Blue Spruce Chisel Arrived

[fritz eng]

Ordered 3/8" dovetail chisel on 25 April and arrived today, almost 5 weeks later and on Memorial Day..........surely a miracle! When ordering the site said delivery can take up to 12 weeks. Maybe things are looking up. Thanks Blue Spruce!

[Jim Koepke]

Sounds good Fritz, some of the items that are on my want list are not available until late September.

Will you be posting images and a review?

jtk

[J. Greg Jones]

Congrats! I’m still waiting on a couple of Veritas mortise chisels ordered a year ago. LN isn’t even taking orders on mortise chisels..

[Thomas Wilson]

I am waiting for Veritas chisels which were ordered in March. They were scheduled for May 26 delivery at the time of ordering. That date held until last week. The 1/2”and 3/4” are now scheduled for end of July. The rest are scheduled for end of June. Lee Valley did not send an email notification. I looked up my order on my account.

[J. Greg Jones]

I am waiting for Veritas chisels which were ordered in March. They were scheduled for May 26 delivery at the time of ordering. That date held until last week. The 1/2”and 3/4” are now scheduled for end of July. The rest are scheduled for end of June. Lee Valley did not send an email notification. I looked up my order on my account.

Mine were ordered May and June, 2021. I too have not received order updates over the last year. Lee Valley has always been exceptional in my book, which is why it’s curious they have not been communicating about the protracted delays. I’m getting too old to wait a year or more on deliveries-I only have limited shop time left myself!

[Mike Henderson]

I have a Blue Spruce 3/8 inch fishtail - bought it several years ago. Some advice: Remember that as you sharpen it, it will get narrower. And don't hit it with a mallet - it's a hand push chisel only.

I use it for cleaning up half-blind dovetails so it doesn't get hard usage and doesn't need to be sharpened very often. It's a good tool for what I use it for. I'm sure you'll like it.

Mike

[Cliff Polubinsky]

I just got a shipping notice for a Veritas 1/2" PM-V11 chisel that was ordered last September, so there's hope yet.

That's the last one to fill the set.


Cliff

[J. Greg Jones]

I just got a shipping notice for a Veritas 1/2" PM-V11 chisel that was ordered last September, so there's hope yet.

That's the last one to fill the set.


Cliff

That’s interesting, because I ordered (perhaps not) the same chisel June 2021 and it still hasn’t shipped.

Edited to add: it occurred to me that perhaps the Veritas chisel you ordered was a bench chisel.

[Thomas Crawford]

Waiting since September for a veritas side rabbett plane. Have gotten a couple other things delivered this spring that were 8-12 month wait. Probably need to think about what I'm going to want in a year and just put the order in.

Congrats on the chisel.

[fritz eng]

In 2020, I ordered the 1/2" PM-VII in September and received it in April of 2021. Hang tough.

I just got a shipping notice for a Veritas 1/2" PM-V11 chisel that was ordered last September, so there's hope yet.

That's the last one to fill the set.


Cliff

[Rob Lee]

Hi Guys -

Firstly - I'd like to apologize for the lengthy delay on some products. Believe it or not - I inquired about the status of side rabbet planes and mortise chisels on Friday, before the start of the posts in this thread....weird how that works.
Update from machine shop and planner:

1) side rabbet planes - "We have 215 at lapping now. Some fallout expected into seconds. We will need to put another order on the Hurco to process more bodies. Predicting output for Hurcos is tough. We should have more bodies through by the end of June then through the rest of the process in July"

2) Mortise chisels - 1/8" - "Expect the mortise to come through assembly approximately two months from now.". 1/4" - "in process now. Expect full delivery in two to three months.". 5/16" - "at the ST20Y. These will come through within two months.". 3/8" - "at knife grinding. These are within three weeks of packaging". 1/2" - "at the vertical mill. These will come through in around 6 weeks".

These notes require some further explanation, to add a bit of context.

We have a large machine shop (actually, two now) with lots of machine capacity. Having been in operation for more than 30 years - we are hitting life end of on some of our CNC equipment, and availability (uptime) is starting to drop on some of our legacy machines. As an example "Haas 4" mill is currently down (awaiting parts). One of our Hurco's has been decommissioned, and another is down. In both cases we have multiples of both machines. You'd think it would be straightforward to move the tooling from one to another, and continue processing, right? In reality - it just doesn't work like that. To move a tooling set from on machine to another involves an industrialization process that averages about 5 days. And - in most cases - the machine being industrialized is disrupted, and not running parts.

We make a lot of parts. The Haas Mill pool produces 186 different parts right now... and loss of a machine could affect only a few, or as many as 50 - depending on the product routing. If it's 50 - moving those parts to a new machine will take 250 days of work, and cost 250 days of production on the machines being moved to. Hurco mills do much of our rough casting milling - and so the pool there is much smaller - only 58 parts total now - but larger jobs, with more work. Many of the parts have been streamed to new mills already, and continue to be moved.

We have been actively buying new CNC's and moving parts - then COVID hit. Supply disruptions, labor shortages, and intermittent shutdowns, combined with a surge in demand for many products put all of us behind the eight ball. Not only did consumer buying change -the threat of increasing lead times for materials and shipping altered the buying behavior at the corporate level - the orders stacked up over a much longer time horizon - with firms ordering as much as a year in advance. It is not an easy problem to solve - nor can we just "spend" our way out (though we're sure trying!).

The past 12 months have seen our shop set new production records several times - yet we have not yet caught up with the demand wave. Naturally - the products with the highest volume and largest scope of delivery have been prioritized - that tooling is moved first, and those products are kept in production. It tends to be the legacy products with the lowest volumes that wait longest for a tooling move (that's the case with side rabbet planes). Other products may hit multiple work cells, which compounds the delays (mortise chisels hit mills, lathes, knife grinding. lapping, and the wood shop, as well as requiring a custom mill run of PM-V11).

The past 24 months have seen us install and commission more than 10 CNC machine tools, and we have another 6 (that I can remember) due in between now and September. We are now at our highest level of employment, and are producing at record levels. Yet - we will still have problems in some of the product line - and will take time to re-align our processes and part routings. We have invested heavily in people, automation, capacity, and rapid changeover technology. As we solve problems product group by product group - they are staying solved.

None of the last two years has been much fun, for any of us - and it's been a particularly difficult on domestic manufacturing. At the same time, I feel it's also afforded the opportunity to take a close look at our operations, and ensure we continue to plan strategically to protect our ability to produce and scale.

The folks at our shops get to read these threads - and are well aware that there are people sitting behind every open order - not to mention the ones we fill. They have done a tremendous job under very trying circumstances for two years now, and we are beginning to see many of the benefits of the work they have done, and investments we have made.

As embarrassed as I am about many of the problems we’ve had – I am more than equally proud of the work our staff have done, and continue to do.

Cheers –

Rob
(who still wants to get you your stuff faster…..)

[Jim Koepke]

Thanks for the note Rob.

This sounds very much like what is happening throughout various industries across the globe.

Whether it is agriculture, automobiles or home entertainment, a pandemic has changed everything from our leisure time to our workplace. From how we earn our income to how we spend it is not the same as it was a few short years ago.

jtk

[Jason White]

Rob, Lee Valley is among my favorite companies to do business with, in large part because of people like you. Thank you!

JW

[Prashun Patel]

Hang in there, Rob. Everything's temporary.

I've always experienced LV a company that has a good commitment to quality and does its best to please the customer.

I'm grateful you've survived so far.

[Christopher L Everett]

Patiently awaiting availability for PM-V11 plane iron/chip breaker sets to upgrade my Stanleys.

I know you guys are working on it.

I'd order something else just to support you guys, but I just have almost everything else I want.