I'm forming my Christmas wish list. Although I may not get it, I'd like to have one really good smoothing plane. I'm looking for a great general purpose plane that is "figured wood friendly".
Yes, I know there are a group of smoothers out there for various tasks but I'm just seeking the consensus recommendation for a new (no antiques please) plane that is a great "go to" smoother for even difficult woods.
>Tommy I think you are going to have to go with a LV bevel up and a couple blades for it. I haven't got one but I have heard good things about it. I don't plan on giving up my teeks any time soon but may add that one to my ever crowding shelf.
>Your site looks like it was a labor of love. Very nicely done.
To me that's an ugly (aestetically challenged) tote shape. Do you know anything about how it was designed: why it is the way it is? Is it supposed to be ergonomically therapuetic? How's it actually feel to hold and work for a few hours?
I agree the tote is ugly - give me the aesthetics of a classic Stanley any day. Mention the LV tote on this forum and you will start an avalanche of opinions. There is the "old" tote and this, the "new" tote. I did discuss these in my BUS review.
The short answer is that I find the tote comfortable among the larger planes (e.g. the BUS), where the plane just needs to be pushed forward as the high mass holds it down. Lighter planes (such as the LA Smoother) need to be pushed downward and would likely benefit from the Stanley tote, which is angled on the diagonal (the "old" LV tote is thinner in the mid section than the "new" tote and can be gripped more firmly for more downward pressure). This becomes even more apparent when you plane on higher (more modern) benches.
>For me it's definetly the Lie-Nielsen 4-1/2 smoother with the High Angle Frog. Works like a charm for me. The HAF makes a big difference in figured woods.
I've never tried any low angle planes, so I can't compare performance between the two.
>I'm just starting out learning about handplanes and your review is like a course in and of itself. I'll be printing it out to digest on the train on the way home tonight from NYC. Thanks, Erik
>A plain bevel-down smoother maybe a L-N either maybe with the 50 degree frog.
There has never been a plane, nor will there ever be a plane, that will handle all figured woods. You need scrapers in your arsenal. It's the un-sexiest tool alive but a lifesaver if you know how to use one and, more than that, appreciate pure simplicity and effectiveness.
Forget all the testimonials about planing a figured board or two in a test environment virtually tear-out free. I'll eat an inventory of hats if somebody experiences this kind of performance day in and day out in a real working shop.
Day in and day out the LA Bevel-up design delivers on tear-out free (or nearly so) performance. Simply use an iron ground at the correct angle and you'll get virtually tear-out free performance that you can't get at a fixed 50º. (BTW, My angle choices are: 37º, 50º and 65º - all total cut angles.)
Finally, fixing the tear out you'll get at 50º may, on several of the woods I've compared this on, require most of the rest of your natural life-time to fix with a scraper. Ok, perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit, but not much.
The tear out will be so big and so deep that fixing with with a card scraper will take a seriously long time, and would, I expect, still require a lot of time to remove with a scraper plane.
Cliff-notes version: Using the right cut angle initially, which is a lot easier and cheaper with LA bevel-up designs will save you a lot of time later - scraper or not.
(No offense intended, but I thought I'd chime in my two cents too.)
>I agree totally. Either the LN 4.5 with HA frog or even the LN 5.5 with HA Frog. The 5.5 is 1.5 times the weight of the 4.5 so the extra heft helps out with the figured hard woods.
>Gorgeous plane that. I received the flyer last night, and sat on my sofa in wonderment after reading it. I want one of these in #4-1/2, #5-1/2, and #7 sizes!
>...I have a couple of Bridge City layout tools that I love. I wouldn't have bought such pricey tools but they were lovely gifts. However, the price of their hand planes is out of reach. I spent hundreds less for my Delta DJ-20 jointer than that plane. It's very pretty but I'll need to stay within the bounds of the common man budget-wise. Thanks for the suggestion though.
The only smoother I use is a Knight coffin bedded at 45. Granted, I don't use a lot of really figured stuff but if I start going that route, a 55 degree will be the first thing on my list. You could get a 50 degree coffin smoother and an extra iron. Put a 5 degree back-bevel on the extra iron and you are away to the races for a lot less than a LN.
>I am trying to convince my wife that she needs one of those for Christmas but so far all I get is a blank stare although the stare seems to get a little more hostile every time I mention it.
I have both a Lee Valley low angle smoother and a Lie-Nielsen #4. The one I always reach for is the Lie-Nielsen. I find it is hands down the better plane for smoothing long grain. I use it on all kinds of hardwoods and the occasional softwood; it handles everything with ease: figured grain, reversing grain and every other troublesome wood. Believing what I read around here and elsewhere, I bought a high angle frog for it--I've never had to use it. With a sharp iron, a light cut, and the proper technique it has easily done all I've asked of it.
Make no mistake, the Lee Valley is a wonderful plane. I use it as a miter plane on my shooting board and it excells at that. But I find it doesn't do as well as my Lie-Nielsen on long grain.
>Alan, just curious. Are you using the standard 25 degree iron in the LV bevel-up smoother?
Given what you said, it seems you're taking about a 25 degree iron at 12 degrees bedding. If so, it would seem unfair to compare a 45 deg LN to a 37 deg LV - regardless of style - bevel up or down. (It would be much like comparing the 50 deg frog with the 45 - and finding the 45 comes up lacking in tougher grain situations...)
Using irons sharpened at higher angles, say 35-55 degrees, will make it work a lot better at long grain. The total angle of cut has more to do with surface finish than any other factor that I've seen - both in experience and in reading others' experiences.
Perhaps you're comparing equal angles, but it didn't sound that way.
>On figured woods, sometimes a little less mass can help you feel out what's going on with the wood. Extra heft can just finish tearing out that chip you wanted in the wood.
I dunno... there's a lot of advice going in a variety of directions here. Woodies, (which I think are nice) a lot of LA plane suggestions (those are versatile planes) as well as infills, and the venerable 4.5 Personally, I think for smoothing, the 4.5 is nice, if you've already done the brunt of the work, and you're just final smoothing. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big guy, and I'm all for muscling through hard work, but at the end of the day, I reach for my old #3 sweetheart.
I don't know much about the gentleman asking the question, or about his experience. Personally, I think the versatility of the LA stuff is great, and I'm fast becoming a convert myself. But I'm surprised at your aversion to antiques, sir. Some of my best and very favorite planes are almost or over 100 years old. Buy a new blade, and one of the crop of new chipbreakers (LN or Hock both make very similar versions) and a Charlesworth book, and you'd be surprised at what you can learn.
Don't get me wrong here... At the end of the day, I'd have to recommend the low angle planes for versatility.
But I think you're selling yourself short, and you may be headed for a little disappointment. No one single plane is a magical cure-all. Many of us are aghast and awed at the things that are possible, only because we've been down so many other roads before. In the past 8 months, I've probably fettled close to a dozen different planes. Transitional, newer (circa 1960s) stanleys, 100 year old sweethearts, a High Angle LN #4... even an old infill. And last week, I ground the irons for the LN low angle jack. Still, there's a lot of knowledge to be gleaned from the old stuff, including how to properly listen to what the plane is telling you, and how to know when the blade has had it.
I don't know where you are, experience wise. For me, after those dozen or so planes, the 2 I reach for, almost always, are my old sweetheart #3, and an old 5 1/2, with an early 2 1/4" width blade. The Lie Nielsen HA4 is nice for weird stuff, sometimes. The 3 has a nice, tight throat, so it handles things pretty well, too. I'm starting to use the LA Jack more, but still... it's always with an eye to the lessons I learned on all my other planes.
>I'll second this choice. With its REALLY tight mouth and higher pitch this will handle figured wood in its sleep. Recently used mine on some very curly English sycamore with zero tear-out. The asthetic of the wooden plane as it glides over the surface is also wonderful.
You're not going to to get a clear answer here... but the good news is, the wood doesn't care whose plane it is. What's important is that you understand how wood fails, and choose the appropriate effective cut angle that will induce the type of failure you want. If the blade is sharp, held securely, and the cut angle is appropriate - you'll get the finish you want.
We come down heavily on the side of bevel-up planes. We feel strongly that it's a more versatile platform, and a more inherently stable one.
But - just about any plane can be made to perform virtually as well as any other.
Ever notice that we don't seem to talk about which chisels inherently cut better... just which ones have better edge retention? A plane is just a chisel in a holder - the mechanics of what's going on at the blade edge doesn't change with the manufacturer's label.
If you're going to work varied and figured woods - then you'll need to vary the the cut angles to produce the best finish. The only effective way to do that is to use multiple blades, or mutiple planes.
If using multiple blades: for bevel-up planes - you change the bevel angle, for bevel-down planes - you add a back-bevel and close the throat to compensate for the change in geometry. It's that straightforward.
For planes themselves - you're buying what fits your hands best, ease of adjustment, mass distribution, and some changes in basic mechanics (toe registration, blade widths, total weight), build quality, appearance, and of course - price. You're the only one who can determine which mix of those factors is the most important for you - no manufacturer nails them all.
