Low Angle Jack Plane Irons

[Lloyd Robins]

I am considering getting a low angle plane. They seem to have many advantages, but how easy is it to camber their thicker blades for smoothing? If needed, how is cambering different for the thicker blade ? Also, most people on site seem to prefer the LV LA jack over the LN LA jack, why?

[David Weaver]

Because it's bigger and cheaper.

[Chris Griggs]

I think a lot of people use them for shooting and I feel that the LV is a better shooter because of its size and shape (yes I've used both). The LV also has more user friendly adjustments and you can get it with PMV11. Finally, the slight extra length and the setup back mouth make give a little more capacity for jointing and flattening.

The LN is smaller and lighter, so if you mainly want to use it for smoothing face/long grain in it may be a better choice. It is also an excellent shooting plane in its own right. The handle on the LN is also more comfortable for me just about anyone I've talked to.

Its worth pointing out though that you can order nicer handles for the LV from Bill Rittner (http://hardwarecitytools.com/). I mostly use mine for shooting so I haven't bothered.

I prefer the LV for the reasons I've stated above so that's what I own. The LN is of course an equally nice tool but they are different planes with different pluses and minuses. The one that is a better option is the one that fits your needs best.

Also, I agree, bigger and [less expensive] is good.

[Jeff Heath]

Don't discount the LN based on size or price. It's an outstanding performer, and in my opinion, a better option, and an excellent value for $245. You'd have to go to a boutique planemaker and spend well over $1000 to find another low angle jack that works as well. It's an extremely versatile plane that can be fitted for different tasks with different irons. I have a regular iron, an iron with a 38° bevel for high angle work, and a toothing blade for flattening really, really tricky grain without tearout. The plane can be used for tasks from smoothing endgrain to a polished finish, to getting a baby-butt finish on gnarly burl wood.

As far as cambering a low angled plane iron.......you'll open up a 4000 post thread with that discussion, which is comical to me. It has been my experience with a low angle plane that all you need to do is 'clip' the corners of the iron so you don't leave tracks. Cambering does little to aid in performance with this style plane. My opinion is not based on anything I read on the internet, or not having done a thorough geometrical mathematical analysis as a thesis report for my doctrine, but from actually putting plane to thousands of board feet of wood.

Take it for what it's worth.

Jeff

[Sam Takeuchi]

If you have a grinder, you can hollow grind that blade to something like 23 or 24 degrees (that is if you have a 25 degree blade, it'll still allow you to work on 25 degree micro bevel, thus reducing the amount of metal you have to work with), and then just add whatever degree of microbevel, 38 or 50. That way you don't have to constantly work on the full thickness of a blade and also reduce time it takes to hone the blade. Adding slight camber or knocking corner off the blade is slightly easier for the same reason. I highly recommend hollow grinding BU blade for those maintenance reasons.

[David Weaver]

What makes the LN plane a better option? The angle of the rear tote? (there's certainly a valid argument to that if someone doesn't like the tote on the LV)

Presume the cambering question had more to do with coarse cambering, which is a pain in the arse on a plane with a 12 degree bed. It is something to be done only with a powered grinder or belt sander, and even at that, you're left with a flat footed feeling plane compared to a cheap vintage BD plane that is less work to camber, lighter and more nimble feeling when doing rough work (and to me more nimble in fine work, too).

I went from being enamored with low angle planes (it is probably easier to make them work like you expect a plane when you're a beginner), like most people who are either beginners or who don't use a plane for any rough work, to leaving the plane on the shelf almost entirely once going to dimensioning by hand.

[Chris Griggs]

What makes the LN plane a better option?

If you rub the shiny bronze lever cap with sunshine polishing cloth, while playing Michael Jackson's "Thriller" backwards at exactly 33 rpms, a genie will emerge and grant your every wish.

Obviously!

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I bought into the low angle thing. I have the Lie Nielsen low angle jack. To me, the only savings, if any, is space, in that I have one plane body, and two blades - one ground flat (for more finessed cuts and end grain shooting) and one ground with a pronounced camber (I believe I went something like 7 or 8 diameter? Whatever it was, I since flattened the curve a bit in the center. Getting the pronounced camber was easy with my 6 inch grinder. The thicker blades, while they take a little longer to grind, are nicer because the mass of them allows you stay on the wheel longer - more metal seems to soak up the heat better.

In the end, I'm not sure it really got me much. A flea market Stanley 5 with a replacement iron would do the coarse work just as well. (And one of these days I'll probably pick one up just to leave it set up for that job, if I end up feeling like I've got the room in the tool cabinet.)

For end grain work, I sharp seems to be more important than a low angle, particularly because I'm not aiming for a polished surface as much as a true one. If the surface is a little rough, (like I've gone too long between honings on the blade) but square and clean enough to lay out my joinery, that's fine. I've shot edges with my junky millers falls jointer plane and been perfectly happy.

There are times that plane shines, and it really helped teach me what a plane could do, but looking back, if I was in purchasing mode all over again, I would have saved my "precision modern plane" money for a jointer and relegated the jack to a fixer-upper, rather than the other way 'round as I did.

That said, if you're doing a lot of your surfacing by machine, and getting pretty true surfaces that are just wanted a bit of clean-up, a low angle jack and a couple of blades might be all you need for a plane. I do all my stock prep by hand, so a jack is really mostly a rough tool for me, and and the jointer plane gets probably the most use.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

I also have to admit that besides the handles seeming more comfortable to me, I went with the Lie Nielsen plane over the Lee Valley because I thought it was nicer to look at, and felt like I could deal without some of the little extras of the LV. So far I haven't found myself kicking myself wishing for those added features, but the option of PMV11 might have changed the calculus for me had it been available.

[Aaron Rappaport]

Peter Tremblay, over on the woodnet forum, has had good things to say about using a LA jack with a toothed (rather than cambered) blade for rough dimensioning. When used cross grain, apparently the high ridges between the grooves left by the toothed blade are so weak that they can literally be pushed (or plowed) aside with the front of the plane when its pushed with the grain.

[Curt Putnam]

Derek Cohen has written extensively about cambering LA irons. See http://www.inthewoodshop.com/WoodworkTechniques/TheSecretToCamberinBUPlaneBlades.html as a good start to the subject. Based on what Peter Tremblay said about using toothed blades for hogging material, I tried the technique but in my jointer - to flatten glued up panels. That also points out one of the advantages of the Veritas (LV) planes - the blades are interchangeable between three different planes: smoother, jack and jointer. The PM-VII steel blades provide considerably longer wear than A2 while sharpening as easily as A2. IOW, the LA Jack is one very attractive package.

[Jim Koepke]

My choice was for the LN 62 for reasons that have nothing to do with the prices or quality.

Both of these makers make high quality equipment.

If my position were different at the time the LV may have been my choice.

My reasons for the LN were because it felt so good in my hands when one was seen at a tool show. There was also a hot dog available for it. My main reason for this plane was for the ability to use on a shooting board with a little less stress on an old shoulder injury. Also since most of my planes are Stanley/Bailey planes, my desire was to stay with something that at least looked like family.

As to why some may prefer the Veritas (LV) line of Low Angle Planes… Most likely it is because there is a set of planes that all use the same size blade. If one has a desire for a fleet of Low Angle Planes, this alone makes LV a practical choice. Get each plane with a different blade and it is off to the races.

Most of my work is in western soft woods. For my work, bevel down planes seem to work quite well. My feeling is even with equally sharp blades the BD plane leaves a slightly better surface than a BU plane.

The resources are not available for me to demonstrate or find an answer to my opinion on the matter of BU vs BD. My only real world explanation can be derived from the use of chisels. When a chisel is driven vertically into a piece of wood, the bevel will tend to wedge against the work and move the chisel away from the bevel side. We have all likely seen this when cutting dovetails or mortises. When paring a surface with the bevel up, the control is made difficult by the bevel trying to pull the blade into the wood. When paring bevel down the control is enhanced by the ability to lever against the bevel. Now this could all be a load of nonsense dreamed up by my wondering mind, but it seems to work for me, ymmv.

As to cambering a blades on LA planes, it depends on the purpose. If it is just to eliminate tracks at the edges there are a few ways to do that. One is just to polish the corners of the blade a little more than the center. Another is to polish the backside of the blades corners as done in this post:

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?158373

If more radius is wanted on the blade for use as a scrub plane then the methods presented earlier are your best bet since my scrub plane is an old Stanley/Bailey with a cambered blade. This solution is available for less than the cost of an aditional premium plane blade.

jtk

[glenn bradley]

LN makes some beautiful, high quality tools, no doubt. Hand planes are very tactile and so one person may like the feel of one form factor and someone won't. I also tried them both at a show and have the LV LAJ with 25*, 38* and 50* irons. The irons swap between my Jointer, smoother and LA Jack which is nice. The modern enhancements to adjustability that Veritas brings are of value to me. They may not be so valuable to someone else.

[Brian Kent]

I chose LV because I tried one after the other at a woodworking show and the LV felt right for my hands.

[Sam Takeuchi]

I've never felt putting heavy camber on a LA jack blade to be any more problematic than BD plane. If there is an issue (compare to BD plane blade), it is simply more to do with the thickness of a blade which results in more metal to grind. I know that due to geometry of bedding angle and bevel side up makes, camber needs to be more pronounced, but it never really frustrated or tired me any more than any other blade. I think it's because realistically speaking, it's not something you do every time you sharpen, and once you put heavy camber, you don't really need to go back to grinding until micro bevel gets wide enough. Even then, amount of grinding to be done at that point is very minimal.

For a few months I didn't have access to my usual roughing jack plane and I had used heavily cambered LV jack. I don't even know how much radius was on the blade. I never measured it. I simply protruded the blade from the sole about the maximum depth of cut I expected to make, and then simply looked at the blade protrusion from the front, mentally imagine the width of cut relative to the maximum depth of cut, connect the dot from the center edge to the maximum width, and then eyeball the rest. Every now and then take it off the grinder, hold the blade roughly at bedding angle and check the shape of camber, etc. It's hard to go wrong as you can visualize depth of cut as well as width of cut. With that, it worked extremely well. Until I got my wooden jack back, I had no complaints whatsoever. Well, it is heavy for a prolonged session, but still manageable.

BUT if you want to use it for roughing, $10 wooden jack will do just as well and cheaper than extra blade for low angle planes.

[Lloyd Robins]

Thank you for your help. I guess another choice is whether I want my shop to be a gathering spot for planes (which would all be used and wonderful to have, but out of my reach) or just stick with one or two, which are used all the time (more affordable.). That is why the LA planes appeal so much although the Veritas 5 1/4 BD or LN 5 1/4 planes sounds like they might also work for the purpose. My stock is mostly surfaced (woodworkersource.com), I need to be able to do some jointing, a little surface clean up, and smoothing. Choices - Choices

[Chris Griggs]

If you can buy and want to buy more than one plane get a smoother and a jointer. Since your not doing any really heavy material removal you don't need a heavily camber Jack plane (and if you do its easy enough to find any old cheap jack).

The smoother would be a No.3, No. 4, No. 4.5 or any of the BU/LA versions. I personally think the No. 4 size is the perfect size smoother, but that's a fairly subjective personal preference.

For a jointer a No.6, No. 7 or No.8 would work or any of the BU/LA varieties.


Depending on the scale of your work you may be able to get away with just a jack sized plane, but in all likely hood you find yourself wanting something smaller for smoothing , and there may be times you want something larger for jointing. Again, all dependant on the scale of work.

FWIW if I only owned 1 bench plane it would be a No. 6 sized plane - the LA jack is more versitile in many ways, but I find a 6 to be the perfect length for flattening and jointing most the work I do yet not so big that it unwieldy on smaller stuff. 5 1/4 are nice planes but I find they function better as long smoothers than small jointers. If you plan to use you first plane for some jointing I would not go any shorter than a 14-15" jack sized plane (BU or BD)

And honestly, while I like a no.6's, the LA jacks are so simple to use and setup your probably best going with one of them as a first plane... you can (and will) always buy more planes later on.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

The one thing I don't think was mentioned in this thread, is resale value - if you go with a choice from Lee Valley or Lie Nielsen, and later on decide you want to invest in a different plane of theirs, their planes tend to keep most of their value at resale. I've even seen them go for over retail on the eBay if they're in good enough shape and you're willing to ship overseas.

But I second Chris' recommendation - when working with surfaced stock, I don't break out my jack plane too much.

[Jonas Baker]

I know this has been discussed in depth, but here's my in depth review, so to speak. I bought the LN low angle jack plane after trying both the LV and LN low angle jack planes. What really sold me on getting one of the low angle jack planes was how well they work when shooting end grain. With the LN hot dog attachment on the low angle jack, I compared it to he #51 and the #9 mitre plane. To me, obviously the #51 felt the best, as it is a designated shooting plane, but the #62 with the hot dog attachment performed just as well, and also was very comfortable in use (conversely, the bevel down planes tend to hurt my hand when shooting, and they perform worse to the strange hand placement needed on such a plane).

So I use it mainly for shooting, and then I use it with a toothed blade in place of a scrub plane for heavy stock removal. It performs very well for heavy stock removal with the toothed blade, much better than a scrub plane in my opinion.

I really wanted to buy the Lee Valley low angle jack, as it is heavier which I like, and it is wider, which is very useful, but once I used it I just didn't like certain things about it, such as the handle angle, the feel of the handle in general, and I didn't like the norris style adjuster, which I found would skew the blade when adjusting blade depth (obviously one gets used to using this style of adjuster, but I just didn't like it, as I prefer hammer taps). I also found that the set screws would move around anyway, and they didn't keep the blade in place to well anyway in my experience. Then finally, I just prefer the traditional look of the LN version.

Whichever one you get, if you will be using it for shooting, get the hot dog attachment, or make your own (Derek Cohen has a write up about making his own hot dog handle out of wood by the way on his site, www.inthewoodshop.com )

Jonas Baker

[Jim Matthews]

[QUOTE=Lloyd Robins;2047629 My stock is mostly surfaced (woodworkersource.com), I need to be able to do some jointing, a little surface clean up, and smoothing. Choices - Choices[/QUOTE]

That sounds like a job for a #4 1/2, not the LA jack.
Have a look around for how to camber a plane blade shifting finger pressure as you hone the blade.
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/woodworking-blogs/chris-schwarz-blog/camber-with-a-honing-guide

Our very own Derek Cohen has a similar approach, applied to BU blades, but I can't get to his site at the moment.
www.inthewoodshop.com (The secret to cambering bevel up plane blades)

The stock LN or LV blades are good to go, as is. If you just relieve the outside of the cutting edge, you can avoid leaving tracks.

In practice, I don't like a heavy camber - I like a straight cutting edge with the ends slightly relieved.
This, I can do by hand.

Note that the LN # 4 1/2 also has an accessory to allow a steeper pitch angle for mounting the blade.
http://www.lie-nielsen.com/catalog.php?sku=4_5

[Chris Fournier]

I think that LA planes are very over rated unless of course you're working on end grain. Bench planes excel at smoothing.

If you want to hog stock: scrub plane. And this is a very inexpensive plane which will reduce stock like you've never seen. Can't be beat.

If you want to shoot: #9. The plane for the job. This being said a Jack or a Jointer will work very well also if you don't want "plane proliferation" in your shop!

Smoothing: get a high angle frog and get on with it. Don't need a high frog for the task? Don't worry, just use it, it's versatile.

A must have LA plane? There is only one: LN 102. This plane fits and makes you think that you're cutting with your fingernails - it is a part of you.

A tight kit that will do it all: LN 102, LN HA #4/4.5 (go 4.5 and you can swap irons with the 7), LN #7, LN #9 (the #7 could shoot, how much shooting do you do?)

Wanna get fancy? Okay, LN #3, LN block Rabbet (This plane is THE JOB SITE GIANT).

Wretched excess? Right, LN 10.5

I'm prepared for the retorts to this post and in the spirit of SMC "there is no one way" responses, but of course, however in my experience I stand by my suggestions. I choose LN because they work well, feel good and look great. I make money in my shop and my opinions are not merely tool snobbery, they are based on efficiency and efficacy which help me pay the bills. Gospel truth? Hell no. Opinion based on my experience? Hells yes.

[paul cottingham]

If you rub the shiny bronze lever cap with sunshine polishing cloth, while playing Michael Jackson's "Thriller" backwards at exactly 33 rpms, a genie will emerge and grant your every wish.

Obviously!
Now I'm going to have to buy one to try that!
cause it didn't work when I tried it with my LV bevel up jack.

[Lloyd Robins]

I think that LA planes are very over rated unless of course you're working on end grain. Bench planes excel at smoothing.

If you want to hog stock: scrub plane. And this is a very inexpensive plane which will reduce stock like you've never seen. Can't be beat.

If you want to shoot: #9. The plane for the job. This being said a Jack or a Jointer will work very well also if you don't want "plane proliferation" in your shop!

Smoothing: get a high angle frog and get on with it. Don't need a high frog for the task? Don't worry, just use it, it's versatile.

A must have LA plane? There is only one: LN 102. This plane fits and makes you think that you're cutting with your fingernails - it is a part of you.

A tight kit that will do it all: LN 102, LN HA #4/4.5 (go 4.5 and you can swap irons with the 7), LN #7, LN #9 (the #7 could shoot, how much shooting do you do?)

Wanna get fancy? Okay, LN #3, LN block Rabbet (This plane is THE JOB SITE GIANT).

Wretched excess? Right, LN 10.5

I'm prepared for the retorts to this post and in the spirit of SMC "there is no one way" responses, but of course, however in my experience I stand by my suggestions. I choose LN because they work well, feel good and look great. I make money in my shop and my opinions are not merely tool snobbery, they are based on efficiency and efficacy which help me pay the bills. Gospel truth? Hell no. Opinion based on my experience? Hells yes.

Chris, which high angle frog do you use the 50º or 55º?