Veritas PM-V11 plane irons for Stanley & Record

[Jacob]

...I'm not sure why you're worried about what others do with their money or time.

Because the OP is asking "Are they really worth that kind of money?"
What do you think iNewbie - are they really worth that kind of money? Our OP would like to hear your opinion.

 

[D_W]

Sometimes we see a lot of concern for money that other people are spending. From the usual suspects. I think it's kind of goofy, too, but I get caught up in it sometimes ($500 - $1000 for krenov planes cranks me up a little bit). I doubt it will make much difference if someone buys nice tools and they build a lot, they'll waste a lot more money in supplies building things that aren't worth what the stock cost, unless you want to make things out of pine and poplar, paint them and give them fake wear.

Have a look at this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Late-Victoria ... 2681809996

If I really just wanted furniture, I'd do that - it'd be a lot smarter than making it. My wife wants a couple of things that cost enough in supplies that I wish I was just buying a few expensive plane irons.

 

[D_W]

...I'm not sure why you're worried about what others do with their money or time.

Because the OP is asking "Are they really worth that kind of money?"
What do you think iNewbie - are they really worth that kind of money? Our OP would like to hear your opinion.

The OP is never going to be able to answer that unless he gets one and tries it.

We're not talking about a $4000 infill plane.

 

[Trafalgar]

Sometimes we see a lot of concern for money that other people are spending. From the usual suspects. I think it's kind of goofy, too, but I get caught up in it sometimes ($500 - $1000 for krenov planes cranks me up a little bit). I doubt it will make much difference if someone buys nice tools and they build a lot, they'll waste a lot more money in supplies building things that aren't worth what the stock cost, unless you want to make things out of pine and poplar, paint them and give them fake wear.

Have a look at this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Late-Victoria ... 2681809996

If I really just wanted furniture, I'd do that - it'd be a lot smarter than making it. My wife wants a couple of things that cost enough in supplies that I wish I was just buying a few expensive plane irons.

You'd be hard pressed to build a dumbed down version in poplar for that piece's asking price. Makes spending a lot of money on tools and replacement irons seem even more absurd. Decent brasses alone, as pictured, would easily be over $250 though I guess if done in poplar you could put cheap big box crap on it -- still run $100 or so.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Brown furniture fetches no money. 2007 I sold an exquisite mahogany roll top bureau that my mother bought in 1975 for £400, it fetched £800. It probably would have fetched two or three times that ten years before. The reason for its being so cheap? a computer wouldn't fit in it. The auctioneer told me that before he said anything else. Fashion is against it as well as often size - much of it won't fit in housing that's been built in the last two or three decades.

 

[Trafalgar]

It would sell for significantly more over here I think it's safe to say. Disappointed to see her asking prices are no longer on her website, but this lady moves a lot of pretty decent English antiques out of her Memphis shop. It would still be difficult to make one of these pieces at a price that would compete with the antique 'real thing.' You could make a little money, but not commensurate with the skill required to build most of these. Have to find a form that somebody wants that can't be found as an antique anywhere (hard to do in the internet age):

http://mfordcreech.com/furniture.html

Of course the Cuban mahogany used to make most of these antiques is simply unavailable now, and Honduran usually a poor substitute.

 

[iNewbie]

...I'm not sure why you're worried about what others do with their money or time.

Because the OP is asking "Are they really worth that kind of money?"
What do you think iNewbie - are they really worth that kind of money? Our OP would like to hear your opinion.

He first asked if anyone had upgraded their irons. You already posted you have no experience of them but suggest they're not worth it. Charlie is probably the same - hasn't had one.

Are they worth the money? I guess they're worth it to anyone who wants to actually buy one.

 

[Trafalgar]

I demo'd a PM-V11 chisel. Based on that demo, I'd say they aren't worth it, but it's moot anyway because everybody has a different measure of 'worth' as my previous posts address. Perfectly fine chisel but nothing to arrange a girl jumping out of a cake over.

Anybody with the need to scratch an itch is usually going to scratch it. I'd rather buy a dozen golf balls that promise 15 more yards in distance through the bag. They never do, but the manufacturer contorts the statistics from some machine that tells you they will and still meet USGA criteria for distance in a 'legal' golf ball. It's a bunch of marketing hoo-hah of course, but people do fall for it. I actually don't any more but admit to having been intrigued a time or two in the past. Pretty cheap intrigue though -- you still need golf balls on a much more frequent basis than you ever would a plane iron, so you spend five more bucks than you otherwise would have just to see. If you have a slow swing speed a ball that spins a little less will go farther but you can't make them stop on the green. A lot of people don't care, they just want to be able to say they can hit a seven iron 170 yards, It's better to hit it 160, and high, rather than 170 comparatively low and screaming through the green. There is no real trade-off. Better players buy a ball that spins they way they want it to and has an overall trajectory that fits their eye. Raw distance is not a problem. Same with a woodworker -- an iron that goes a little farther is not a game changer, well not unless a couple of 90 second honings avoided during a work session is considered a game changer. Surely, this can't be the case can it? That's all we're talking about, a couple or three fewer honings during any given day. Five to seven lousy minutes. Big. Fat. Deal.

 

[Jacob]

....

Are they worth the money? I guess they're worth it to anyone who wants to actually buy one.

:lol:
What if someone says they are not worth the money - might that stop someone wanting to buy one?

 

[Noel]

I demo'd a PM-V11 chisel. Based on that demo, I'd say they aren't worth it, but it's moot anyway because everybody has a different measure of 'worth' as my previous posts address. Perfectly fine chisel but nothing to arrange a girl jumping out of a cake over.

Anybody with the need to scratch an itch is usually going to scratch it. I'd rather buy a dozen golf balls that promise 15 more yards in distance through the bag. They never do, but the manufacturer contorts the statistics from some machine that tells you it will and still meet USGA criteria for distance in a 'legal' golf ball. It's a bunch of marketing hoo-hah of course, but people do fall for it. I actually don't any more but admit to having been intrigued a time or two in the past. Pretty cheap intrigue though -- you still need golf balls on a much more frequent basis than you ever would a plane iron, so you spend five more bucks than you otherwise would have just to see. If you have a slow swing speed a ball that spins a little less will go farther but you can't make them stop on the green. A lot of people don't care, they just want to be able to say they can hit a seven iron 170 yards, It's better to hit it 160, and high, rather than 170 comparatively low and screaming through the green. There is no real trade-off. Better players buy a ball that spins they way they want it to and has an overall trajectory that fits their eye. Raw distance is not a problem. Same with a woodworker -- an iron that goes a little farther is not a game changer, well not unless a couple of 90 second honings avoided during a work session is considered a game changer. Surely, this can't be the case can it? That's all we're talking about, a couple or three fewer honings during any given day. Five to seven lousy minutes. Big. Fat. Deal.

Remember square drivers and all the other junk that comes onto the market....best investment in golf is learning. 6 lessons may knock a stroke or two off your HC.
Learning a good sharping regime is good too.

 

[woodbrains]

Alan Peters used a Record plane and irons throughout his entire working life which included an apprenticeship in the then unmechanized Barnsley firm where all stock was hand processed. It didn't seem to hamper his output or his art. Except for those more or less forced to use harsh woods because of geographic locales, the whole thing is simply a nonissue. It's hard to imagine the prospect of being able to plane an extra thirty of forty minutes between honings is cause for such celebration and joy, yet it apparently is.

Hello,

Alan Peters had 4 irons for his plane, all sharpened up at the beginning of the day and changed out when dull to prevent having to sharpen and break the work cycle. I suppose if he had something that didn't need honing often it would amount to the same thing. I seem to remember him commenting on his dissatisfaction of the irons quality. Looks like you picked the wrong subject to illustrate your point; it is entirely the opposite of what you are saying.

For abrasive wood, I think PMv11 is definitely advantageous. I once had a terrible time trying to plane some super hard stuff. It took half a dozen strokes and the iron actually curled at the edge. I bought a Hock A2 cryo iron and the problem was solved. I'm not sure there is much argument to sticking with bog standard irons here. Incidentally, Hock A2 is bloody superb compared to other types I've tried.

Mike.

 

[D_W]

....

Are they worth the money? I guess they're worth it to anyone who wants to actually buy one.

:lol:
What if someone says they are not worth the money - might that stop someone wanting to buy one?

If charlie tells you they're not worth the money, you may want to buy one and see for yourself.

If derek says they're not worth the money (he's usually too polite for that), then you're probably better off letting other people buy one and see for themselves.

I never found much in common between irons and irons, but my golf clubs were made when tools were pretty terrible (1980s) and they cost me $115. I love them. There is a lot less difference between them and new forged irons than there is between a V11 iron and a 1980s stanley iron. Or a record iron for that matter. Records irons are nice, but given a choice between the two and I'd prefer a V11 iron in a smoother. Record irons in anything more coarse. Even better is to make your own iron for a stanley plane - it's about 2 hours, ten dollars and you get exactly what you want.

You will sweat making one, though, and you may have to work for a week or so before you get to the good part of the iron.

 

[G S Haydon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7HjCFphaNk

Example of the different plane iron steels in action. What I liked most was how the Bailey adjustment found on the Lie-Nielsen is really effective on the move whereas the Norris adjustment on the Veritas looks awkward, as does the blade carrier set up. Could be due to David's experience with Stanley pattern planes but my experience with Norris style is similar, I did not find the Norris adjustment helpful.

 

[D_W]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7HjCFphaNk

Example of the different plane iron steels in action. What I liked most was how the Bailey adjustment found on the Lie-Nielsen is really effective on the move whereas the Norris adjustment on the Veritas looks awkward, as does the blade carrier set up. Could be due to David's experience with Stanley pattern planes but my experience with Norris style is similar, I did not find the Norris adjustment helpful.

I had 3 planes with the norris adjuster two weeks ago, now I have one (a big panel plane that a dealer fibbed about to me, so I'll probably have it forever to avoid eating the several hundred dollar difference in what I paid vs. what I should've). I could get used to it in a smoother, but in a way that it would still never be as good as a bailey plane in use, which is a shame, because the rest of the beech A5 planes (that are common as water) aspects are really nice. They're nice in proportion, they have strong (ugly, but strong) handles on them, and they aren't too heavy. Something about the iron bedding is bizarre - the tighter the lever cap, the deeper the cut, so even though the adjuster sucks, you can set it a tad light and then us the lever cap as micro adjust for depth just loosening and tightening it.

The adjuster itself, though, is like a 100 mile an hour first gear in city traffic - it's several times too fast, and then it has the habit of losing lateral adjustment when you adjust depth. LV's version of the adjuster is far finer and better working, but I still like stanley better. In all fairness, I don't use the LV custom plane enough to use it well, and it could be me on that one. I am so used to the proportions of a bailey plane that the LV plane feels a bit like a metal european plane to me (Charlie might be quite fond of it if he could spend the money on planes instead of expensive golf balls). I wish I could convince LV to make a dead-on copy of the stanley bailey plane, but they can use bubinga handles to make it theirs (not that I've ever called them to tell them that - being such a fan of the double iron, I think Vic Tesolin would have my number blocked if I tried to call anything other than customer service).

My two favorite bench planes of all time are the attached (I had to give a guy a princely sum for that plane, though ($40 - I think, which is highway robbery for a type 20), and it came with the only stanley iron that I've ever had that was too soft). I don't like that stanley just because it's supposed to be junk, but because it's nicer to use than any stanley 4 that I've ever used, and I'll bet I've had 15 of them. ....


And a #7 sorby bench plane that I snarfed off of the island and that is just about the finest display of cast iron loveliness that I've used outside of a lie nielsen plane (but there is something more honest about it, it's just nicer to use in actual work).

 

[Trafalgar]

Alan Peters used a Record plane and irons throughout his entire working life which included an apprenticeship in the then unmechanized Barnsley firm where all stock was hand processed. It didn't seem to hamper his output or his art. Except for those more or less forced to use harsh woods because of geographic locales, the whole thing is simply a nonissue. It's hard to imagine the prospect of being able to plane an extra thirty of forty minutes between honings is cause for such celebration and joy, yet it apparently is.

Hello,

Alan Peters had 4 irons for his plane, all sharpened up at the beginning of the day and changed out when dull to prevent having to sharpen and break the work cycle. I suppose if he had something that didn't need honing often it would amount to the same thing. I seem to remember him commenting on his dissatisfaction of the irons quality. Looks like you picked the wrong subject to illustrate your point; it is entirely the opposite of what you are saying.

For abrasive wood, I think PMv11 is definitely advantageous. I once had a terrible time trying to plane some super hard stuff. It took half a dozen strokes and the iron actually curled at the edge. I bought a Hock A2 cryo iron and the problem was solved. I'm not sure there is much argument to sticking with bog standard irons here. Incidentally, Hock A2 is bloody superb compared to other types I've tried.

Mike.

Well Mike, he had a work cycle to break (full order book) but apparently preferred not to hone on break. I'm certainly not claiming Record irons don't need to be honed. Four irons at roughly thirty to forty minutes each -- 120 to 160 minutes of planing in a busy day, sounds about right. He didn't plane wood for eight straight hours a day and you know it, nor did he use four irons every day, day in and day out.

I need this kind of dissatisfaction and poor performance:

https://www.google.com/search?q=alan+pe ... 78&bih=556

"I would like to own a Norris smoothing plane, but I would only put it on a shelf in the house and admire it, for I am pretty convinced that my $20 (he used symbol for the Pound) scraper plane would do the job equally well." From Cabinetmaking, the Professional Approach.

No secret that he scraped and sanded. Surfaces look fine to me, you? Or have we come to the point where a giant like Peters is now considered to be a piker because some pendejo shooting videos in the last 45 square feet of what's left of his garage informs us that anything less is a punt?

 

[D_W]

It's sort of strange that we bring up all of these guys who are no longer working and make assertions about what they were using. I couldn't say for sure they wouldn't use something modern and like it quite a bit. I don't know who would.

The first person I know of to start making A2 irons (and I'm sure there are others) is George Wilson. Alan Peters was an excellent and prolific maker. I don't know that he ever made anything George couldn't have (i'd be extremely surprised if there was anything). George likes A2 just fine and uses modern stones, and you know that where he worked, he was forced to do his work in public for a decade and a half using only hand tools.

Maybe there was someone doing A2 irons earlier than George (late 1980s or so), but I don't know who. George did them to give to the coopers who were also doing their work by hand, and were struggling with the edge life of 1080 steel irons. I know he's stated that online before (i hope). George could've been born in any era and would've been a master's master. He is obsessed and talented. You follow that, right? The coopers working white oak and with piece rate they were trying to make were annoyed with the irons they were given, and before the internet or LV free shipping, he made the decision to sneak them some irons out of A2. They were "real" coopers who came from scotland and lived in an unheated building making two barrels a day there, barely getting by before they found life a little easier working at the museum. Not the kind of guys who would make prima donna complaints.

I can't imagine that we have any clue what Alan Peters would use if he was given a full menu. I can't say he'd use anything other than stock irons, nor can anyone say that he wouldn't if something else was available.

 

[iNewbie]

I demo'd a PM-V11 chisel. Based on that demo, I'd say they aren't worth it, but it's moot anyway because everybody has a different measure of 'worth' as my previous posts address. Perfectly fine chisel but nothing to arrange a girl jumping out of a cake over.

Anybody with the need to scratch an itch is usually going to scratch it. I'd rather buy a dozen golf balls that promise 15 more yards in distance through the bag. They never do, but the manufacturer contorts the statistics from some machine that tells you they will and still meet USGA criteria for distance in a 'legal' golf ball. It's a bunch of marketing hoo-hah of course, but people do fall for it. I actually don't any more but admit to having been intrigued a time or two in the past. Pretty cheap intrigue though -- you still need golf balls on a much more frequent basis than you ever would a plane iron, so you spend five more bucks than you otherwise would have just to see. If you have a slow swing speed a ball that spins a little less will go farther but you can't make them stop on the green. A lot of people don't care, they just want to be able to say they can hit a seven iron 170 yards, It's better to hit it 160, and high, rather than 170 comparatively low and screaming through the green. There is no real trade-off. Better players buy a ball that spins they way they want it to and has an overall trajectory that fits their eye. Raw distance is not a problem. Same with a woodworker -- an iron that goes a little farther is not a game changer, well not unless a couple of 90 second honings avoided during a work session is considered a game changer. Surely, this can't be the case can it? That's all we're talking about, a couple or three fewer honings during any given day. Five to seven lousy minutes. Big. Fat. Deal.

And yet its a Big. Fat. Deal. for you someone else might do that. You'll be worrying about the glues they use, next.

 

[Trafalgar]

He used stock Record irons in a Record No. 7. Photos abound throughout his career of him holding the 7 and a fair number of them were taken close enough to see the Record brand on the iron. See Fine Woodworking, et al.

I have no idea what I'd be using if I lived to be 150. It has no bearing on anything. Peters had choices, and ones he could have afforded at points in his career. There is no indication that I am aware of that he ever went away from the Record.

 

[Trafalgar]

I demo'd a PM-V11 chisel. Based on that demo, I'd say they aren't worth it, but it's moot anyway because everybody has a different measure of 'worth' as my previous posts address. Perfectly fine chisel but nothing to arrange a girl jumping out of a cake over.

Anybody with the need to scratch an itch is usually going to scratch it. I'd rather buy a dozen golf balls that promise 15 more yards in distance through the bag. They never do, but the manufacturer contorts the statistics from some machine that tells you they will and still meet USGA criteria for distance in a 'legal' golf ball. It's a bunch of marketing hoo-hah of course, but people do fall for it. I actually don't any more but admit to having been intrigued a time or two in the past. Pretty cheap intrigue though -- you still need golf balls on a much more frequent basis than you ever would a plane iron, so you spend five more bucks than you otherwise would have just to see. If you have a slow swing speed a ball that spins a little less will go farther but you can't make them stop on the green. A lot of people don't care, they just want to be able to say they can hit a seven iron 170 yards, It's better to hit it 160, and high, rather than 170 comparatively low and screaming through the green. There is no real trade-off. Better players buy a ball that spins they way they want it to and has an overall trajectory that fits their eye. Raw distance is not a problem. Same with a woodworker -- an iron that goes a little farther is not a game changer, well not unless a couple of 90 second honings avoided during a work session is considered a game changer. Surely, this can't be the case can it? That's all we're talking about, a couple or three fewer honings during any given day. Five to seven lousy minutes. Big. Fat. Deal.

And yet its a Big. Fat. Deal. for you someone else might do that. You'll be worrying about the glues they use, next.

In a regular working day that involves a good bit of planing (not all do!) you might save two or three honings. That's about seven minutes, ten tops, and not even every day. Again: Big. Fat. Flippin'. Deal. It's meaningless. Most people spend that much time changing the shop's music play list, text-messaging your wife, Twitter, Facebook, this forum, adjusting the thermostat, and stuff like that. The whole thing is a joke. It really is.

 

[woodbrains]

Hello,

Charles, you chose Alan Peters as an example to prove Record irons are as good as we ever need. In fact he is actually an example of someone who decided to circumvent the need to hone during a work cycle. You might not think honing is a big deal, I agree, it isn't, but you must realise that some people, some professionals, in fact, do find it desirable to not have to hone at inopportune times. Perhaps the break in concentration is off putting, perhaps he had paperwork to do during his teabreak, perhaps he didn't want to get oil near his wood, I don't know, but there it is, he didn't want to hone during the working day. To be honest, neither do I. I like to have a sharpening session, do everything in the shop that needs it and then work. I go a stage further than having 4 irons, since I got my Record planes dirt cheap, I just put a dull plane down and pick up another, not even having to change out the double iron, I bearly miss a plane stroke. When I'm designing I don't sharpen pencils, I have a box ready to go, pick up a new one and away. Perhaps I'm daft, but Mr. Peters must have been daft too.

Mike.