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Wojciech Tryc
08-22-2018, 6:14 AM
Hi,
My friend managed to create several deep scratches on my Veritas Bevel Up Jointer.... As you can imagine, I feel terrible. I understand that these scratches should not really affect anything, however, I would like to get them removed. I contacted the LV customer service, but was told that they can not help, as they do not offer such service. I am really surprised, as so far they have been great and always standing behind their products. Should I just contact some local metal shop and ask them to remove scratches and flatten the sole? What are my options?

Wojtek

Frederick Skelly
08-22-2018, 6:56 AM
Good morning. Welcome to the Creek! You would get more answers if this was in our Neanderthal forum because that is for hand tools. But with luck, a few of us will see your post here and try to help.

You could try sanding out the scratches. Attach sandpaper of 220 grit to a flat plate (glass or granite) and then push the plane back and forth like one does when trying to flatten the sole. Do that until the scratches come out, then wipe the plane off to remove the loose grit. Then change to a higher frit sand paper (perhaps 320 grit) and repeat. (You can start with lower grit paper like 100 grit, if you want too. But I start at 220.)

If the scratches are too deep for that, you may have to go to a machine shop and have them carefully remove them.

I hope that helps you. Good luck!
Fred

Bill Berklich
08-22-2018, 7:19 AM
ditto on the sanding if they are light scratches but if you are going to a machine shop make sure they have a surface grinder. Most shops don't have or use one. And you really don't want them to mill it if it can be helped.

Shane MacMillan
08-22-2018, 9:20 AM
I had the same thing happen to me, was a tiny rock in a live edge I was working on and left 3 nice gouges in the bottom. All I did was take my find diamond stone and rub it on the bottom to take off the high edges till I couldn't feel them anymore and went back to work. Think of it as a mildly corrugated plane. Veritas BU-C jointer! :D

Nicholas Lawrence
08-22-2018, 9:32 AM
Unless you know what you are doing, you could easily do more harm than good in trying to sand out the scratches. Now you have an ugly plane that works. If you do not do it right, you could end up with a pretty plane that does not work as well as what you have now.

It does not sound like a LV issue to me. Unfortunate they cannot help you, but they sold a good plane, and the operator error is not a defect in the plane or the customer service, in my opinion. If it were mine I would probably just use as is. I know it is probably like a scratch on a new car, but it happens, and they will inevitably develop a bit of character in use.

Brian Hale
08-22-2018, 9:39 AM
Fine grit sandpaper to remove the high spots and ignore the cosmetic aspects.

Jim Koepke
08-22-2018, 10:31 AM
My friend managed to create several deep scratches on my Veritas Bevel Up Jointer.... As you can imagine, I feel terrible.

Now you know why my good tools are not loaned out to friends or family.

Having an experience like yours can be heart breaking. As others have said, this isn't a problem of the vendor. They would end up lapping the soles of planes to nothing in no time if they "fixed" cosmetic problems like yours.

Next time your friend wants to borrow a tool show him what he did to the plane, tell him how much the plane cost you. Then ask him if a person who did that to your tools should ever be allowed to use your tools again.

jtk

Mark Rainey
08-22-2018, 10:52 AM
The scratches have no impact on the function of the tool. The plane is made for hard use & deep scratches are evidence of that. Philip Lowe christins a beautiful new work bench top with a solid blow from a hammer, gouging the surface. Perhaps the next time you borrow a tool from that friend you will not worry about damaging it and use the tool as it was meant to be used.

Simon MacGowen
08-22-2018, 11:03 AM
Hi,
I contacted the LV customer service, but was told that they can not help, as they do not offer such service. I am really surprised, as so far they have been great and always standing behind their products.

Wojtek

Totally understandable why they could not help. They are a production shop with machines set up to do batch work, hundreds or thousands of the same items at a time, and the programming in those machines is done by trained people. To make a cosmetic fix for you could mean disruption to their schedules, flow of work, etc., and a lot of money, and frankly, it could have been hundred times cheaper to send you a NEW plane.

Simon

Hasin Haroon
08-22-2018, 11:44 AM
Hi Wojciech

If it's a few deep scratches sporadically on the sole I wouldn't worry about it - I would be more hesitant to try sanding it out as I doubt you would be able to keep it as flat as it came from Veritas. It shouldn't affect the performance of the plane. I wouldn't get it ground by a machinist - I could be way off base here but I recall a post by George mentioning that he got a plane that was .01" thinner than it should have been and that was enough to introduce flex into the body.

As for Veritas, they run a big operation and produce a lot of items everyday, and flattening individual customer's planes is probably not practical. If this was a damaged plane when it came to you i'm sure they would help.

Most important thing - never lend your nice tools to friends, especially friends who are not neanders themselves.

Wojciech Tryc
08-22-2018, 11:59 AM
All true, thank you for your input. I will share the outcome, but definitely I will not lend my tools to anyone.... Lesson learnt....

Simon MacGowen
08-22-2018, 12:24 PM
All true, thank you for your input. I will share the outcome, but definitely I will not lend my tools to anyone.... Lesson learnt....

Sorry that this experience left a bad taste in your mouth.

I loan my tools (power and hand) all the time to my neighbors. I always ask if they have used the tools I am lending out; if not, I show them how to use them. My neighbor used my Japanese pull cut saw to trim his stool legs with success and without damaging the saw's teeth...even though he had never used a pull saw.

Loaning handplanes? Not my most treasured ones, but the block plane is what they really need. I decide what they will get based on the job they tell me to be done. I give them a scratch board and show or ask them to try it.

I dropped some of my tools on the floor (concrete!), and I don't cry. T don't get upset...I just just fix them and move on.

Heartbroken over a tool? Never for me. I will one day sell them all away anyway.

Simon

Barney Markunas
08-22-2018, 1:59 PM
Sorry for your misfortune. If you look through old plane threads here, you will find plenty of stories of planes made worse not better by well-intentioned machine shops and even more by DIY types lapping on plate glass, stone counter tops, and whatever presumed flat surface they can find. You might very well make it look better but end up with it not working nearly as well as it does now.

I know it is painful to look at but unless there are burrs that scratch your work, I'd suggest not worrying about the scratches, just consider them a place to hold a little extra sole lube wax. If there are burrs, I would address them individually and then get on with using your plane. Remember it is a tool, not a piece of art or a museum artifact.

Brandon Speaks
08-22-2018, 2:54 PM
I agree that "fixing" them will more likely do harm than good.

Rob Luter
08-22-2018, 3:08 PM
Sorry for your misfortune. If you look through old plane threads here, you will find plenty of stories of planes made worse not better by well-intentioned machine shops and even more by DIY types lapping on plate glass, stone counter tops, and whatever presumed flat surface they can find. You might very well make it look better but end up with it not working nearly as well as it does now.

I know it is painful to look at but unless there are burrs that scratch your work, I'd suggest not worrying about the scratches, just consider them a place to hold a little extra sole lube wax. If there are burrs, I would address them individually and then get on with using your plane. Remember it is a tool, not a piece of art or a museum artifact.

Good advice here

Mike Kreinhop
08-22-2018, 4:25 PM
This might be a silly question, but did you contact Veritas Customer Support? I realize Veritas is part of Lee Valley, but it has its own customer service contact information.

When I damaged my Lie Nielsen 4-1/2 plane through my own negligence, I contacted Lie Nielsen to see what options I had if I sent it back to them for repairing the damage. If the damage could be fixed by hand, there would be no cost. If the damage had to be fixed by machine, the cost would be $35. I decided to try it myself and was pleased with the results, as shown in this thread (https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?260802-Lesson-Learned-Always-Check-for-Screws-and-Nails-Before-Planing). My fail safe option if I made it worse was to send it back to LN and pay for the machine repair.

Wojciech Tryc
08-22-2018, 8:11 PM
My horror story is over... Thanks to Rob and LeeValley/Veritas teams my plane has been fixed. The lesson has been learnt, think twice before lending your "toys" to "strangers".
Exceptional customer care, way to go Veritas/LeeValley.

Frederick Skelly
08-22-2018, 8:13 PM
My horror story is over... Thanks to Rob and LeeValley/Veritas teams my plane has been fixed. The lesson has been learnt, think twice before lending your "toys" to "strangers".
Exceptional customer care, way to go Veritas/LeeValley.

What did they do?

Rob Lee
08-23-2018, 7:51 AM
What did they do?

Hi Fred -

Since Wojciech is local, I asked him to drop it by our store. When I saw the sole, I was pretty sure it could not be easily fixed - I had never seen a sole so damaged. If you can imagine hitting a hardened nail you can imagine the damage it would do. Now do it 25 more times. Yes - whatever the neighbor hit, he just kept on going. Took the plane to our machine shop (it's beside the Ottawa store) where the machine shop manager and I decided the plane needed a body transplant - the amount of grinding necessary to remove the scratches would put the plane out of tolerance...so we located a cosmetic second, and had Wojcieh's plane stripped, the parts cleaned, and put back on the new body. It only took an hour or so before it was ready to be picked up again.

As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's really not practical to regrind a plane sole in a production environment... the tooling just isn't set up for that. We would have to take a machine out of production, and have a skilled operator do the work. The actual cost would be many hundreds of dollars - it's less costly to just supply a new body.

If one of my planes had been damaged to the extent Wojcieh's was, it would bother me every time I picked it up - whether or not the marks actually affected the use. It was an easy thing for us to address, and turn a bad experience into a good one.

Cheers -

Rob

glenn bradley
08-23-2018, 9:06 AM
Amazingly generous act on Rob's part. Kudos once again to Lee Valley's business philosophy and congrats to Woj for living so close :D. A painful lesson on loaning tools to be sure. If the plane was that beat the friend could have shown some class and offered to replace it and just kept the "beater" for himself. :)

Simon MacGowen
08-23-2018, 9:48 AM
Amazingly generous act on Rob's part. Kudos once again to Lee Valley's business philosophy and congrats to Woj for living so close :D. A painful lesson on loaning tools to be sure. If the plane was that beat the friend could have shown some class and offered to replace it and just kept the "beater" for himself. :)

Bad story, good ending here.

I hope people won't stop helping neighbors because of this unfortunate incident. One of my neighbors returned my Festool RO sander with a new pack of sandpapers; another new filters after the filtration system was returned; a gift card after....

Just do a little research before you loan. Worse comes to worse, you have Rob (if you live near his production shop).:D

Simon

Brian Hale
08-23-2018, 10:46 AM
Snip...

As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's really not practical to regrind a plane sole in a production environment... the tooling just isn't set up for that. We would have to take a machine out of production, and have a skilled operator do the work. The actual cost would be many hundreds of dollars - it's less costly to just supply a new body.

Cheers -

Rob

Great to hear you took care of him Rob!!!

This was what was going through my mind when it was suggested LV could re-machine the sole. My last 18 years before retirement was spent in a machine shop running a Matsuura MC-600v, the same machine i saw in your video of the BU Jack Rabbet Plane, setting and running small quantities of parts for the defense industry. Mostly prototype quantities, 2-5 pieces, where i could spend 3-5 hours setting up for a run that took 3 hours to complete. This was very expensive for the customer. But to remove jigs and tooling from a production job, setup and run one piece, then put the jigs and tooling back in and re-certify the setup could take a couple days. $$$

Brian

Jim Koepke
08-23-2018, 2:19 PM
Amazingly generous act on Rob's part.

Truely an example of Rob Lee going WAY above and WAY beyond what is expected of even great customer service.


I had never seen a sole so damaged. If you can imagine hitting a hardened nail you can imagine the damage it would do. Now do it 25 more times. Yes - whatever the neighbor hit, he just kept on going.

This is my main reason for not lending my good tools. A friend once mangled a screwdriver because he didn't want to bother looking for the right tool, an Allen wrench, for the job and he is an experienced user of tools.

Sadly it isn't rare to find planes or Crescent wrenches at yard sales that look like they were used like a hammer to drive nails.

Some people do not know how to use the tools they say they do. Some have no idea of using the right tool for a job. Others do not put any value on a tool someone will loan them willingly, and it is certainly rare for them to step up and offer to replace what they damaged.

Before hand they will guilt trip you if you do not want to loan them a tool. Afterward they will try and blame it on the tool.

My solution is a selection of beater tools for my dirty work and to loan when necessary.

jtk

Tom Trees
08-24-2018, 8:19 AM
Kudos to Rob Lee, gotta hand it to him for that one.
If only our local businesses could be half as good as that, talk about going the extra mile!

I'll bet there be a few dusty folk hanging around the shop, banging down the back doors like in a zombie apocalypse film
half price tools, half price tools, half price tools :)

Rob Luter
08-24-2018, 9:09 AM
Kudos to Mr Lee.

Frederick Skelly
08-24-2018, 6:01 PM
Hi Fred -

Since Wojciech is local, I asked him to drop it by our store. When I saw the sole, I was pretty sure it could not be easily fixed - I had never seen a sole so damaged. If you can imagine hitting a hardened nail you can imagine the damage it would do. Now do it 25 more times. Yes - whatever the neighbor hit, he just kept on going. Took the plane to our machine shop (it's beside the Ottawa store) where the machine shop manager and I decided the plane needed a body transplant - the amount of grinding necessary to remove the scratches would put the plane out of tolerance...so we located a cosmetic second, and had Wojcieh's plane stripped, the parts cleaned, and put back on the new body. It only took an hour or so before it was ready to be picked up again.

As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's really not practical to regrind a plane sole in a production environment... the tooling just isn't set up for that. We would have to take a machine out of production, and have a skilled operator do the work. The actual cost would be many hundreds of dollars - it's less costly to just supply a new body.

If one of my planes had been damaged to the extent Wojcieh's was, it would bother me every time I picked it up - whether or not the marks actually affected the use. It was an easy thing for us to address, and turn a bad experience into a good one.

Cheers -

Rob

This is truly phenomenal. It's above and beyond anything I'd ever expect for even Lee Valley's superb Customer Service Team. In a way, it's more of a kind and neighborly gesture than a customer service action, because the damage is no fault of LV. (And it's pretty good advertizing too. ;):):))

This sort of extra effort is another reason you have the customer loyalty that you do Rob.

All the best,
Fred

Jim Koepke
08-25-2018, 1:39 PM
This sort of extra effort is another reason you have the customer loyalty that you do Rob.

If every enterprise followed this model the world would be a different place today.

jtk