Brief review: LV Shooting Plane

[Frederick Skelly]

Ok, so I just couldn't wait for Christmas. I set it up and used it on the new shooting board I made. Observations so far, based on about 2 hrs of using it:
* The fit/finish is what we've all come to expect of LV - very nice. I bought mine on cyber monday so it was a "blem" (manufacturers second). This is the first time I've ever actually found the supposed blemishes on a cyber monday purchase from LV. There are a 3-4 pockmarks in the casting, under the paint. Purely cosmetic and I can gladly accept them - I saved nearly $100 buying the "blem".

* The instructions include an insert that talks about tolerances (picture below - sorry it's a tad fuzzy). I found myself wondering if that may have been included based on conversations here a few months ago. Mine is within the 0.003 tolerance. I was glad to get the insert - it told me that absolutely nothing was wrong.

* Mine has the PMV-11 iron. This was my first experience with PMV-11 and I'll tell you it was a positive one. The iron came with a 23* primary bevel and a 25* microbevel. It honed easily on my Shapton 1000 and 6000, and then the strop with LV green mystery compound.

* Performance was excellent. FOR ME, there was a world of difference in shooting performance compared to either my Stanley #606 or my LV LAJ. It. Just. Powers. Through. The thinnest intact shavings on end grain that I have experienced. You guys were right. Very little effort. I squared a couple boards and it was right on. I cut several miters. After I shimmed-out my miter appliance, all the miters were dead on 45*.and the edge of the bevel was consistently square. (Derek you are right - I need to make a microadjust and stop messing with shims.)

Not a mandatory tool for my kit - I have other planes - but a darn nice tool to have. I'm glad I pulled the trigger. It works REALLY well.

Thanks for your help and advice on this purchase folks!
Fred


20171223_135227.jpg

[Chet R Parks]

Fred,
May you have many effortless square ends. It's great choice and an even better plane.
Chet

[Prashun Patel]

Congratulations, Fred. If you haven't purchased a track for it, and you are looking for a reason to take advantage of free shipping, get it. It makes great, greater.

I tell you, it makes shooting so effortless, my 13 yr old son uses it with ease.

[Christopher Charles]

Sometimes it is good to get square

Thanks for the review; I've had one about 6 months and it is becoming my favorite plane, especially for smaller scale stuff. I built one similar to the David Barron board in the video below (minus the ebony bling!). Mine is on the large size, which I anticipate turning into a dedicated shooting table. I. Like. It. That. Much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y90bK_03zXk&t=34s


IMG_1307.jpg

My next task is to build the donkey's ear he shows at the end of the video. Perhaps today in fact as I'm working on some small trays for a box with mitered corners...

Congrats!

[Frederick Skelly]

Thanks guys!

I made a shooting board like this one of David Charlesworth's that I found on LN's site. I really liked his birdhouse fixture (donkey ear appliance) - Christopher, see if it might suit you too. It could fit right on your David Barron shooting board. Edit: you can download the pdf plan free at the link I posted. You don't have to buy the DVD.

Prashun, I'm eyeballing that aluminum track. My new wooden one works very well but man, it's tempting. (As an old friend of mine always says "It only costs a little more to go first class".)

Fred

[Dominik Dudkiewicz]

Ok, so I just couldn't wait for Christmas. I set it up and used it on the new shooting board I made. Observations so far, based on about 2 hrs of using it:
* The fit/finish is what we've all come to expect of LV - very nice. I bought mine on cyber monday so it was a "blem" (manufacturers second). This is the first time I've ever actually found the supposed blemishes on a cyber monday purchase from LV. There are a 3-4 pockmarks in the casting, under the paint. Purely cosmetic and I can gladly accept them - I saved nearly $100 buying the "blem".

* The instructions include an insert that talks about tolerances (picture below - sorry it's a tad fuzzy). I found myself wondering if that may have been included based on conversations here a few months ago. Mine is within the 0.003 tolerance. I was glad to get the insert - it told me that absolutely nothing was wrong.

* Mine has the PMV-11 iron. This was my first experience with PMV-11 and I'll tell you it was a positive one. The iron came with a 23* primary bevel and a 25* microbevel. It honed easily on my Shapton 1000 and 6000, and then the strop with LV green mystery compound.

* Performance was excellent. FOR ME, there was a world of difference in shooting performance compared to either my Stanley #606 or my LV LAJ. It. Just. Powers. Through. The thinnest intact shavings on end grain that I have experienced. You guys were right. Very little effort. I squared a couple boards and it was right on. I cut several miters. After I shimmed-out my miter appliance, all the miters were dead on 45*.and the edge of the bevel was consistently square. (Derek you are right - I need to make a microadjust and stop messing with shims.)

Not a mandatory tool for my kit - I have other planes - but a darn nice tool to have. I'm glad I pulled the trigger. It works REALLY well.

Thanks for your help and advice on this purchase folks!
Fred


20171223_135227.jpg

Yeah mine didn't come with that tolerance explanatory note so that is new. But then, mine was 0.008" out of square. Lee Valley sorted it out in the end so all good. Enjoy the plane, I wouldn't be without mine now either.

Cheers, Dom

[Phil Mueller]

Glad to hear, Fred. It’s hard to understand how nice it is and whether it’s worth the $ until you have a chance to work with it. Enjoy!

[Patrick Chase]

Prashun, I'm eyeballing that aluminum track. My new wooden one works very well but man, it's tempting. (As an old friend of mine always says "It only costs a little more to go first class".)

I have the aluminum track on both my "flat" and donkey's-ear shooting boards. It doesn't do anything more or better than a home-made wooden track, but sometimes it's nice to not have to hassle with it. My only advice is to make sure to put the (included) HDPE tape on all mating surfaces, including the lip of the track that sits just behind the face of the workpiece. Iron-on-aluminum makes for a less than ideal bearing surface.

The shooting plane is wonderful. As you say the 20 degrees of skew makes a world of difference to ease of use.

[Simon MacGowen]

<p>

. Mine is within the 0.003 tolerance. 20171223_135227.jpg

The SawStop&#39;s tolerance is 0.010&quot;, though I never bother to check my table saw nor any of my Veritas tools (I also have the Shooting Mitre Plane). I am no machinist and I judge based on the outcome of the work and not the tolerance of the tools -- hand tools or power tools. I really don&#39;t care if it is 0.001 or 0.006 off. I know some people have top of the line tools, perhaps finetuned in tolerance to the standard of NASA. But that says nothing about their work. I don&#39;t care about the shavings, I mind about the finished surface. I know I am not as romantic as many of you here! Of course, the above is a general oberation of mine, not directed at you, Fred. I am happy you are now a member of the Veritas Shooting (M) Club!</p>
<p>
People who have not used the skew shooting plane would continue to believe a low angle jack or the like is the same as the shooting plane you now own. Simon</p>

[Brian Holcombe]

I’m not sure why such a thing needs to be framed in such a manner. Tolerance is relative to specific work. I did work in a machine shop and even there everything was relative to the job and what can be expected of the job. Deck a small aluminum block on a Bridgeport with a fly cutter and you’ll expect a wider range of error than doing the same job on an iron block in a dedicated block surfacing tool with a coolant bath.

You can have wide tolerances and do accurate work, if you gave good practices. You can have narrow tolerances and do good work if you have good practices.

The realist works around reasonable tolerances, but I can’t see a reason not to minimize variables on something that is made to repeat.

[Simon MacGowen]

<p>
It isn&#39;t about how I frame a discussion, Brian, but an observation that people put too much emphasis on tolernace as to the usefulness or accuracies of a tool. I did not imply tolerance is pointless.</p>
<p>
Check out the other thread (Power) where people confessed that they had spent hours and hours in frustration, trying to &quot;correct&quot; a tolerance issue...say from 0.004&quot; to something better on the new SawStop saw. This is no different from people advocating scary, super super sharp edges before work can be done. I touched the edge of a toll Paul Sellers sharpened using diamond stones at a show in person. It was sharp but not the kind of super sharp many people including article writers preach. It is nonsense that edges must be super sharp to work, else everyone is sharpening every 10 or 15 seconds.</p>
<p>
If my work, checked by a square (but how square is square?), is squre or the joint closes gap free (based on visual inspection, not under a mircoscope) . that is good for me and that is how I judge the work. I couldn&#39;t care less about the minute difference in tolerance. 0.004 vs 0.002? Give me a break.</p>
<p>
Your approach, with your machinist background, may be different and may work well for you. But most woodworkers do not start as a machinist, I must say. Simon</p>

[Brian Holcombe]

I wouldn't dismiss either way without understanding the context of those commenting. Many of those guys either work in or run production shops, in a production environment high accuracy is often very important because it can save you time and energy. Fitting work is time consuming which translates to higher labor expense per product and longer lead time, so they may in many ways feel that they want their machines setup to extremely tight tolerances.

I worked as a production welder in college and in a custom shop. In the production shop we were held to tolerances which were fairly reasonably but strictly adhered to. In the custom shop as a welder my work had to be accurate but the fabricator laying out and cutting sheetmetal worked to insanely tight tolerances because it made the job of the welder and finisher easier and translated into far fewer hours per product. That's a considerable savings over the course of a given year.

Off hand you might think...it's sheetmetal, how tight does it need to be? Where the reality of the situation is that it was tight to the point of being enviable to a machinist.

Further those parts are part of larger assemblies and keeping them to narrow tolerances results in better and faster assemblies.

This all starts with the tools.

Now if I'm doing windsor chair building I'm going to work to a completely different set of tolerances.

[Patrick Chase]

I’m not sure why such a thing needs to be framed in such a manner. Tolerance is relative to specific work. I did work in a machine shop and even there everything was relative to the job and what can be expected of the job. Deck a small aluminum block on a Bridgeport with a fly cutter and you’ll expect a wider range of error than doing the same job on an iron block in a dedicated block surfacing tool with a coolant bath.

You can have wide tolerances and do accurate work, if you gave good practices. You can have narrow tolerances and do good work if you have good practices.

The realist works around reasonable tolerances, but I can’t see a reason not to minimize variables on something that is made to repeat.

I may be misunderstanding your point here, so please bear with me if so.

As I'm sure you know increased accuracy comes with rapidly increasing cost beyond a certain point. In this instance a plane with tighter tolerances would likely require slower or otherwise more costly post-machining. The asymmetric shape of the casting may further complicate matters in a shooting plane, because residual stresses in the casting will be asymmetric such that it may require multiple machining passes to hit very tight tolerances.

I think you can make a reasonable argument that for woodworking a few mils over the width of a shooting plane's plane sole will almost never be a significant contribution or limiter to overall accuracy, particularly if you check the planed part and dial in the lateral adjust to square it. Money spent manufacturing such a tool to a higher standard is effectively money wasted. One of the things that I like about LV is that they actually have a pretty good sense of how much is enough. They could fairly easily "give the market what it wants", machine to tighter tolerances, and charge more (after all their only competition is a $500 tool), but they've chosen instead to attempt to educate people.

Besides, if a user really wants their shooting plane perfectly perpendicular they can always hand-lap. My shooting plane came accurate to within 1 mil and hasn't been touched, but I've been know to do such things to other tools, even though I now full well that it's mostly pointless. At least that way I'm not forcing *other* customers to pay more for their tools because of my OCD.

The only case I know of where a couple mils can make a significant difference is in the flatness of a Western-style smoothing plane. It's noticeably easier to take very thin "final" shavings when the plane is reasonably flat.

[Brian Holcombe]

I'm not suggesting that these planes need to be made to an extreme tolerance, that's the exact opposite of what I'm suggesting.

Instead I'm saying both that tolerances are relative and that setup error is best worked to a minimum in situations where repeat performances are required.

It's confusing to respond to because Simon is commenting on machining tolerances and machine setup tolerances in the same post. My response was mainly directed at setup tolerance because that is something I can easily have an effect on in my shop that does have a real effect on results.

I have never checked any of my iron plane soles so I don't know if they're in machining tolerance or even what the tolerance is supposed to be, however, I know that my setup error is very little (side to side), it's well under .001" and I know that because of how the shaving tracks. The planes work well so I have not had a reason to investigate any issues with the soles.

I checked my jointer/planer in the same way, adjusting it to the point which it made a fine cut and checking the resulting wooden surface after the fact. Literally too heavy slabs could stick together with vacuum so whatever the tolerance may be it is producing an excellent result.

My bandsaw setup to an extremely small amount of error in squareness between the blade and table. Why? Because I want a repeat performance and I want to minimize the chance of a variable. If the error is larger than .001" I'd be surprised, frankly.

So my point is that those setup error is something well within our control and it's not absurd to minimize that tolerance to a tight range where possible. In fact it saves a future headache in many cases to check for changes in that error and make certain it remains within an acceptable tolerance.

[Patrick Chase]

So my point is that those setup error is something well within our control and it's not absurd to minimize that tolerance to a tight range where possible. In fact it saves a future headache in many cases to check for changes in that error and make certain it remains within an acceptable tolerance.

We agree, and that's really the point of LV's pamphlet as well.

Anybody who knows what they are doing will shoot a part, check perpendicularity, dial in the lateral adjust, and repeat until happy. If you follow that process then the perpendicularity of the plane sole isn't even part of the final tolerance stack. The only thing it could conceivably impact is the effectiveness of the mouth at preventing tearout, though that's usually not an issue for shooting (and if it is for your work then you probably want the 51, or at least a higher-angle blade in the LV).