Plane kits

[Jonathan Spool]

After seeing a Brese smoother at work on youtube I think I am in love. However, close to a couple grand for a plane might get me in trouble. I see that Brese has kits available, but even those are around $800.
St James Bay Tool Co http://www.stjamesbaytoolco.com/ has kits (look under smoothing planes) at lower price threshhold. Has anyone experience with their kits, and can recommend them? Or should I hold out for a Brese?

[Andrew Gibson]

I have had a chance to talk with Ron at a LN tool event and give his planes a test drive. They are truly amazing. he had a few of us planing highly figured maple. you plane in one direction then take the maple and turn it end for end and plane back in the other direction. He described it as feeling like raking shag carpet back and forth, you can feel every curl on the first pass. On the scened pass it feels nice and smooth. Flip end for end and repeat.

If I recall correctly the St. James bay kits require a lot of metal work to get together, but Ron's kits basically have all the metal work done and you can focus on the wood...
I may be way off base but that is what comes to mind.

[David Weaver]

I have used some of ron's parts, I did my own metal carcass, though.

Ron's stuff is top notch. If he did the carcass for you, you would really have to rush through putting the infill together to not have a nice-working plane. I highly recommend dealing with ron, he is a quality guy.

I also am in the middle of a st. james bay kit. It should also make a nice working plane because it has a nice iron with it, but the level of drilling, tapping, mouth work , file work on the pins and tails, etc. is a lot higher with the st. james bay kit and it will definitely be a lot more of a challenge. In fact, maybe one that's somewhat difficult if you don't have shepherd instructions or something to play off of.

I will be buying st james bay kits if I decide to use kits after this current one, just because of price, but if the result is more important than the experience, spend the money on ron's kit, and buy a st james kit second if you don't decide to do the metal work yourself for plane #2. (I have done the metal work entirely myself, too, with the exception that the lever cap blank was given to my by raney nelson as a piece of bar stock with the hole in it, and the iron - as it's very difficult to heat treat an iron and get it to perform like a hock iron).

If you're going to do it, and you want to use cocobolo or some other wood, you want something that is rift sawn orientation, I think, and you want the piece to be large enough that you can basically saw all of the wood out in in pattern in the piece, or the grain will look funny.

Also, if you're going to use cocobolo or something similar, start looking now, because it's likely you'll find something that even as a partially dried blank, will need to dry another year or two.

I got VERY lucky and got my first big blank from Eddie Jones (Clint) and it was a VERY old piece of what appears to have been brazilian rosewood. Since then, I've had to scramble and I have some partially dried blanks going in my basement (my basement is finished and dry). Working with good rosewood that's that old and dry is a whole different world than working with newer wood, it's like the difference between dove chocolate and the kind of chocolate that comes as coins wrapped in tin foil with cartoon characters on it.

If you're going to use something like a walnut blank, not such a big deal, there are large chunks of it dry available everywhere thanks to the gunstock and instrument making folks.