RWW 107 Lie Nielsen and WoodRiver Hand Plane Shootout

hi everybody welcome back to the Renaissance woodworker welcome back into my shop so a few weeks ago I threw down the gauntlet and I did an out-of-the-box test of my new wood river number three plane and you remember I took about 10 minutes maybe a little bit more just to remove all the packing grease and things like that off of it and tried to give it a trial run without touching the blade and again I said this several times is probably not what you should do you should probably end up doing some honing but we've all done it and I wanted to see how it performed well I had a few issues here and there I was getting a nice thicker shaving but considering the number three is really more of a smoothing plane I wanted to make sure that I could get really really gossamer thin shavings ended up being not quite as I wanted it to go but still a workable plane for a deeper cut well what I did is pull the blade out I went over my stones I did just a quick flattening I use a diamond stone what is it medium DMT diamond stone and did a couple of quick passes with it realize that I've got a pretty flat back so I worked until I had a consistent scratch pattern I worked it up to a thousand grit stone and then up to an 8,000 grit water stone till I got a nice polished surface on the back then I went over to my thousand grit Shapton stone established a micro bevel the blade is the geometry is 25 degrees so I just put a micro bevel somewhere around the maybe 29 28 degree mark I did it freehand so I can't really tell you it was a little higher and then I went over to my 8,000 grit stone up the bevel just a little bit more an added kind of a tertiary bevel just a little bit steeper than that this is a technique that Rob Cosman actually espouses and I felt at that point that the blade was ready to go all told maybe about five minutes of which maybe four of that was actually spent lapping the back of the blade what I have left is what's in my hand at this point got a piece of walnut here that is relatively flat this was flattened on a power jointer run through I'm sorry I wasn't even flattened on a jointer it was run through a powered planer and it's actually been sitting for a little while so I probably have just a little bit of a cup here with just shifting humidity in my shop but it's relatively flat so we're going to come back and try this blade out again and basically I want to continually advance the blade until I start to get a shaving like I just did and now I'm getting really nice thin thin shavings I can see that the board is not perfectly flat but what I'm doing is removing those mill marks and it's evening out the board and getting it flatter all right pretty consistent across the board here but what I'm what I'm seeing now is I'm not taking a shaving all the way across the length of the blade so I need to use my lateral adjustment lever back here to even out the cut I'm a little too heavy on the left-hand side of the plane so what you do is you push your lever as you're holding it upside down you push your lever towards the direction where the blade is high there we go getting a shaving off of both corners of the blade or both sides of the blade and getting more of a full width now I'm getting gossamer-thin shavings that are actually so thin that static electricity is causing them to stick to my fingers more importantly I have a beautiful polished walnut surface on this side of the board you can see what the the board looks like coming out of a powered planer this side you can see oh my goodness and feel the polished surface of walnut so that's what happens after you have polished the blade really really well performing plane that you can be extraordinarily proud of the finish that you get off of it so I got a lot of responses to that blog post many people who were excited to hear it some people who were concerned that it was still a plane that was not made in the USA and made over in China yeah there's no question I mean that's one of the reasons this plane is going to be cheaper some of the materials may not be as robust and frankly the labor that made it might not have cost as much all those responses and many of you actually went out and and picked up a plane or two yourself and I want to say thank you because many of you actually use that affiliate link that I put into the website in fact a heck of a lot more of you use that affiliate link than I ever thought would so as to give back the money that I frankly made in commissions at woodcraft on affiliate was put towards another toy to complete this experiment what I have here is a Lee Nielsen number for bronze smoother so again thank you all very much for using that affiliate link being a selfless as I am I reinvested those funds back into the show and purchased a Lee Nielsen smoother now this plane was got it on sale for I think $119 this plane was three hundred and fifty dollars so sizable difference more than twice the difference this just came in the mail today I pulled it out of the box and I've done absolutely nothing to it now there is a note in the box when you get it from Lee Nielsen saying that the cap screw has been tightened down during shipment so nothing shifts so you do have to come back and loosen that up a turn maybe a half a turn so that's what I'll do first come back about a quarter of a turn by the way you guys have never heard of elk head tools this is an elk head tool screwdriver this is a flat bladed screwdriver I'll be talking more about these in the blog in the future but the the guys that elk head tools actually sent me a set of a Phillips head and a flat blade screwdriver to try out and of course to promote on the blogs I've had it now for a little less than week any time I reach for a Phillips head or flathead I'm grabbing this the cocobolo handle is beautiful fits perfectly in my hand the machining on the brass ferrule and everything is just perfect is the most beautiful set of screwdrivers you'll ever see anyway that's not what we're talking about that'll be later on but thanks guys over at elk head I appreciate you guys sending those over so now I backed off the the cap screw here just a little bit and what that does is release some of the tension so now you can move the adjustment wheel a little bit more and what I want to do is advance the plane or excuse me the blade okay till I get close till I give it some blade projecting because what I want to do is go ahead and do the lateral adjustment to make sure the blade is straight in here and I can see a little bit more protruding on this side so I'll move the adjustment lever over and just kind of even it out by eye now right off the bat the first thing I'll say is this plane is definitely more massive now certainly this is a number four this is the number three they are going to be decidedly smaller but what I notice is the length is about the same obviously the number four is wider it's a it's a beefier plane Plus this is made out of bronze so it is going to be heavier so there's there is definitely a difference this is probably half again as much half again is heavier than the Wood River plane but more importantly I notice in the adjustment wheel the adjustment wheel has absolutely no well very little play from advancing and retracting the blade and basically what I mean is as you advance the blade it catches the toggle the Y toggle here and it moves the blade out as you back it out there is a little bit of free rotation till the the knurled nut can catch the other side of the toggle and start pulling it out but it's completely smooth no slop whatsoever this plane is very very smooth but there is a lot more well not a lot but maybe another extra swipe to pull up that slack the lateral adjuster while they look very much the same the positive feedback I feel from the Lee Neilson is is much higher I can definitely feel like I've got more control over it the lateral adjuster on the Wood River does feel just a little bit jumpy I had to kind of I went too far first then I had to back up and readjust the lateral gesture and the Lee Nielsen is smooth all the way through when I was able to just sneak right up and get it perfectly aligned now I'm going to back the blade off again we'll work the other side of the board here that hasn't been planed yet I'll advance the blade until I get a shaving now remember I have not touched this blade what you just saw from the Wood River again was a sharpened blade okay I really backed the iron out okay a little bit of Shaving there getting a whisper thin shaving out of this but obviously I'm not perfectly aligned yet yeah a little too proud on one side you're just a little bit of an adjustment there we go now I need to flatten out this side of the board a little bit more which I probably shouldn't be trying to do with a plane that's taking like a thousandth of an inch shaving here we go I just pushed the blade or the adjustment of a forward maybe a quarter of a turn just to take a little bit more bite off so I can flatten this board out faster I'm getting full with shavings though that are still maybe I'm taking a thousand and a half thickness shaving here okay that whole boards pretty flat so I'm going to back the blade out again and sneak back into the cut there we go I feel like I have just a little bit more control over the adjustment about how far I advance the blade with this plane kind of the same thing I was talking about with a lateral adjustment but the key is I have not touched this plane in fact if you there was no grease to remove now Lee Nielsen will apply I believe it's just a lacquer finish on here just for rust prevention you should go ahead and remove that grab some mineral spirits or lacquer thinner and pull that off and then you know oil the plane or wax the plane just like you normally should but there are no adverse marks on this board I have not I've done nothing what you what I have done you've seen here so technically what are you getting for that 150 extra dollars there's no question when I compare these side-by-side this feels better bill now that's hard to say because the the weight difference this just feels more massive I personally do like the feeling of the handle quite a bit more this front knob is a little bit bigger fits my hand I had pretty big hands fits my hand better the tote has a cleaner feel to it and the back curves back and kind of hugs my hand a little bit more now obviously just looking at these you can see the designs of the moving parts the frogs and such are really based off well this one came after so we'll say this is based off or actually they're both based off the Stanley bedrocks series however the machining the tolerances on the Li Neilson the quality of the hardware it's really what makes up for that price difference you know the results speak for themselves this is the side that was playing by Lily Neilson with nothing done to it this is the side that was playing by the Wood River after a honed and sharpened iron I can't tell the difference can you guys I see no difference whatsoever well okay I've got a few more plane tracks on the Lee Nielson side that's just because I haven't done anything to the blade I put really round off the corners the most minut of camber on this on this blade that's something that could be done on the Lu Neilson with maybe 15 seconds of honing part of just my normal honing process anyway but I can definitely feel no difference from one side of the board to the other and they say that the human finger can tell a thousands of an inch difference and I don't feel anything so results speak for themselves which means we're kind of in a dead heat here except for the fact that this took 30 seconds to get that this took about 15 minutes of cleaning reassembling and then another maybe five minutes of sharpening to get there so 20 minutes 157 dollars cheaper no time 150 dollars more expensive you know when you look at it that way the word River seems like a pretty good deal however I do think that with the tolerances of the Lee Nielson plane the better as I feel the better adjustability the more control over the adjustability in practice you know we're just dealing with this simple little board here very straight grain no real issues in practice with real-world boards with switching grain figure of things like that I think the more massive nature of this plane the easier ability the more fine-tuned adjustability of it will produce better results in the long run also in the long run I think this plane is just going to be more durable and lasts a heck of a lot longer and it looks really really cool so you know we're talking a very very close difference there's no question this is a better made plane it's going to last longer but I'll leave it up to you guys is it worth 150 dollars more than the Wood River personally in my opinion I think it's worth every penny you get to support a local a local business a North American business you get a plane that my grandkids will be getting just as much enjoyment out of and hopefully their grandkids will get just as much enjoyment out of once I get this honed and sharpened I think that we're going to even get an even higher level than what we're getting with the Wood River if they're at a dead heat right now and this one's been sharpened and this one hasn't what's this going to perform like once it's been sharpened and I can tell you with my Miley Neilson jack plane that I have when that's fully that's sharpened and honed and kept very very sharp that performs like a dream I think the difference when we may run into is even the resistance that I have to take to push the board across or push the plane across will be even less so again I think it's extraordinarily exciting that wood River is producing planes of this quality it's it's a great option for people on a tighter budget frankly I would not have spent I'll be perfectly honest I wouldn't have spent the $350 on this smoothing plane because I have a really nice veritas bevel up smoothing plane I have a beautiful vintage coffin wooden smoothing plane that I absolutely love I have a number three Wood River smoothing point I've got enough smoothing planes that I probably wouldn't have spent it on that however now that I have this in my hands I it's a it's a expense that I would probably consider again now I say that because this was basically funded by affiliate commissions thanks to you the listeners so again I know I've said it several times already thank you for that that's really what I plan to do has you know affiliate commissions and things like that come in I have a full-time job that pays the bills in the mortgage and the the proceeds from that the hand tool school helped me to make my way in this world if you will anything extra whether it's sponsorships from tool manufacturers Adsense revenue any of that stuff is really being reinvested into the show and if things like a new camera the tripod that's sitting on is brand new and I'd like to reinvest in tools so I can show you guys here's really what the difference is about so kind of getting off topic there but the Lee Nielsen head the head with a wood River really very very close I'm going to sharpen this thing up and you'll see it in use in future episodes I think the Lee Nielsen will lengthen the gap a little bit once it's been perfectly cold you

Channel: RenaissanceWW

Views: 101,139

Rating: 4.5428572 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, hand tools, hand planes

Id: PK7hWGLKeTY

Length: 20min 24sec (1224 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 27 2013