I Need Help with Lie-Nielsen Planes

[Steven Harrison]

Record 8, Stanley and LN7, plus various woodies. LN7 is my preference; there are few times when the extra length and weight of the 8 is beneficial. With a humidity-controlled shop, the woodies are a good option as well.

I work in my garage so I've ruled out the woodies. Seems like the 7 is more useful generally than the 8 for you. Good to know and thanks for the reply

[Patrick Chase]

I work in my garage so I've ruled out the woodies. Seems like the 7 is more useful generally than the 8 for you. Good to know and thanks for the reply

I think this may reflect an incorrect impression about the stability of woodies. I also work in my garage, and it simply isn't an issue with my ECE jointer. Adequately seasoned, properly built woodies are more stable than you might think.

[Steven Harrison]

I think this may reflect an incorrect impression about the stability of woodies. I also work in my garage, and it simply isn't an issue with my ECE jointer. Adequately seasoned, properly built woodies are more stable than you might think.

Interesting, and good to know. I don't have much experience with them, but was told they can be temperamental. Maybe it was because they were planes that were homemade.

[Patrick Chase]

Interesting, and good to know. I don't have much experience with them, but was told they can be temperamental. Maybe it was because they were planes that were homemade.

They certainly can if the wood isn't properly seasoned, or is cut improperly (pith down the middle of the body, that sort of thing), etc. Any or all of those could be true of a plane made by somebody lacking in experience.

It's probably worth noting that over the course of history the vast majority of fine hand-tool woodworking was done in uncontrolled environments with wooden planes. They can't be *that* susceptible :-).

[Allen Jordan]

I have the LN 7 1/2 low angle jointer and it is amazing for edge jointing.

[Steven Harrison]

They certainly can if the wood isn't properly seasoned, or is cut improperly (pith down the middle of the body, that sort of thing), etc. Any or all of those could be true of a plane made by somebody lacking in experience.

It's probably worth noting that over the course of history the vast majority of fine hand-tool woodworking was done in uncontrolled environments with wooden planes. They can't be *that* susceptible :-).

Nothing like a daily dose of common sense

[Kurtis Johnson]

I think this may reflect an incorrect impression about the stability of woodies. I also work in my garage, and it simply isn't an issue with my ECE jointer. Adequately seasoned, properly built woodies are more stable than you might think.

I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt this is universally true geographically. I think he concern is more for areas of the country that see extreme fluctuations in temperature and humidity like four season midwest. I don't like to saturate old woodies with BLO either, and that might be the only salvation for a woodie in my uncontrolled garage. But I'm experimenting with it.

[Patrick Chase]

I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt this is universally true geographically. I think he concern is more for areas of the country that see extreme fluctuations in temperature and humidity like four season midwest. I don't like to saturate old woodies with BLO either, and that might be the only salvation for a woodie in my uncontrolled garage. But I'm experimenting with it.

Hopefully somebody like Steve will come along and give a more authoritative opinion than I can. I'm a user who's starting to build wooden planes, whereas he has a lot of experience. With that said...

As with everything made of wood it's a question of the orientation, species and quality of the blank, and the degree to which the plane design "self compensates" for inevitable variation. You can't stop wood from moving, but you can design the plane such that movement doesn't compromise functionally important properties such as bedding, wedging, and sole flatness.

The ideal is for the blank to be even- and straight-grained and sawn such that the pith was dead center above the top of the plane, with the fibers oriented directly lengthwise or slightly tilting towards the sole from the toe to the heel (the latter to avoid short grain in the mouth). You also want a species that will equalize relatively quickly to minimize nonuniform expansion and resulting internal stresses. This last objective is helped by a prominent ray structure. More on that here.

If you build a plane from wood selected and sawn for those attributes, then the plane can be made functionally robust to natural expansion and shrinkage of the wood. Note that saturating a woodie with BLO is arguably self-defeating, because it slows equalization and causes nonuniform expansion (see the Larry Clark article I linked above as well).

As I pointed out earlier, 18th century pre-metal-plane American woodworking was largely done in regions with significant climate variations and no A/C, and yet they somehow produced excellent work.

Of course the catch is that building a plane the way I've described is expensive and work intensive. A log doesn't yield very many 16/4 blanks with the geometry and attributes I listed above, and the last set of Beech blanks I bought (from Horizon) consequently cost $20/bdft shipped ($70 per 32" x 4" 16/4 blank). The gluelines in laminates act as moisture barriers and lead to differential expansion, internal stresses, and potentially warping, so you have to use traditional mortised construction which further adds to cost.