There seem to have been a fair number of "tool build quality" threads lately, so I thought I'd share my personal experiences over several years in the hopes of calibrating people on what should be expected and how the vendors handle it if/when contacted. Note that I tend to customize my tools anyway, so in most cases I decided that a bit of tweaking was less hassle for me than contacting the vendor. I have been very explicit about those cases.
I'm restricting myself to LV/LN here as those are the ones from which I have a meaningful sample size. I have several times more LV tools than LN, so even though they will appear more times on the list my experience has been that LV has at least equivalent quality as measured by "percentage tools that require some sort of unexpected intervention". One interesting note is that LN does very well with plane bodies, but recently seems to have had trouble with their iron assemblies (and this has been reflected in some other recent experiences outlined on SMC).
What you won't see here is any mention of out-of-box tune or readiness. I honestly don't even pay attention to that, because I would never put a tool to use without at least honing it. I did mention one case where an iron required notable work to get the back flat enough, but other than that I don't "score" on tune.
- LV edge planes (L+R). Soles warped and more than a few mils out of square, particularly on fence side. Resolved by lapping to square on a high accuracy (cast and ground) reference angle iron, with PSA sandpaper on one side and UHMV film on the other so that I could target one face at a time. Vendor not contacted.
- LV BU jack rabbet plane. Toe insert had convex top registration surface, such that it "rocked" against the plane sole and didn't register solidly in front of the mouth. The resulting "give" made it noticeably difficult to maintain a thin shaving, though note that this isn't really what the BUJR is for. Resolved by scraping the top "rails" of the toe insert (the parts that register to the body on either side of the screw boss), using Prussian Blue to check engagement to sole in expected range of operating settings. Base re-lapped to align toe to sole. Vendor not contacted.
- LV 3/4" PM-V11 Butt Chisel. Corner came chipped, such that grinding back would have sacrificed 1 mm of edge life. Vendor contacted and replaced immediately, no question asked.
- LV Low-angle smoother. Face of toe insert was >5 mils out of square w.r.t. bed/iron when iron was set to uniform cutting depth. Checked multiple irons to confirm it wasn't a one-time mating issue (see footnote). Resolved by filing trailing edge of toe insert to match iron. Vendor not contacted.
- LV Traditional (non-custom) #4. Cap iron out of square such that it couldn't be set uniformly close to a square blade without overhanging on one side and leaving the other "uncovered". Resolved by regrinding cap iron bevel. Vendor not contacted.
- LN #8. Cap iron leading edge lip "over-cut" (bevelled the wrong way such that it formed a massive fiber trap). Resolved by regrinding cap iron lip with under-cut. Vendor not contacted.
- LN #10-1/2. First cap iron had skewed leading edge, which caused cap iron sides to extend past edge of blade when leading edge was set square. This is not a good thing in a rabbet plane. Resolved by grinding lengthwise taper into cap iron sides to accommodate rotation without overhang. A second/spare/experimental cap iron was wider than the iron, which is also not a good thing in a rabbet plane. Resolved by grinding cap iron to match iron width. Vendor not contacted.
- LN #3. Significantly warped iron corner (the most I've seen from a top vendor). Resolved fairly quickly by lapping on diamond paste and cast iron, though it would have been a chore earlier in my progression. Vendor not contacted.
My point here is not to beat up on LN and LV, but to point out that imperfections are inevitable with tools as complex and sensitive as these (and with the vagaries of UPS, in the case of the chisel). The mostly minor issues listed above impacted a small minority of my LV tools, and perhaps a somewhat larger fraction from LN. Both vendors deliver terrifically made tools overall, and it would he hard for them to do better without adding a lot of cost in the form of extremely thorough QA inspection. IMO we need to understand what we are (and aren't) paying for and be ready to work with the manufacturers to deal with the inevitable issues (or fix them ourselves without complaining if/when that's the easier option. Again, this post is NOT a complaint).
FOOTNOTE: Fun fact: In a plane with a 12 deg bed, 1 mil of side-to-side tilt in the bed will produce ~5 mils of iron-edge skew when the iron is set to cut a constant depth from edge to edge. Low-angle planes are tolerancing nightmares, and I'm continuously amazed that they turn out as well as they do.