele, which is what the premium makers have to do these days.

It's not like there's a great big supply of new apprentices jumping at the bit to buy a basic set of metal planes. But there's a huge array of middle-aged white collar workers who are looking for a hobby and who will pay for a plane that's ready to work as soon as they learn to sharpen.

Near as I can tell, Stanley's planes cost about half a day's labor in the early 1900s, maybe closer to a day for an apprentice. that could easily be done these days if there was any volume, minus the rosewood handles, maybe.

The place where Lie Nielsen falls short in looks is the handles and the adjuster knob. Stanley's segmented hollow adjuster knob looked infinitely better, but I get what LN is doing with their knobs (and I bought my share of them, and eventually sold them - having been the typical white collar person looking for a head start in a hobby).

Lie Nielsen builds a nice plane, but there are still parts of them that they don't have a very good handle on, like considering their chipbreakers an improvement based on their thickness, and considering a high angle frog to be an enhancement (something stanley sure would've done if there was a real use for it).

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Clifton without a shadow of a doubt - my LN went bye byes...

What happened to your LN? Because I strongly disagree, clifton only matches Lie Nielsen in the shoulder plane department. Otherwise Lie Nielsen's are better in every functional capacity... though I will say that the Lie Nielsen Bronze planes are dum as hell (a LN salesman even told me they are just to "look pretty"), they brake so easily... the iron ones are though as anything though. I have been told that they bounce if you drop them on something hard rather than smash like Cliftons (and every other cast plane), evidently I don't want to test this with £400 of Jointer plane :?

Just for the record, there's a factual inaccuracy in this statement.

Both Lie-Nielsen and Clifton overcome the tendency of thin castings to distort after machining by annealing the raw castings. They do this by heating the castings to about red heat, then allow them to cool very slowly without any restraint on how they can move. That has two effects. Firstly, it relieves the stresses in the raw casting locked into it as the casting solidified, then contracted as it cooled, but was restrained from moving where it wanted by the mould. The other effect is to toughen the iron, changing it from grey cast iron (which is indeed brittle) to ductile iron (which, as the name suggests, isn't).

The older Stanley and Record plane castings were not heat treated, but were left for a period of time to 'season' (allow the internal stresses to relieve themselves over time). About twelve months is the time period commonly quoted. Later plane castings were not seasoned or annealed, and thus have something of a reputation for distortion.

If you dropped a Clifton bench plane on the floor, it would bounce, not shatter.

 

[custard]

I'm sure you're right, and I think most folks would be worn out by selling to an uneducated clientele, which is what the premium makers have to do these days.

It's not like there's a great big supply of new apprentices jumping at the bit to buy a basic set of metal planes. But there's a huge array of middle-aged white collar workers who are looking for a hobby and who will pay for a plane that's ready to work as soon as they learn to sharpen.

Near as I can tell, Stanley's planes cost about half a day's labor in the early 1900s, maybe closer to a day for an apprentice. that could easily be done these days if there was any volume, minus the rosewood handles, maybe.

Some well considered points there.

Apprentices in the UK are only entitled to a nugatory wage. The legal minimum wage for anyone over 21 in this country is £6.70 an hour, £5.30 for anyone aged 18-20, £3.87 for anyone under 18, but only £3.30 an hour for apprentices aged under 18 or indeed apprentices of any age during their first year. That's barely enough to keep body and soul together. You can guess what the result has been, a rush to classify many jobs as "apprenticeships" and 12 month employment contracts for those aged over 18. This has led to the nonsensical situation where you can serve a year long apprenticeship as a coffee brewing barista or a shelf stacker in a supermarket.

Apprenticeships still do exist in the woodworking trades, although they're few and far between. I've met many of them and indeed worked alongside several of them. They generally have almost superhuman levels of dedication and enthusiasm, which is reflected in the UK's outstanding achievements in the World Skills championships...the Olympic Games for young cabinet makers,

http://www.chichester.ac.uk/News/Archiv ... rldSkills/

But despite having bags of commitment they don't have pots of money. So the typical furniture making apprentice, despite lusting after a Lie Nielsen, will often have an old Record or Stanley. However, with experienced men at their shoulder to patiently guide (rather than the bedlam of conflicting advice on the internet) they can usually fettle most planes into performing to the level they need. And having sunk many hours into getting a tool sorted, and having experienced that specific tool delivering excellent results on demanding real-life projects, they're often then in no rush to "upgrade" it to a fancier tool when funds allow.

The other thing is that they quickly realise that professional furniture making, even in a heavily craft based workshop with extremely high levels of traditional handwork, doesn't actually require that many handtools. The difference between making something a la Fine Woodworking and making the same item in a commercial environment, is that in a professional workshop (even a bespoke designer/maker workshop) much more of the work is done with basic machinery and power tools in conjunction with a vast number of simple, user made but task dedicated jigs. So they quickly realise that excellent layout tools plus say a really good router is where their limited funds need to go if they're to pursue their ambition of running their own workshop.

All this means that it's very common in the UK to meet truly exceptional craftsmen and craftswomen with only a very basic hand tool collection, typically older Stanley or Record tools with perhaps one or two more expensive replacements sprinkled in, say a block plane or a shoulder plane. The difference is that every tool they own will actually be performing properly, and they'll have the knowledge and ingenuity to stretch the application of those tools to extraordinary lengths.

So you're right, LN, Veritas, Bridge City, Clifton, and all the rest is primarily about hobbyist use. Which brings about the paradox that some of the finest handtools ever made are only actually used for rudimentary coffee tables and simple garden planters. What a funny old world we live in!

 

[worn thumbs]

"The bailey design is exceptional. Modern low-cost versions of it are not." - D_W
I have a new No.4 (I picked it out of the scrap metal skip at the dump) - out of curiosity I measured the width of the mouth. It was exactly half as wide again as the mouth of my old No.6. - not really ideal.

If you adjust the frog,you can have just about any effective cutting width you want.A bit of air behind the ground bevel won't make any difference.Maybe if the original owner of the plane in the skip had known this and how to sharpen the plane,it wouldn't have been dumped.