Two Shameless Gloats and a startling Lie-Nielsen repair experience

[Danny Thompson]

Shameless Gloats
For the past several months I've been closely watching Criagslist, the Classifieds here, and on one other Wood-related Net Forum, in search of a tailed jointer. When I was at my lowest, thinking I would never find one, thinking "Maybe I should just go Ne-" . . .

. . . the galoot gods dropped this Veritas Bevel-up Jointer with standard 38º blade, a spare 25º blade, a fence, and a plane sock (not pictured) into my lap:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=112041&d=1236144681

$225 for the plane, $20 each for the blade and fence. It joins the matching Veritas LA Jack already at home here. Not a steal, but a pretty good deal.

Then, just last week this 18" Starrett Precision Combination Square hit CL.
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=112042&d=1236144681
$75 still in the box. At less than half of current street price, it seemed like a deal. Now, what to do with it?

Lie-Nielsen
Lastly, in the summer of 2007 I bought my first high quality plane. It was a bronze Lie-Nielsen Skew Angle Block Plane w/nicker (LN 140). I had no idea how to use it, I just new it was quality and a beauty. The feeling wasn't mutual. The first day in the shop, the plane realized whose hands it had fallen into and chose to take its own life--i.e., it took a header off the workbench smack into the concrete.

The cap screw was bent as was the front knob! Yikes! I couldn't begin to think how much it was going to cost to repair this plane I had already spent way too much on! Could it even be repaired? Needless to say, I put off the inevitable.

With the new jointer (above) on the way, I got inspired to finally send the 140 in for repairs. A couple of days later I got the call.

Me: Hello?
LN: Hi, this is Lie Nielsen calling. We received your plane. Are you willing to pay $6 in return shipping?
Me: Uhh, yeah?
LN: Okay, I'll send it down to the shop in the morning. It should be ready tomorrow or the next day.
Me: Um, great!

Sure enough, the plane arrived today: practically a new plane. At the very least they gave me a new knob, new cap, new cap screw, and gave it a good spit-shine. At most, it's a brand new plane. To be honest, I can't tell for sure. And NO CHARGE for the repair, just shipping. Look at that cap shine!

I had heard LN stood by its products, but when the damage was so clearly my fault? What a great company! I mean, really . . . six bucks for shipping? I guess I didn't overspend on the plane after all.

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=112043&d=1236144688

[Brian Kent]

Wow.

Tools to build with for a lifetime. Congratulations!

Brian

[Joel Goodman]

Isn't it a pleasure to deal with Mr. LN!!!!! Your experience is not unique.

[Charles Shenk]

Lie Nielsen is a great company!

[John Keeton]

And, that is why we don't need to be buying Wood River planes, or the other import crap - without starting another lengthy thread.

Great score Danny, and that LN really does look new. There is no turning back for you now - have you looked in the mirror and noticed the physical changes yet??:D Since getting into the handplanes a few months ago, I have to shave more, and the sleeves on my shirts are too short!

[John Powers]

Puts LN up there with Martin Guitars and Orvis fly fishing. Standing behind the product is one thing, fixing up the occassional user screw up is outstanding.

[Berl Mendenhall]

I agree with John Keeton. Every day it seems like we're just along for this economic ride. We need to support companies like LN. It would be awful to loose a great company like LN. What they did for Danny and others comes from the top of the company. It would be a whole lot more profitable for them to have charged for those repairs. My opinion, it doesn't get any better than that.

Berl

[Joe McMahon]

Puts LN up there with Martin Guitars and Orvis fly fishing. Standing behind the product is one thing, fixing up the occassional user screw up is outstanding.

Don't forget Lee Valley. When the CEO of a large corporation such as Lee Valley regularly scans boards such as this and personally responds to comments, question & gripes, well, you certainly can call that a great, consumer oriented company.

[Richard Dooling]

Yep. I bent the cap screw on a LN low angle block - totally my fault. Called and had a new one in a couple of days - no charge.

I have also been very impressed with Veritas and Lee Valley.

Excellent products and excellent customer appreciation.

[Justin Green]

Martin is awesome. I love my Martin. I can't wait to save a few bucks for some LN tools.

[Walter Lay]

That's a great story to hear about L-N's customer service. I'm a new woodworker, but already I can see that working with planes is a lot more enjoyable than using a thickness sander. My wife gave me a L-N block plane for Christmas and I've already dropped it on a oncrete floor - fortunately it just put a small nick in the sole that I was able to clean up pretty easily. But that plane works so much better than the other planes I have, that I went ahead and ordered a L-N 4 1/2 smooth plane from Woodcraft last Saturday (10% off). I just got a call that it's in already:p Hearing your story confirms that I did the right thing, not settling for Wood River.
Thanks,
Walter

[Thomas Pender]

With all the talk of how good LN and LV are (and they are), I am not sure anyone got sufficiently jealous of your LV buy on the Jointer Plane with the accessories.


Well, I am not jealous, because I have the LV bevel up jointer (with the fence) and love it. However, I do congratulate you on a real deal!

[Dave Anderson NH]

Danny, that's just the way Tom Lie-Nielsen operates. Yours was a simple job for his people. One of my NH guild friends had a fire in his shop about 2 years ago due to defective insulation around a heating unit exhaust flue. He lost most of his machines and a very nice collection of hand tools, some of which had been in his family since before 1900. His set of about a dozen and a half LN planes were charred, warped, twisted, and some of the parts were melted. He sent them all back to Tom with instructions to see if anything could be repaired or salvaged. He really didn't have very high expectations. A month later every tool came back as good as new with a nice note from Tom saying that there would be no charge. That is truly above and beyond the call of good customer service and is one of the reasons that it is important to support our domestic tool makers.

[Doug Mason]

I had a similar experience--I knocked a bronze LN smoother off my bench and it hit the concrete. LN told me to send it in--and they did the best they could (it was damaged too much in one corner to get entirely flat again) at no charge. I have been entirely happy with the LN stuff (despite the stiff prices) that I have never veered elsewhere for a metal-bodied plane.

[Mike Henderson]

I've had excellent service from LN, also. Never dropped a plane, but when I had a problem with an LN plane, they took care of it quickly and at no charge.

But remember the economics. When you purchase an LN plane, you're paying a price that includes the cost of that "insurance". It's as if you paid the fair value for the plane and added an "extended warranty" for the life of the plane.

When you purchase some other brand of plane, you may only pay the fair value of the plane and get a 90 day or 1 year warranty. After that, if you drop it (or have any other problems after the warranty expires) you pay to have it fixed.

It's up to you as to whether you want the insurance or not.

Mike

[Bill White]

Now let me see.......You were wondering what to do with the Starret combo. HMMMMMM??? PM me and I will send you my address. I will study the individual parts of the combo once I receive them and give you a suggested use. (Snarrrk!)
You know darned good and well what to do with 'em.
Bill ;)

[Danny Thompson]

...When you purchase an LN plane, . . . It's as if you paid the fair value for the plane and added an "extended warranty" for the life of the plane.

When you purchase some other brand of plane, you may only pay the fair value of the plane and get a 90 day or 1 year warranty.

Mike

Good point, Mike. Even so, is there a comparable quality plane on the market that falls in the second category?

[Bill Houghton]

Then, just last week this 18" Starrett Precision Combination Square hit CL....Now, what to do with it?

Your question may have been a tease, but I'll reply anyway:

1. The protractor is terrific for fitting any angled joint. With this and a sliding bevel, you can determine what angle you need to match, reset the protractor to half the angle, and reset the sliding bevel, for marking out your trim piece or setting your miter box. You can set table saw miter gauges to a very precise angle. Etc. etc. etc.

2. The square/miter head is, of course, useful all over the place.

3. In a recent discussion on another forum, I suggested the following uses for a center head (slight editing):
The most common use of center heads is, as you might expect from the name, finding the centers of round objects, like furniture legs, or the rough centers of irregular objects. You put it on the end of the round spindle (or whatever), strike a line along the rule, then move it to another location and strike another line. Where the lines cross is your center on round objects. On irregular objects, you repeat the move/line process several times, and kind of average the results. Turners use them quite a bit (or used to - maybe they have something fancier now), and they're also useful if you're drilling a table leg for casters.
You can also use it on a square board to strike a 45 degree line from a corner. Why would you do this? Imagine you want to radius that corner. Strike your line, set your compass to the radius you want, and test the compass against your 45 degree line until the pencil point touches the edge while the steel point's on the 45 degree line, with the two points describing a right angle from the edge (you can eyeball this last, usually). You should now be able to draw your radius.
[Many Starrett squares use trapped clamp bolts, that don't fall out when you remove them from the rule. If that's the case with yours], you can also remove it to use it as a saddle square, to draw lines on two faces of a board; although the width/thickness of the head results in a rather short baseline, so you should be careful that your face and edge are smooth.

4. You may find the rule a big long for daily use (although it's a real score - incredibly helpful when 12" is too short). If you go to garage sales, it shouldn't take long to find a 12" Starrett rule that will fit the heads. Try to a No. 4 or 4R rule - these have fractional markings on both faces (1/8", 1/16", 1/32", 1/64")

[Mike Henderson]

Good point, Mike. Even so, is there a comparable quality plane on the market that falls in the second category?
I was not trying to compare quality of planes - I don't know how you could do that accurately in any case. What I was pointing out is that there's a cost to providing warranty work and the customer pays for it - either up front as with LN, or on a per incident basis as with other items (a washing machine, for example). If you got a lifetime warranty with your washing machine it would cost you quite a bit. A plane doesn't break as easily as a washing machine but has a long lifetime.

I tend to doubt if LN will be able to continue to provide warranty on customer caused damage (or fire, theft, etc.). Once their installed base gets large enough the number of incidents will be too high. (Sidetrack: If 1% of the installed base has an incident per year, and the installed base grows each year, they will eventually reach the point where everyone in the company is working on warranty work and no one is building new stuff. That's the downside of a product with a long life. Normally, retirements eventually equal new sales so the installed base becomes stable - assuming stable sales volume. The other way is to only warranty to the original buyer so the warranty ceases when the unit is sold.).

The only way out is to increase sales each year but you eventually run out of people to sell to.

Mike

[A bit more of an example. Suppose you sell 100 units per year and have a 1% return rate. In the second year you'll get 1 unit back for repair. In the third year you'll get two units back, etc. Eventually, you'll get so many back that you won't be able to make your 100 units per year, or you'll have to charge a lot extra for those new units to pay for the (old) warranty work.]

[Steve Clardy]

Awesome.
I had a problem with changing out to a different angle frog on my 4.5 LN.
They took care of me, no charge

[Ben Rafael]

I returned a plane to LN once that didn't meet my expectations. More my problem than LNs, but they took it back no questions asked.
I bought a spokeshave from them that didn't quite suit me, I talked to LN on the phone and explained my issue. They said I should send it back and they'd fine tune it to my preferences. Quality company. I never hesitate to buy things from them because I know they stand behind their product 200%.

[Danny Thompson]

I hear you 100%, Mike. You are making good points. I didn't intend to contradict you.

I guess it's in our interest to help grow the LN market.

[John Shuk]

Those are great stories to hear.

[Jerry Balzell]

It is good to know that a USA company, takes such great pride in the product and workmanship. One day I will own a LN plane.

[John Messinger]

I have four Lie-Nielsen planes: the large shoulder plane, a low angle block plane, and a pair of matched side rabbet planes. They are all a joy to use. I put in a wood floor so that I would not have to live without them.