lie inelsen planes

[thedeeredude]

Does anyone have any lie nielsen planes.  I really want one just need a good excuse. ;D

[Ironwood]

No excuse needed if you really want one. They are nice, my friend is a dealer, I don't actually own one myself.

Ironwood

[low_48]

I bought a low angle jack plane a couple of years ago. Give it a swipe or two on a 3000 grit water stone, and cut shavings right out of the box. It's a beautiful thing!!!!!!   If you consider your time worth anything, tuning other planes that come as junk will work out to be about the same money. The Lie Nielsen's use really good steel in the blade and thicker steel as well. Really the only other one to consider worth buying today, is the Lee Valley. Of course we are talking new planes.

[Dodgy Loner]

I've had my eye on their low angle smoother.  Need to get my shop ready to move into before I start buying tools to supply it, though :-[.

[Dave Shepard]

I've had my eye on some Lie-Nielsen planes. I'll keep fettling the old ones for now. I am sure they are worth the money, very nice tools.


Dave

[Don_Papenburg]

I have used LN planes before and they are nice . But I have a lot of Baileys but I would by LN if I needed another one.   I have a GreatNeck no 5 pattern that I thought was junk ,then I spent some time sharpening and truing it, surprise it can be used as a real tool now .  I do use it a lot .  so do not pass a deal on an off brand if you are short cash.  I gave less than $5 for the GN plane on a sale.

[Dodgy Loner]

My first plane was a post-WWII No.3 without so much as a brand name on it.  No matter how hard much I fiddled with the mechanisms or how sharp I got the iron, I couldn't make it work properly.  So I bought a shiny new Groz No.4 smoother.  Same results, which was even more frustrating.  Finally, a friend of mine gave me an old pre-war No.5 Craftsman jack plane, and it's been used on every woodworking project since.  It required a lot of work to get it in usable condition, but now it's a great plane.  After that, I bought a LV low-angle block plane, and it was like a revelation.  Worked great right out of the box, all I had to do was hone the iron.  My next purchase was a Stanley Sweetheart No.4, which put my perfectly good jack plane to shame after an evening of tuning up.

Based on my experience, new top-quality planes are worth every penny.  New bargain-brand planes and any vintage plane made after WWII is pure junk.  I don't know how to date vintage planes accurately, but here's my rule of thumb: if it doesn't have real rosewood totes, save yourself the frustration.  Totes made of painted/stained beech or even plastic (shudder) indicate that cust-cutting measures have been taken in the manufacturing process, which WILL affect the plane's performance.

[Don_Papenburg]

Dogy , That is why I thought that the Great Neck plane would be a pile of junk. I had some other GN tools er toys  you could not call them tools or use them for the designed purpose.  Maybe my plane was a reject from their assembly line ,someone screwed up and made a good batch of useable planes.

[Dodgy Loner]

The reason cheap planes are poor purchases is their inconsistencies - ie, the sole may not be flat, the iron may not be properly tempered, the cap iron may not fit tightly over the iron, the frog may not mate properly with the sole, the iron may not mate properly with the frog, the lever cap and/or adjustment mechanism may be poorly designed and/or poorly constructed...  There are so many things that can go wrong with a plane that precise manufacturing is a key.  As the saying goes, though, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then.  When a manufacturing process is highly variable, probability dictates that every now and then everything will just happen to work out right.  Sounds like you lucked into one of those planes where everything accidentally worked out right ;).  I haven't been as fortunate, so I've found that purchasing quality planes is the more reliable option.

[MSU_Keith]

The plane collecting bug caught me a few years ago.  I have several pre and post war Stanleys both bench and block planes along with a some wooden body planes.  I inherited a bunch of Lie Nelson planes from my father who was into them from the beginning.

The LN bench planes are nice but a good condition, well tuned Stanley (or Baileys, Millers Falls) can be just as nice.  One thing about an older plane is you learn a lot from tuning it up.  Where the Lie Nelsons really shine is the specialty planes that aren't readily available (or cheap) as a used model.  The shoulder planes, scraper planes and the edge plane are all great tools.

My new interest is Japanese planes.  Recently bought an old plane and learned to tune it.  Its a completely different feel and produces an amazingly thin shaving and smooth surface.  I bought a relatively cheap one but these things can get incredibly expensive for a simple chunk of metal wedged into an old block of oak.  Well worth trying one out though.

[Dodgy Loner]

I agree about the old planes - as frustrating as it was to learn to tune them properly (especially when I was starting out with junk), I learned a lot more about plane mechanics than if I had started out on the top.

[Don_Papenburg]

Dodgy , the best thing about it is I did not want it but it came with a bunch of other stuff I did want . I had plans of tossing it in the junk .  The only thing that saved it was it had a nice polish and I hated to throw out shinny tools.

[Radar67]

I agree about the old planes - as frustrating as it was to learn to tune them properly

Now you have to start a thread to explain the procedures for tuning an old plane. I have a couple of old Bailey No 5s I need to clean up and put back in service.

[thedeeredude]

Go out and buy a book called Hand Tool Essentials from the editors of Popular Woodworking.  Good info on tuning old planes and using old planes.

[Dan_Shade]

what's a good sized plane for starting into the handtool world?  I look at the planes, and there are many types and sizes, what's the best "all around" model?

[Dave Shepard]

What are you trying to do? Each one has a special purpose. I would say a #3 or #4 is going to be the most commonly found plane at tag sales. #6, #7 and #8 are good for jointing long boards. A #9 1/2 or #60, both block planes, are good for touching up small details. For timber framing I have a #60, which is the low angle block, for end grain. A #3 for cleaning up tenons, as well as a #10 carriage makers plane for cleaning up to the shoulders. It's a nice, rare, and valuable plane, but a $10 wooden rabbet works just as well. ;)


Dave

[Dodgy Loner]

I think the best plane to start out with is the No. 5 jack plane (ie, jack of all trades).  It's longer than a smoothing plane, but shorter than a jointer.  It can handle both tasks well, though.  A block plane is also an essential tool.  I went for more than a year with just those two planes.  Be careful, though - it's a very slippery slope ;D.

Radar - next time I pick up an old plane, I'll take pics of the restoration process and post them here.  None of my current planes are in need of restoration ;).

[Radar67]

Thanks DL, will be looking forward to it. I've been doing a little research on the net and found a few interesting pages about it.

[Raphael]

I got the 10¼ about half way into timber framing my house, well worth every penny.
I've also got their scrub plane.