A new Lie-Nielsen and a question

[Mark Engel]

LOML has been telling me for a while that she had a gift for me. She first told me, few days before Christmas, that it wouldn't arrive in time. I said "no problem, my birthday is coming up." (Jan 25th). Well, my birthday past and still nothing. I mentioned the 'gift' to her and she said she had to check on it. After another month, I asked her again and got the same response, so I just wrote it off. Yesterday she brings a small box to me out in the shop with a happy birthday tag on it. She tells me they were out of stock and yadda, yadda, yadda...

So this is it, a Lie-Nielsen No.1
283596

Here it is next to my Stanley No.8 for some perspective.
283597

So here is my question. How much work should I reasonably be expected to do to get this thing working as it should?

All of my other bench planes are vintage, mostly Stanley and a couple of others, Sargent, Millers Falls, Union. These I expected to spend some time on. But I kind of expected a Lie-Nielsen to come pretty much ready to go out of the box? Is my expectation off?

Let me say right up front that I have not yet contacted Lie-Nielsen about this. I just started playing with it this afternoon.

When I got the plane on the bench I decided to just try it out without doing a thing to it except back off the lever cap screw(as instructed) and advance the cutter. I got nothing. I released the lever cap and discovered the first annoyance, the lever on the lever cap is very tight, like, am "I going to break this?" tight. Is that normal, will it break in over time?

Okay, so I take the lever cap off and then the cutter and cap iron. I see that the cap iron is past the edge of the cutter. That's not good. Took off the cap iron and I look at the cutter, that's also not good. There are visible nicks in the cutting edge and one corner has a visible burr on the bevel side. The back side has a scratch pattern that looks like it just came off a fine diamond plate(?). I kind of expected it to be more polished. Anyway, I did a little work on the back to get it where I thought it should be and took a few strokes on my very fine diamond plate, then gave it a few strokes on a leather strop to get the iron good and sharp.

Put it all back together and tried a couple of passes on a piece of pine and everything is clogging up. I opened the mouth, still clogging. I moved the cap iron back a bit, still clogging. What I found to be the cause for this was an ill fitting cap iron. The shavings were going between the cap iron and the cutter. Again, I thought this would be something that should have been taken care of before this plane shipped.

So, am I being too nit-picky, or are my expectations for a premium plane(with a premium price) not being met?

[David Weaver]

Lap the back and sharpen it. That's it. ....oh yeah, you do have to prepare the leading edge of the cap iron.

[Chris Griggs]

For the lever cap...unless I'm not understanding something, just loosen the screw (I have a feeling though that maybe I'm misunderstanding)

It is normal for the blades to require sharpening and polishing but they really shouldn't come chipped. Probably got jolted in packing/shipping, perhaps knocking the cap iron forward and chipping the blade

The cap iron should mate perfectly though,it is on one hand something that is very easy to correct, but on the other something that you shouldn't be expected to need to do on a new LN plane. That most certainly is something LN would not send out if it had been caught.

It's up to you to decide whether you want to tune the cap iron or have them send you a new one...I'm sure they would be happy to send you a new one...they do not like it when these things get passed the goalie (and all companies occasionally have one get past the goalie), and it is not unreasonable to expect getting a cap iron/ blade that mate as they should.

Again its up to you to decide and tell LN what will give you satisfaction...they will certainly fix any defect you have.

I'm not sure what I would do..I guess, if it were me, I probably would just regrind the blade and spend a few minutes getting the cap iron to mate. If I couldn't get it to mate well with less than a few minutes of work, I would have them send me a new one.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I didn't know anyone actually used #1's..., now I want to go try mine out!

[Tom McMahon]

I think of the #1 as a block plane with a chipbreaker, the smallest plane with that advantage.

[Mike Brady]

It's a fully functional plane and should be usable in your shop. Mine takes nice shavings. I think those still use the Stanley style of chip breaker; not the "improved" model. Just put that part flat on a fine stone and lightly lap the edge that contacts the iron. Check that no light comes throught the mating parts when you reassemble it. Prep the iron with a small micro bevel, assemble it and you should be able to quickly tune it to the point of taking nice shavings.

[Tony Shea]

As Chris said the lever cap screw on most new planes needs to be loosened up. They over tighten this screw in order to prevent it moving around during shipping. Maybe Im also misunderstanding the issue as well. It may be that the lever cap spring pin is peened too tight. After using it a while it will loosen itself out. And the iron coming with that scratch pattern on the back is Lie Nielsen's norm. After the iron comes out of heat treatment they take the back of the iron to a granite surface plate with sandpaper stuck down. Shouldn't take any time at all to get it polished up.

[Jim Koepke]

If the lever cap feels too tight when trying to close the lever it is likely the screw is too tight. If it feel too tight off of the plane, it may just need a bit of lubrication. For many things like this I like to use some silicon oil. I have had terribly stiff items swing freely in the breeze with just a drop of silicon oil.

The chip breaker on my LN #1 is flat with a raised area with a negative bevel to meet the blade.

I would not try to fix this is this was a problem.

LN would likely prefer to exchange it so they can try to determine how this got shipped and how they can prevent it from happening again.

Very often around the holidays a lot of this kind of "for fun" items get ordered and then filling back orders becomes a clown car fire drill. Mistakes can happen.

Though my #1 is certainly not my most used bench plane, it does come in handy at times.

jtk

[Brian Holcombe]

I wouldn't expect it to come ready to use right out of the box. I've bought a few planes from LN and my procedure so far is to loosen the cap, hone the blade, bevel the cap iron and set the depth.

[Mark Engel]

Just to clarify a bit. I did loosen the lever cap screw, so that is not a problem.

The tightness I mentioned is when moving the lever on the lever cap, even with the lever cap off of the plane. I will put a small drop of oil on the pivot point of the lever and see if that loosens it up. That is really a minor issue.

The real problem is with the cap iron.(btw, this is the 'new improved cap iron, not the old, bent spring steel type). This cap iron just doesn't fit flat and tight against the now polished back of the cutting iron so that the wood shavings are able to get between the two. I have done a little work to the cap iron edge to try to get a better fit, but it will need more work. I really didn't expect to have to do this much prep on the cap iron.

I have put replacement cap irons and cutters on a few of planes. All of the cap irons I have purchased from Hock and Veritas were usable right out of the box.

I'll contact Lie-Nielsen on Monday and see what they can tell me.

I am still deciding if I want to keep this plane anyway. I'm not sure how much use I will get from it. I may be better off returning it and getting something that I think I will use more. I've had my eye on the Veritas No.4-1/2 for a while.

[Brian Holcombe]

My cap iron was good to go right out of the box, but I decided to tweak it a little after some use. Talk to them, I've always found the people at lie Nielsen to be great.

[Jack Curtis]

I wouldn't expect it to come ready to use right out of the box. I've bought a few planes from LN and my procedure so far is to loosen the cap, hone the blade, bevel the cap iron and set the depth.

We haven't bought any LN planes for a couple of years, but they sure used to come ready out of the box.

[Stanley Covington]

I use mine as a paperweight on my desk at the office. Here in Tokyo, no one can figure out what it is! It took very little fettling for it to hold down paper like champ.:D

[Winton Applegate]

Must be hard for them to get competent workers these days.
In my experience they will do what it takes to get a truly nice plane into your hands. If you give them another chance.

I have the Woodcraft 25th Anniversary commemorative edition of the LN #1
It was made in "white bronze" .


http://i801.photobucket.com/albums/yy298/noydb1/b2d9b7c6-1d7f-4184-a773-64df03fe8d4f_zpsb1ac00cc.jpg (http://s801.photobucket.com/user/noydb1/media/b2d9b7c6-1d7f-4184-a773-64df03fe8d4f_zpsb1ac00cc.jpg.html)


bear with me . . .
I have the LN #4 in their normal Manganese Bronze


http://i801.photobucket.com/albums/yy298/noydb1/7cb7bbc6-8455-4a1d-87e5-15ad5d491cc3_zps20b76731.jpg (http://s801.photobucket.com/user/noydb1/media/7cb7bbc6-8455-4a1d-87e5-15ad5d491cc3_zps20b76731.jpg.html)


Not saying anything against the Manganese Bronze.
Not saying the white bronze is better.
It has been many years since I got the #1 and the #4
OK
My experience is the #1 was perfect. I just use it.
The #4 I had to scrape the sole here and there to bring it up to spec. That worked better than sanding on the bronze.

(notice I didn't use the word "Fettle" :eek: ) (I still think Fettle is fine. Fine Fettle :D)
anyway . . .
I bought the #1 as a curiosity and expected to use it as a paper weight; nothing more.
I wound up liking the little devil and use it all the time for critical planing where I want to hit it just right in a small area; as one would use a scraper or a fine paring chisel etc.

A valuable tool to have and worth the wait in my view.

PS: I seem to remember the cap screw tightened all to heck on one or two planes.
Out of the box I have never had the chip breaker down over the edge or the other anomalies you mentioned on any of my LNs. The old LN blades from back around 2002 or 2003 were crap; coarse surface grinder patern on the back of the blades and not all that flat. All the recent blades have been really nice / flat (er) and much, much smoother to where it takes very little to polish them.

[Jim Matthews]

I wouldn't put something that small down in my shop.

It would be too easily covered by loose shavings and lost
until the next millenium.

******

The size of this thing would be proportionate to the thickness of shavings taken.
How deep a cut are you making?

Hummingbirds can't eat watermelons...