Veritas LA Jack vs Smoother

[James Carmichael]

I'm finally going to take the plunge and reward myself on my next bday this summer with a Veritas LA plane, but am undecided between a Jack and a Smoother. I'm sure I'll go with the conversion piece as well.

I own an Anant smoother which I still haven't fettled and used. My most-used planes are my stanley LA block and grandpa's Ward MasterCraft #5 with a Clifton chipbreaker.

I have yet to try a smoother and am curious as to what one will do that can't be done with a Jack?

Thanks,

James

[Marc Hills]

Hi James:

Besides a LA block plane, I confess no particular expertise with LA planes. However, if you haven't set up and used the Anant by now, I seriously doubt you'll even bother after investing in a Veritas anything. Your standards will be forever changed.

With that said, you've already got decent functionality in the jack plane size with your current #5, especially since you've gone to the time and expense to upgrade the chip breaker. Not to mention I'm shamelessly sentimental, so if Grampy's ghost doesn't kick you for retiring his old jack, I will.

I would counsel you to go with the LA smoother.

[Richard Gillespie]

James;

I have both the LV LA Smoother and Jack. In addition, I have two HA blades for the Smoother and one for the Jack.

I'm afraid I have to disagree with Marc, I feel the Jack is the more versatile of the two planes. I can use it as a jack, smoother and it works great as a miter plane with a shooting board. I've even used it to joint 40" long stock for glue up. Having these two great planes I'm now considering reducing my collection of metal body planes. I hope this helps and doesn't cause any problems.

I'm not affiliated with Lee Valley in any way other than a satisfied customer.

Rick

[Roy Wall]

Vote #2 for the LA Jack...........get the LA Smoother next year..:cool: (or better yet, for Christmas!!:) )

[Tim Sproul]

What do you need a plane to do?

A bit of everything? Get the jack....must be why they call it a "jack" of all trades.

I have both and use both. If I'm fitting drawers, the smoother is used much more than the jack. If I'm milling smaller pieces, the jack will get used (if I'm not using a woody).

btw, Lee Valley put up some new planes on their website.

[JayStPeter]

btw, Lee Valley put up some new planes on their website.

... including a new LA smoother. Which means that very few people can actually answer how it compares to the jack. Only those who are "beta testers" for LV.

Jay

[John Keeling]

Not sure you're right here... i've had a LV LA smother for a couple of years now. Although I guess that doesn't mean that they haven't come up with a new one. Its OK, don't like the handle for comfort or the hollows in the sides for cosmetic reasons. Also wasn't impressed with surface finish on sides, I have a great deal of trouble keeping rust off them.
If you have the cash i'd spring for the LN's, a very different animal, but then, thats why there's a significant price difference.

In LV's defence, handle is a matter of opinion, mine, as is the cosmetic thing and my workshop is an unheated garage and I have the rust problem only in the winter because of condensation. All of my planes get a film of rust, LV's LA tends to get it worse because of surface finish. I will be moving my hand-tool shop into the basement this fall so rust problem will go away or at least be alleviated.

The LV will do the job, i'd go for the jack first since its more versatile, hence name, jack, of all trades. You will have to fettle and sharpen just a little. Have fun

John

[John Keeling]

Apologies, I see the new plane on the LV site, oddly they've called it the bevel up smoother. Other than the sides, which i'm not sure why they did that, I don't see too much difference from the LA, which they still offer. It has a small brass stop screw on the throat adjustment too... that could be useful I have had the throat close up on me before, on Stanley, LN, LV and Sargent planes.

Anyone out there had it in their hot little handies?

[JayStPeter]

Apologies, I see the new plane on the LV site, oddly they've called it the bevel up smoother. Other than the sides, which i'm not sure why they did that, I don't see too much difference from the LA, which they still offer. It has a small brass stop screw on the throat adjustment too... that could be useful I have had the throat close up on me before, on Stanley, LN, LV and Sargent planes.

Anyone out there had it in their hot little handies?

I have the LV LA smoother (not the new bevel up version). The new one is different size, like a #4.5 vs #4. It also has the screw to keep the throat from closing. Don't know what plane you have, the regular smoother maybe.

I probably would've gotten the jack had it been available.

Jay

[Brad Olson]

If you have the cash i'd spring for the LN's, a very different animal, but then, thats why there's a significant price difference.


I disagree with you completely on the LN.

The LN doesn't have anyway to adjust the blade latterally and in my side-to-side comparison between the LV and the LN, the Lie Nielsen is definately the lesser plane. For precise adjustment of the blade you have to use a plane hammer which for someone new to planes is a pain to say the least.

That is unless you like to look at your planes more than use them, in that case the LN would win because they spend a lot of time polishing the planes.

In a side-by-side comparison of each of these (The Veritas 62 1/2 LA Jack vs. The Lie Nielsen 62 LA Jack) we started with two new planes. The Veritas was purchased by a friend with little plane experience and the Lie Nielsen was purchased by a friend with considerable knowledge and experience with planes. We didn't intend to have a plane head to head battle, but we ended up having a plane tune up party on the same day we picked up the LN and thought it would be good instruction for my less experienced friend.

It took us more than and hour to get the blade set to our satisfaction to produce very fine smooth shavings with the Lie Nielsen. If you take the blade out you start all over again. This is a big detriment to my mantra of "sharpen more to sharpen less". In other words, I'll pop a blade out and quickly touch it up with a 4000 and 8000 water stone before a final pass so that I don't end up with a suprise from a dull blade. I know someone will make an A2 comment here, but in my experience, it is right on your last stroke that your blade is too dull and you kill that finish you were trying to put on a board.

Back to the LN, It also would tend to lose blade adjustment if you hit knarly grain and gouge the wood on the opposite corner more than I would have liked (only a few thousandths, but enough to see in a finish). This happend 2-3 times and I consider it a fatal flaw of the plane design. Another fatal flaw of the plane is that you adjust the mouth opening by unscrewing the front knob and on several occasions we accidentally undid the mouth setting while planing (loosening, causing opening or closing of the mouth during a cut). On one occasion this led to a shaving being jammed underneath the blade and we had to spend about 20 minutes cleaning it out and realigning the blade.

With the LV, once we got the set screws dialed in (It has set screws near the mouth opening), it never lost its lateral adjustment and since it actually HAS a lateral adjuster, you could tweak it on the fly. Also the mouth has a set screw that you tighten so it doesn't come open on the fly. Blade set up took a bit longer than the LN, but this is a one time task so irrelevant to a user. Overall the veritas is not as polished as the LN, but a MUCH better user. To me, the plane in action is far more important that what it looks like.

We ended up taking the the LN back and he ordered a the Veritas 62 1/2 and is much happier with it.



As far as the smoothers from Veritas, there are now two varieties

The bevel up LA "Heavy" smoother (brand new as of a few days ago) which is coffin shaped and does not have polished sides. This plane takes the same size blade as their LA jack plane I reviewed above. I have this one on order and will report if it is a winner or not. This plane comes with a york pitch blade and is designed to be a dedicated smoother


And they also have their older LA smoother that has ground sides but has a narrower blade. The OEM blade on this plane is LA blade and a York pitch blade is optional. This plane is designed as a multipurpose smoother.

[Derek Cohen]

A point to note about the new LV Super Smoother (#4-1/2 size) vs the the LA Smoother and the LA Jack:

Unlike the latter two planes, the Super Smoother is a dedicated smoother and its shape is dedicated to this end - no flat side as it aims to get as low a centre of gravity as possible. For this reason, unlike the other two LA planes, it cannot be used on a shooting board.

This may influence your decisions.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Peter Mc Mahon]

20 minutes to remove a shaving from under a blade?

[Roy Wall]

It took us more than and hour to get the blade set to our satisfaction to produce very fine smooth shavings with the Lie Nielsen. If you take the blade out you start all over again. This is a big detriment to my mantra of "sharpen more to sharpen less". In other words, I'll pop a blade out and quickly touch it up with a 4000 and 8000 water stone before a final pass so that I don't end up with a suprise from a dull blade. I know someone will make an A2 comment here, but in my experience, it is right on your last stroke that your blade is too dull and you kill that finish you were trying to put on a board.

Back to the LN, It also would tend to lose blade adjustment if you hit knarly grain and gouge the wood on the opposite corner more than I would have liked (only a few thousandths, but enough to see in a finish). This happend 2-3 times and I consider it a fatal flaw of the plane design. Another fatal flaw of the plane is that you adjust the mouth opening by unscrewing the front knob and on several occasions we accidentally undid the mouth setting while planing (loosening, causing opening or closing of the mouth during a cut). On one occasion this led to a shaving being jammed underneath the blade and we had to spend about 20 minutes cleaning it out and realigning the blade.

With the LV, once we got the set screws dialed in (It has set screws near the mouth opening), it never lost its lateral adjustment and since it actually HAS a lateral adjuster, you could tweak it on the fly. Also the mouth has a set screw that you tighten so it doesn't come open on the fly. Blade set up took a bit longer than the LN, but this is a one time task so irrelevant to a user. Overall the veritas is not as polished as the LN, but a MUCH better user. To me, the plane in action is far more important that what it looks like.

.

Brad, I would think that every time you sharpen the blade, you'd have to adjust those set screws again........just like tapping a plane hammer on the LN.....and make a test shaving......so that seems like a "wash" to me??

[Brad Olson]

Brad, I would think that every time you sharpen the blade, you'd have to adjust those set screws again........just like tapping a plane hammer on the LN.....and make a test shaving......so that seems like a "wash" to me??

Nope, not unless you either A) Take a nick out and change the angle of the bevel in relation to the sides of the blade or B) If you can't re-hone the bevel at the same angle to the sides of the blade. That is the whole point of the set screws, to make resetting the blade easy

We went through several re-honings and two re-sharpenings of each plane (honing to make the blade sharp again and sharpening to remove nicks) and each time we just poped the blade in and made a couple of tweaks with the lateral adjuster for the Veritas. Overall a few minutes to re-hone and a minute or two to reset the blade and make a test cut.

Yes it takes 20 minutes to remove the jammed chip. A couple of minutes to remove it and about about 20 minutes to get the blade re-set and make tests cuts-remember this is being used for smoothing so if the blade isn't set well laterally, you will leave scratches in your work that show up in the finish. That is the whole point of smoothing, to not have to sand.

[John Keeling]

I disagree with you completely on the LN.

Another fatal flaw of the plane is that you adjust the mouth opening by unscrewing the front knob and on several occasions we accidentally undid the mouth setting while planing (loosening, causing opening or closing of the mouth during a cut). On one occasion this led to a shaving being jammed underneath the blade and we had to spend about 20 minutes cleaning it out and realigning the blade.


My LV plane [I have the LV LA smoother and the LN LA jack, both of which are heavily used/abused] adjusts the mouth opening by unscrewing the knob too, suffering from the same 'fatal flaw' but the LN addresses this by having a lever adjustment, just like the Stanley and LN block planes, which stops/reduces the self closure after coming unscrewed during use. The only one of the two that I have had the mouth adjuster slam shut bending the cutting edge over was the LV. LV have apparently addressed this by putting in the stop screw, good, in my opinion it was necessary.

My LN also has lateral adjustment provided by the pushing the back edge of the blade over with my fingers rather than doing the same thing with the dual-purpose lever on the LV. And the dual purpose Norris style lever is not the easiest adjuster to use [I do like the idea though] since it generally unintentionally adjusts the lateral position as well as advances the blade, making it difficult to adjust the blade whilst the plane is moving.

I have been using mine mostly on Sapelle, Iroku, marine plywood, figured cherry and walnut lately so plenty of wild wood grain and I can't say that i've seen irons moving when they hit it. In fact both planes have stood up pretty well to finding hardened epoxy, stainless steel nails and staples in their way during my boat building project.

I would still maintain that my LN was my goto plane for finishing [despite being a jack] whereas my LV was better for work requiring a little less polish. The LN kept it's edge better, IMO, the parallel sided iron makes it easier to fit/align into my grinding jig, but it looks as though the LV jack has parallel sided iron too [my smoother does not].

[Steve Wargo]

To all,
I’m no expert, and have never claimed to be, but I’ve been known to use a few hand planes and make some furniture with them. The notion that it would take 20 minutes to remove a chip from any properly set up plane and readjust it for use is ludicris. You can completely dismantle a hand plane including the totes, wipe it down with spirits, hone the iron, and then reassemble it in less than 10 minutes. I think that Mr. Olson’s post may be a little jaded. It appears that he is obviously not impressed with his LN plane, but there are many people that are. I personally don’t own a low angle plane that I use for smoothing, but imagine it’s workings to be no different than my number 9. Also, in my opinion, if the plane is tuned and set up properly, I don’t see how a chip should ever get lodged under the iron on a regular basis. Please note that this message is only my opinion and should be taken for what it’s worth.

[Brad Olson]

To all,
The notion that it would take 20 minutes to remove a chip from any properly set up plane and readjust it for use is ludicris.

A few things that are being missed here and are important...

A) We were setting these planes up as smoothers. This means you are taking the finest possible shavings (0.001" or less) and trying to create a ready to finish surface. IMHO this in an acid test for a plane and requires the utmost of tuning etc.

B) Because you are trying to get a ready to finish surface, you must absolutely have a perfectly set blade. Since there are no set screws lateral adjustment of the LN is finicky becase you are moving the blade both axial and laterally. With the Veritas set screws, you only adjust the blade axial, thus is sets much faster. In our experience, it took about 20 minutes to get the blade dead set, REMEMBER, there is NO WAY TO ADJUST THE BLADE LATTERALLY OTHER THAN A PLANE HAMMER for the LN!

We found the easiest way to set it up was to set the plane on the table saw and tighten down the blade referencing the jointer surface and then making test cuts and tapping the blade unil we weren't getting corner gouging (measured with mineral spirits)

With the veritas, they have a latteral adjuster and thus you don't need a plane hammer and setting is only one axis not two.

C) You probaly missed this, but what happend is that the knob came loose, which so happens to be what keeps the adjustable mouth from moving. This caused the adjustable mouth to crash into the blade jamming a chip underneath the blade. This meant we had to pull off the blade and unjam it (quick) and the reset the blade for smoothing again

D) These are Low angle planes, they are much different animals that your traditional bench plane

E) Did I mention that we were setting these up for smoothing and that we wanted these planes dead set? This is much different than setting these planes up for rougher work. Even a few thousandths of blade mislignment will make it difficult to go directly to finishing-which is the WHOLE PURPOSE OF SMOOTHING!



I make no excuses for poor plane design no matter how much the plane cost or the reputation of its maker. If there is another plane that is better, I tell it like it is. Planes are not collector items to me, they are workhorses.

In fact the two biggest shortcoming of the LN design are directly fixed in the Veritas version, so that is the purpose of my posting somebody built a better mousetrap.

It is now up to Lie Nielsen to step up to the plate and improve their design to justify the cost difference, because right now, I see no justification for spending the extra $ for the LN other than looks. I just so happen to not care about looks.

As always you are free to spend your money as you please, but in this case I see no reason why *I* would pick a LN vs. the Veritas.

[Steve Wargo]

I'm sorry Brad. Having never used the LN low angle jack plane I really should not have commented on it. I've always had good luck getting nicely finished surfaces with my irons genlty cambered though. I think this alone, would allow you to minimize the excessive set up time involved in getting your planes ready to go. I also do this with my wooden smoothers, which can be a little finicky at times. I'm still not understanding the use of the Tablesaw top for setting the iron though. I think that the thumb test on the bottom works quite well.

[Peter Mc Mahon]

Brad. Forget the hammer and the table saw jointer reference.etc. etc. Look down the plane sole, adjust for the amount of cut you want, skew the blade with your hand and take a test cut. If it digs in on one side adjust it with your hand. This is called using a hand plane. I try to leave a handplanned finish on everything that I make. I take 1 or 2 test cuts and then get to it. No plane tracks no hammers and I don't have 20 minutes to spare. Peter

[JayStPeter]

but it looks as though the LV jack has parallel sided iron too [my smoother does not].

That is something I dislike about the LV LA smoother I have. Since I got the HA blade also, it's a double sharpening pain.

Had I known what was going to happen to the LA lineup, I would've gotten the jack. It can share blades with the new smoother and the new LA jointer due out late summer (that I'm (im)patiently waiting for).

Jay

[John Keeling]

Jay
I got my LV smoother first and there was all sort of things I didn't like, some of which in all fairness they have addressed, its actually why I got the LN jack not the LV. The LN has its faults too and none of them have been addressed but most, if not all, I can work around. I work around the ones on the LV too but then I don't finish with a smoothing plane I finish with a scraper which removes any slight smoother imperfections and also introduces some of its own. Perhaps my smoother technique isn't perfect?!:eek:

I wonder if the originator of the topic, James, knew the lively discussion he was likely to set-off.:rolleyes: Course he could've asked the bevel up - bevel down question too and then we'd really have lit off the fireworks. Then lets throw in waterstones vs arkansas vs ss and i'm running for cover:D !

[Marc Hills]

I wonder if the originator of the topic, James, knew the lively discussion he was likely to set-off.:rolleyes:
I'm still going to kick his butt if he ditches his grandfather's jack plane. ;)

[James Carmichael]

Jay
I wonder if the originator of the topic, James, knew the lively discussion he was likely to set-off.:rolleyes: Course he could've asked the bevel up - bevel down question too and then we'd really have lit off the fireworks. Then lets throw in waterstones vs arkansas vs ss and i'm running for cover:D !

Oh I've weighed in on my share of the sharpening threads, probably started one or two when I was bored ;)

Yeah, this has been an awesome thread and really helped me decide - on an infill!

[John Keeling]

Yeah, this has been an awesome thread and really helped me decide - on an infill!

I LOVE my couple of old infils, bought as cheap pieces of junk with lots of rust. Spent a lot of time fixing them up, including carving a new infill for one of them but they work like a dream. Take a lot of set-up and playing with but once setup they just need the occasional tap. These most definately need a hammer to adjust, or at least mine do with the way I work!
So what kind are ya gonna buy? Kit or complete? $8000 Holtey?

Have fun

John

[James Carmichael]

Oh I'm sure it'll be a kit John. I was mostly having fun with the LV vs LN bunch, but I would like to try an infill.

Of course, down here in TX, I've never even seen one in the flesh.