I took the liberty to go back to the October podcast of "Shop Talk Live" (STL 70: Lie-Nielsen Live) where Asa interviewed Thomas Lie-Nielsen, and some interesting things were said. For one, he said around the 48 minute mark in one brief sentence that one thing in the works is a compass plane. Sweet! Around 51 minutes he starts to talk about upcoming releases- the Plow plane and the honing guide. First off, for those of you like myself saying, "Come on, dude- hurry up with the plow plane already!", he did say the end of 2014 or early 2015 it would be released, citing the redesign of their facility as the reason for the delay. I would personally call that no later than the end of March, but that's just me. (That's the end of the first quarter of 2015.)
Next up, he talks about the new honing guide, and I will quote the conversation here. (I type really fast)[Thomas] The other one is a honing guide... [Asa] Oh, I've heard about this... [Thomas] ...and I've been fooling around with this for quite a long time. Um, we're just about to release this as well. This is actually all stainless steel except for the brass knob on it, and it's based there again on a traditional style. It's a clamping honing guide; eclipse guide- whatever you want to call it. [Asa] Yep, not too different from the little inexpensive one; just in its basic idea. [Thomas] Right, but um... [Asa] ...but I'm sure it's very different in its execution. [Thomas] ...but we sell a lot of those inexpensive ones with our sharpening kits and so forth, but the difference- the main difference- in this one is that the blade is registered against a lip that's above. It's not sitting on a surface, so you are registering the blade off of the long, flat side. [Asa] Right, which rides upwards when you're sharpening. [Thomas] Yes, so um, it doesn't matter what thickness of the blade you are putting in the honing guide, the projection will always be the same because it's registering against the top. It's also a much more solid grip than the other design; and the other part of it which is very cool in my opinion, is that the honing guide is made with removable jaws. [Asa] Oh, I see. [Thomas] - So you can take these jaws off. I don't really like combination tools very much, and, you know, one tool- typically one honing guide is one honing guide; it doesn't do it all well. [Asa] Yeah, there's a variety of blade shapes- spokeshaves- all sorts of things it's got to grab. [Thomas] Exactly. So, they're all a little different, and, um, at the same time, we have designed this so that it will accomodate almost every blade that we make. [Asa] And those little accessory jaws- those index on little pins it looks like so they always return to the same spot. Do they get- Is the plan to have some of them with the basic setup and have some as add-ons? [Thomas] Yeah, I think we're gonna have some with standard blade jaws which will hold most chisels, um, and a pair of long jaws which are designed to hold short blades, and the long jaws have a short side so you can hold really short blades on the long side- as part of the standard package, and then additional jaws will be available for specifically for small chisels, mortice chisels... [Asa] - with the thick body, and I see something there for... [Thomas] They're tall. And one is for skew blades-so this is for our skewed block plane blade. [Asa] Without that they're a challenge to sharpen. [Thomas] Absolutely. So this is going to make it easy- very very easy. So we will have a couple of other separate jaws for other angle skew that we make. We will probably have a jaw that is set up to do our fishtail chisels which have a tapered round shank-so I really think that makes this a very versatile tool. I emphasize using a honing tool the way we teach sharpening, because what I am looking for is a way to get people to get sharp edges quickly, repeatedly and reliably. [***Note: I am leaving out some conversation from Asa about sharpening] [Thomas] So we have a way to set the depth or the projection of the blade which will set your angle with a stop block- It's a very simple way to do that and you can have various stop blocks set up for different angles. And we also teach people to use a secondary bevel that's about 10 deg. higher than the primary bevel which means all your force is focused right on the tip. And we're using honing guides with a stop block where it's extremely repeatable so you can go touch up an edge in a few seconds. [***Note: Again, I am going to leave out some of the conversaytion about sharpening methods] ...[Thomas] So I'm very anxious for this to be on the market. We're about ready to go and I think it will be a vast improvement over what's out there right now. [Asa] Manufacturers never answer this question, but do you have a basic ballpark figure at where it's going to come in; in regards to price? [Thomas] Yes, I'm looking at between $100 and $125 for the basic unit and then the other jaws between $20 and $30 a pair. [Asa] And then you can get a couple of sets that will cover the bulk of what they need to sharpen. [Thomas] Exactly
They go on to talk about the compass plane. Thomas says he is the chief designer and his time is limited. He says he is interested in the design of the tool but also how to efficiently make it. One of the delays, he said, has been the capacity of the shop.
So there ya go- straight from the horse's mouth. Around $125 for the basic model, and $20 to 30 for the add-on jaws. That's fair. By the way, in the above transcript, where he starts talking about registering to a stop block, I think he was actually referring to his sharpening method and you make the stop block yourself- not that it actually comes with one.
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Originally Posted by lowell holmes
Think it was probably half and half Tom - in that the Eclipse while not doing it very well does attempt to register off the back on chisels at least...
