Quangsheng No.62 low angle vs No.5 vs No.5 1/2?

[Luke Barnard]

I own a QS No. 5 that I bought from Workshop Heaven. I've been very happy with it. I don't make big things - the largest in recent years was a small wall cabinet. Therefore, I use a Record No. 6 as a jointer, my No. 5 as a jack, and a No. 3 as a smoother. The No. 5 has been very nice to use and performs well. If you want a new No. 5, I think this is a good option. For the things I like to make, I think a No. 5 1/2 is overkill.

I also have an Axminster Rider 62, that I bought from Axminsters ebay outlet store years ago. It's sole purpose now is to be used with a shooting board. I too was taken in by the marketing of a 62 being an excellent all-rounder. In my experience it was, at best, a mediocre all rounder. But it's good on a shooting board, and as I already had it, it was conventient to set it up to be used just for that.

If I had neither and were in the market now, I'd certainly get a No.5 over the 62, and the QS is a good option. I wouldn't replace the 62 if it was lost, but I would the No. 5.

 

[Jacob]

Two probs with low angle - they have thick blades which take longer to sharpen, they tend to have Norris adjusters, which look neat but don't work at all well. You end up having to tap the blade with a little hammer.
Also they don't cut any better than a normal Stanley as the effective angle is about the same and they don't have the advantage of cap iron.
OK for block planes though, as the low profile makes them good for one handed use i.e. you can hold the workpiece with the other hand etc.
And they are expensive - you can buy 3 or 4 old Record 5 1/2 s for the same price.
That's four problems!
Also they are harder to camber effectively
That's 5 problems, plus the price!

 

[D_W]

Cool, I’ll have a look at English style wooden jacks. Any particular manufacturer you recommend?

I note that you don’t mention using a jointer plane at all. As I say, I already have the longer ECE wooden jointer. I bought this in anticipation of the day I lose my PT

Where, if anywhere, would this fit into your work as you progress from rough stock to fully prepped board?

ECE's jointer is about the upper end of the size of try planes in length, and I'd be surprised if it wasn't close in weight. You'll find a use for it.

Traditional wooden jointers were more like 26-30" and they are nose heavy and hard on the user. The same is true for modern iron planes when they get overweight (like a 10 pound 8 or a 9 pound 7), so you tend to use them only when necessary, like long edges or match planing something long.

I think you'll find the ECE plane is useful following a jack plane. I just looked up the specs on listings for them here - just under 24" long and 7 pounds.

By far the most common routine for me would be jack, try plane, smoother. Try to do as much as possible with each to lessen the load on what follows. For example, when you get good with a jack plane, it's pretty low effort to use and you can just develop a rhythm and go with it and stop pretty close to a mark, leaving relatively little to do with a try plane and almost nothing smoothing. I don't rely on keeping camber low, either - the camber on my jack plane is pretty strong. If wood gets harder than something like beech, then the cut just gets shallower and narrower, there's no real virtue in setting the rougher planes too finely. It's just more work.



that is my jack - you mentioned brand. It doesn't really matter if it's that style - straight from front to back and 16 or 17 inches. No razee and no big bulky handles. This one is just in the same proportions as a nice mathieson jack that someone gave me. The ulmia plane in the background was one that someone sent me to refit - I can't remember what was wrong with it, it didn't adjust right for some reason. I later made the guy who sent it (along with another small smoother with a defective iron) a jack more like mine, but I'm fairly sure he uses it like a smoother.

There are also wide jacks with a closed handle - mathieson made them and others probably did, too. They have 2 1/2" blades like a try plane but length like a jack, and they also make a nice jack plane.

At any rate, If I had the ulmia plane based on proportions and weight, it's closer to a try/long plane and I'd use it like that - after a jack, before the smoother. Use the cap iron, keep it in a continuous cut and it will refine what the jack did and get you right to the mark without any risk.

 

[Jacob]

Cool, I’ll have a look at English style wooden jacks. Any particular manufacturer you recommend?

I note that you don’t mention using a jointer plane at all. As I say, I already have the longer ECE wooden jointer. I bought this in anticipation of the day I lose my PT

Where, if anywhere, would this fit into your work as you progress from rough stock to fully prepped board?

A long wooden try plane (26" +) is worth hanging on to for long stuff, as they are much lighter in weight for the length, much cheaper and longer than the biggest metal plane No 8
But otherwise I wouldn't bother with woodies as they are a faff to use unless you are a dedicated enthusiast. Cheap though - nobody wants them much!

 

[thikone]

There’s not a huge difference in price between these planes, but I can only afford one. I will purchase a low angle block plane as well, and already have an old Stanley No.4. The three planes will have to do for now.

I have a bandsaw, but no other machines, so will need to use the plane for dimensioning and smoothing all stock. I also will use it for shooting end grain.

I did that for some years, dimensioning and smoothing all stock. Only recently I started to learn and use machines.

Since you have already #4, I would suggest #7 (or #6 at least), rather than #5. This is by far the most used plane for me, #7. It is set as medium cut and occasionally as fine for edge work. I also shoot long grain with it - I just put it on its side on my workbench, offset my piece with some plywood off cuts so that it is above workbench for plane blade to cut it and clamp it. And it does work on end grain amazingly well too.

And I wouldn't want to be without some sort of scrub plane (maybe make a wooden one with some nice blade, say PM-V11 with 35° bevel - very rarely needs resharpening in scrub plane).

Block plane I also use a lot, mostly for correcting joints and chamfering. I would suggest the one with open sides - Qiangsheng Luban Low Angle Rebate Block Plane. I have JUUMA Rabbet Block Plane (same factory as Quangsheng), my first purchase.

My set for dimensioning at the moment includes Veritas Custom #7, #5-1/2, #4-1/2, Veritas scrub plane and Veritas shooting plane. I start with scrub plane then go to #5-1/2 that has blade with big camber. And finish dimensioning with #7. Once joinery is done I go to #4-1/2 to smooth showing surfaces and prepare for finish. And a saw followed by shooting plane replaced me miter saw, that is to make ends square.

So, I cannot stress enough #7. And you can level wooden workbench top with it and then your workbench acts as calibrating surface. Put a piece on it, see where it rocks, knock that place down with #7 and repeat. That's what I do and amazingly efficient too.

And yes, if you see that you become more and more efficient (means less force and less time and better result) - then you are on the right track, that's the measure that you do it right.

 

[D_W]

The jointers that I've had in 26-28 inch length have been the same weight as metal jointers. They make far less friction and can remove a larger volume of wood for the same effort despite the weight, though.

I bought somewhere around 7 or 8 jointers when I was starting to make planes to find which ones worked the best. there were some that were surprisingly light (relatively) like a 2.75" iron 28" plane that was just over 8 pounds, and others that were boat anchors - like a Lamb plane (early US maker, good quality plane) 2 1/2" wide plane that was dead on 10 pounds and the extra weight always leads to fatigue on the top strap of your forearm.

I've had stanley 7s as low as 7 pounds, and that's the lightest I've ever seen a wooden jointer, but with the caveat that it was somewhat dry rotted, which happens to beech as it gets old sometimes - it can become weaker and powdery and lighter as the volatiles leave...and also well worn, probably 1/4th of its height gone.

I've seen try planes close to 6 (22 inches long), but also dry rotted. 7-8 is more typical in English planes.

Worst offender I've seen is a 20" long plane that I found at an antique store here - old enough that the cap iron was bitted instead of solid steel - 9 1/2 pounds. I'm guessing that someone soaked it in seed oil several times because they liked that. It was easy to not like it. It had a tiny early scottish size handle to go along with the heavy weight, but was an american made plane.

 

[D_W]

My set for dimensioning at the moment includes Veritas Custom #7, #5-1/2, #4-1/2, Veritas scrub plane and Veritas shooting plane. I start with scrub plane then go to #5-1/2 that has blade with big camber. And finish dimensioning with #7. Once joinery is done I go to #4-1/2 to smooth showing surfaces and prepare for finish. And a saw followed by shooting plane replaced me miter saw, that is to make ends square.

Not being critical here, but that would be a punishing regimen. I tried out one of the very early custom planes - LV sent it to me for feedback, and I later sold it. It was a well made plane ,but with a V11 iron, I could not do the same volume of work that I could do with a wooden try plane before resharpening.

the plane design itself ( that was a 5 1/2, cap iron and all, same effort of cut with each sizing beech planes from rough to make planes) created a lot of friction. this is somewhat shocking (less work removed between sharpenings) because V11 abrades less than half as fast as the iron that was in my try plane, and still is (w. butcher, which are sometimes soft, but this one isn't so much), and in a contest of taking thin smoother shavings, I'm sure the V11 would last more than twice as long.

I spotted brian holcombe early on using metal planes. Lie Nielsen for a jointer, and I don't remember what for the jack. I told him I'd make him a pair of planes at the cost of material and it would lighten the load a whole bunch, and I'm guessing that he's still using them from time to time, though his business volume increased a lot forced his hand on buying some high quality machinery.

That said, a metal jointer is nice to have along with a wooden try plane of about the same length of a metal jointer both for match planing, and also if you're stuck doing a lot of rough edges where the volume of work isn't really that high, that can wear the center of a try plane and you can spare the sole with a metal jointer. It's also probably true of the volume is really that big, it's easier just to do the work with the wooden plane and correct the sole afterwards.

Cosman and a lot of other gurus try to point people toward an all metal plane regimen for dimensioning wood and I think it's not going to be possible for someone using all metal planes to not tire of it and look for machines quickly. the level of friction for the newer premium planes adds a layer on top of that, both on long grain and end grain.

if we were all in a town somewhere that people could come to my window, I'd refit wooden planes for everyone who had an otherwise solid older plane - I guess it's not always that easy to do if you don't do a bunch of them, but it's usually a 10 minute exercise for me and maybe an hour to make an attractive wedge on the odd circumstance that a wedge is so out of shape that it can't be saved.

If someone *wants* to use machines instead, there's nothing wrong with that, but working from end to end for a while with hand tools will make someone a better woodworker, far better at sawing and planing once they go to machines, and less likely to get stuck altering designs or sticking to plain flattish work just because it's easier to figure out how to get it through machines. As soon as machines became the norm, work got ugly and boring pretty quickly.

 

[D_W]

That's not so much a whack at the custom plane design, by the way. I think a fresh new lie nielsen plane would give the same result. They're kind of like using a heavy shovel or a heavy wheelbarrow - it feels more solid and secure, but you end up moving the weight of the shovel or wheelbarrow, plus the addition of the considerable friction is sneaky in converting what would've been removed wood into heat in the sole of the plane. You can get the sole of a metal plane warm enough to melt paraffin without leaning on the plane itself - it just happens.

 

[thikone]

Veritas Custom #7 weighs 8 lb 9 oz (3500 g), not very heavy, unlike Clifton or even Quangsheng/JUUMA that weights 3820 g.

Looks very slim too:

Wouldn't know if that is too much or critical as my dimensioning sessions never exceeded 2 hours or so. Good exercise for body though and I gained some muscles. So, good balance, cannot complain!

 

[thikone]

Thanks David (@D_W), a lot of thoughts to process and interesting too. And thank you for the cap iron campaign, without it my beloved Custom #7 most likely would not have cap iron!

There is friction with metal planes, quite noticeable too. At times it is simply not possible to fine plane hard wood like beech without some oil, plane just skips over. So I do use oil and quite often too... Heck, even shavings are warm to touch immediately after cut. One of my PM-V11 blades had discoloration near the cutting edge, like it was heated to high degree, dark surface on otherwise shiny and polished blade.

I did make one chip breaker dark for easier adjustment of the distance to edge. Helps a little bit but not very much, they way I did it it is still shiny enough. Something I picked up from your posts somewhere...

 

[thikone]

I do want to make some wooden planes one day. At least a scrub plane for starter. And now I think I should consider making a bigger try plane or a jointer. I will use metal planes to make wooden planes. Also to correct wooden planes. Then I would definitely stick to #7, one plane to make them all!

 

[Jacob]

....

There is friction with metal planes, quite noticeable too. At times it is simply not possible to fine plane hard wood like beech without some oil, plane just skips over. So I do use oil and quite often too... .......

Candle wax is better. Just a quick squiggle, wood or metal plane.

 

[D_W]

yeah, it's not the weight, it's the friction and proportion.

The 5 1/2 has the mouth back just a little bit from where stanley does, and the plane doesn't work quite as well with the typical lean and extend (vs. getting low and bracing up - hand work over the long term is always a lean or a twist or something vs. something athletic that will wear us out).

But I didn't think the 5 1/2 was very heavy, it just had a lot of friction.

Now that you're on to doing bulk work with power tools, it's not a concern. I don't have a jointer, but I do have a power planer that I use every 2 years or so. Just used mine a month ago. If I used power tools more often, I'd be less stubborn about discussions like this with wooden planes. I don't think it's by chance that once stationary planing machines became very local all the way down to in every shop of any size, planes went to all or almost all metal aside maybe from profile planes and moving fillisters.

I used a lie nielsen jointer until moving to working entirely by hand and then started to notice just how much it would drain batteries.

QS/woodriver's weight is probably aimed at winning the spec sheet war and based on the pretty heifer-ish advice that was everywhere 15 years ago about more weight always being better. It's a "wood show spec" - if you plane one stroke in wood and one plane is heavy and the other is less heavy, the heavier plane will seem like it's more stable.

I was reminiscing the other day looking through old "definitive statements" from Chris Schwarz where he was touting an 8 1/2 pounds smoother and a 12 pound shooting plane. it was just the thing, completely detached from any historical reality, but everyone was saying they used hand tools a lot without actually doing it that much. Chris had some segment about that long ago where he wanted to make a small simple workbench and he got to the point of cutting the ends off and got out a circular saw because it was too physically demanding to crosscut. Anyone working by hand will eventually crosscut something large with a rip saw just out of laziness for not wanting to walk back across the shop and figure out how much faster it cuts in big wood than a crosscut saw, but Chris never burdened himself with too much do vs. talk about.

At any rate, the weight of the QS and woodriver tools will be a burden, and the friction of the Ln tools and the bit of extra weight eventually became offputting to me. It could also be that I am very selectively lazy (that's true), but I just want to keep working by hand as the projects where I don't get to do much of it sort of unstoke the fire a little.

For anyone thinking this means that nobody should start with any of those heavy planes, there's nothing really wrong with starting, getting the hang of things and then changing to fit your needs. If heavy planes and fine threaded adjusters are sort of like the training wheels that get you to the tall frame road bike later, that's not the worst thing in the world.

 

[thikone]

Candle wax is better. Just a quick squiggle, wood or metal plane.

Never tried, but always wanted. I have fear it is somewhat hard to find the proper one. Should it be byproduct of oil, the paraffine one? Or wax as bee wax? Modern candles are full of other stuff, and they are often packed in plastic...

 

[Jacob]

Never tried, but always wanted. I have fear it is somewhat hard to find the proper one. Should it be byproduct of oil, the paraffine one? Or wax as bee wax? Modern candles are full of other stuff, and they are often packed in plastic...

Just normal paraffin wax candle.
It doesn't do to overthink these things - I expect most sorts of candle would do.
If in doubt, try it out!

 

[D_W]

Thanks David (@D_W), a lot of thoughts to process and interesting too. And thank you for the cap iron campaign, without it my beloved Custom #7 most likely would not have cap iron!

There is friction with metal planes, quite noticeable too. At times it is simply not possible to fine plane hard wood like beech without some oil, plane just skips over. So I do use oil and quite often too... Heck, even shavings are warm to touch immediately after cut. One of my PM-V11 blades had discoloration near the cutting edge, like it was heated to high degree, dark surface on otherwise shiny and polished blade.

I did make one chip breaker dark for easier adjustment of the distance to edge. Helps a little bit but not very much, they way I did it it is still shiny enough. Something I picked up from your posts somewhere...

that's interesting you mention that. If I dug up my notes to LV for the custom 5 1/2 ,you'd find the same thing in it - I blued mine with cold gun blue and suggested to them that it would be a lot easier for people to set if it was contrasting to the iron.

Simple and dumb as it may sound, just the fact that stanley's cap iron is round makes it a lot easier to differentiate in terms of reflecting light vs. the back of the iron. When the cap iron is two planes that aren't coplanar, they still can be difficult to discern if they're not different colors.

I gave LV some suggestions but mentioned that I was used to the proportions of a stanley plane in terms of how I lean and push planes (and stanley planes are pretty much right in line with the proportions and orientation of old english wooden planes) - at any rate, I mentioned that I couldn't get to a point where I'd prefer the custom plane because it feels a little like it's under your armpit vs. a stanley feeling like it's more at your fingertips. I'd bet the iron is not even an inch further back, but little changes in proportions with handles and mouths make a big difference in feel.

if one is using them instead of stanley planes, I think you'd just get used to the custom plane proportions, though, and it wouldn't be mechanically out of whack with how you're working like it is with me.

By the time LV sent me the last one before production, it did, fortunately, have a cap iron, but it seemed like that would've also been better if it would've just been a copy of the stanley. the test plane would advance the cap iron forward as you tightened it. sometimes that's the case on old planes and it's a matter of scuffing the cap and iron so that they have more friction to each other than the screw does to where it touches the iron (as it's turning, it pushes one toward or away from the other), but it seems like that should be accounted for on a premium plane, and maybe it was.

but interesting that you mention darkening the cap iron - I really struggled to see setting it at first.

 

[D_W]

Never tried, but always wanted. I have fear it is somewhat hard to find the proper one. Should it be byproduct of oil, the paraffine one? Or wax as bee wax? Modern candles are full of other stuff, and they are often packed in plastic...

paraffin. If you get it in a bar, let the corner of the bar wear a little and instead of squiggling, you can just pull it in one quick stroke from the back of the plane to the front.

It's like sharpening - do it before you start to notice that it needs to be done, like estimate 2/3rds of the way, and then it becomes part of the work rhythm and you won't get the skipping feeling that can mislead, leave little ridges at the starts of cuts and make it seem like a plane needs to be resharpened when it doesn't.

when I still had a bronze LN 4 (don't now), it would warm enough so that pulling the paraffin across the bottom back to front (it won't harm the iron, so there's no need to lift it from one spirited stroke) would result in the wax melting to the bottom of the plane.

Not sure about there, but most candles here are paraffin. Gulf wax sold here for canning used to be the typical do-all for drawers in kitchens and chests, etc - people used it because they already had it for canning and it was really cheap. It's still really cheap.

 

[D_W]

I'd second the recommendation for a #7 that thikone made, too. I'd probably have a try plane first, but if means aren't an issue, I like a metal jointer better than a wooden one.

Second double iron plane that I made was a 28" jointer with a 2 1/2 inch iron. I figured I'd use it a lot. The third plane was a 24" try plane (listed as a "long" plane in some listings, with try 20-22", but whatever - kind of the same thing for us - I think 22 and 24 are both nice).

I haven't used the wooden jointer since making the first try plane. The things where a fine set jointing plane are useful are just easier to do with a decent metal plane - there's a bunch of little nitpicky things that I could mention, but i'll spare everyone. a 22 inch really flat metal plane will match what a 28" wooden plane will do for accuracy on long work, which is why I mentioned the ultima wooden plane being more like a try plane than a jointer.

A 7 "puts it to your forearm" a lot less than a good quality wooden jointer, too.

Raffo on here mentioned to me that he'd read somewhere that there are accounts of the jointers being hard on workmen or complained about - I'm just not much of a reader, so I don't know where they are. But it's not a "today I totally wore myself out" thing, it's more of a "I could see this becoming a problem over time just like a cabinet factory worker could develop repetitive injury grabbing a heavy duty stapler".

A fine -working metal jointer and a stronger cutting try plane make a really nice combination.

I'm not in england, so I can't get the dirt cheap try planes that show up there needing nothing more than a little refitting. The best try planes and jack planes that I've gotten have all come from England, too. Really good makers making a good plane end to end here disappeared long before 1900, and the early-mid 1800s planes just aren't common compared to the "everywhere" ohio, auburn, etc, planes that were sort of a cut-quality plane other than the wood.

 

[thikone]

I was reminiscing the other day looking through old "definitive statements" from Chris Schwarz where he was touting an 8 1/2 pounds smoother and a 12 pound shooting plane. it was just the thing, completely detached from any historical reality, but everyone was saying they used hand tools a lot without actually doing it that much. Chris had some segment about that long ago where he wanted to make a small simple workbench and he got to the point of cutting the ends off and got out a circular saw because it was too physically demanding to crosscut. Anyone working by hand will eventually crosscut something large with a rip saw just out of laziness for not wanting to walk back across the shop and figure out how much faster it cuts in big wood than a crosscut saw, but Chris never burdened himself with too much do vs. talk about.

Oh boy, I'm so glad that it took me ONLY a year or two to find the proper authority, like The English Woodworker. I did fall into the trap of bevel up planes superiority and table saw necessity after watching American woodworkers and reading American magazines. Americans are good at selling anything, . Construction table saw I sold pretty fast after I built workbench for hand tools with it in my apartment. But I still have BUS, LAJ, BUJ (bevel up planes of sizes that of #4, #5 and #7). They are even useful at times, mostly to delay sharpening of double iron planes... Shooting plane I use all the time though, it has the same iron as those other 3, but it is only for the end grain.

There is a huge difference for me, between "this is how I did it first time and it worked out alright for me" and "this is how I learned from my father and this is why previous generations found this approach better than that and this in this particular situation".

Sawing I find more demanding than planing, at least ripping for a few meters is. Band saw was a bliss, got small 10" quite soon. Sawing and planing also led me to conclusion that it is very nice to be ambidextrous. I try to teach the same operation to the right hand and the left hand if I can. And rhythm and breathing and all other yoga or martial arts like things that you can find useful. Not as substitute for proper technique, but it helps of course.

 

[Derek Cohen (Perth Oz)]

Lee Valley managed to convince people that the bevel up planes were swiss army knives. Their incompetent internal advisory group seems to have convinced most folks that cap irons are too hard to set. I guess they must be - it takes about 1 week to learn to do them, which is too much for folks? I don't know. It's just the wrong mindset in most of these companies that are obsessed with CNC type production and can't get a handle on trusting hand and eye. I've encountered the same thing on the knife forums "you can't heat treat in a forge and get reliable results!". It's kind of a shame - I get how it happens, but it's still a shame.

At any rate, several people pushed on LV's behalf along with the goofy "high bench" concept, which is completely detached from reality and body mechanics, but I get it if the bench is a staging area for chest height joinery - it's not a good thing for planing. Most of us bought and tried the planes - instant success is deceptive in that it doesn't communicate how poor the planes are for anything beyond smoothing and even at that, they're incapable compared to a stanley plane with a cap iron.

The pressure to make bevel up plane for LN, which appeared later, probably came from folks who said "I want a bevel up plane, but I want it to have stanley-ish aesthetics instead of LV aesthetics", and maybe some complaints about the handles.

The comment about using them if you're not going to do much planing isn't snark - most people don't do anything more than smoothing in any volume, and if that's the case, a 62 isn't as good as a 5 1/2, but success will be instant and maybe use will never be often enough with a 5 1/2 to really figure out how to get the most out of it.

Not so, David. While I thank you especially for helping many of us learn to use the chipbreaker to control tearout, this was only discussed in seriousness on the fori from 2012/3 onward. The day of the BU plane preceded this time. There was no con by Veritas or LN - a high angle BU plane planed rings around a BD plane without a chipbreaker. I was one to use a high angle BU plane very seriously when planing interlocked timbers, and it worked very well. It has not suddenly stopped working very well - it is simply that a closed up chipbreaker can control tearout … in highly interlocked grain … better. My go to preference is a chipbreakered BD plane, but I will still happily use a BU plane in selective situations. The forte of the BU plane is taking fine shavings, and it is easier to set one up to do this than a BD plane. A LA Jack makes a fine shooting plane, and preferred in this task over a BD #5.

Having said all this, if I was making small stuff, such as boxes, then the LA Jack would be my choice. However, if making bigger stuff, such as tables and cabinets, then I would get a #7 jointer.

Regards from Perth

Derek