L-N's levers are always pretty stiff, but they shouldn't bind. As you say, throw it back.
I personally prefer LV's tensioning scheme, but that's just a subjective thing. I have examples of both and they all work (and should work) fine.
L-N's levers are always pretty stiff, but they shouldn't bind. As you say, throw it back.
I personally prefer LV's tensioning scheme, but that's just a subjective thing. I have examples of both and they all work (and should work) fine.
I would take a #7 over an 8 for jointing, general use.Easier to handle, plenty of weight...IMHO
Jerry
I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt this is universally true geographically. I think he concern is more for areas of the country that see extreme fluctuations in temperature and humidity like four season midwest. I don't like to saturate old woodies with BLO either, and that might be the only salvation for a woodie in my uncontrolled garage. But I'm experimenting with it.
Thanks for the smile Kurtis.
Having my shop open to others has so far allowed me to meet some very nice people. Funny story about this is someone who isn't a member of SMC was reading posts and saw one of mine with the same welcome offer and looked me up in the phone book. He lives across the river in Oregon. We have gotten together a few times.
jtk
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Hopefully somebody like Steve will come along and give a more authoritative opinion than I can. I'm a user who's starting to build wooden planes, whereas he has a lot of experience. With that said...
As with everything made of wood it's a question of the orientation, species and quality of the blank, and the degree to which the plane design "self compensates" for inevitable variation. You can't stop wood from moving, but you can design the plane such that movement doesn't compromise functionally important properties such as bedding, wedging, and sole flatness.
The ideal is for the blank to be even- and straight-grained and sawn such that the pith was dead center above the top of the plane, with the fibers oriented directly lengthwise or slightly tilting towards the sole from the toe to the heel (the latter to avoid short grain in the mouth). You also want a species that will equalize relatively quickly to minimize nonuniform expansion and resulting internal stresses. This last objective is helped by a prominent ray structure. More on that here.
If you build a plane from wood selected and sawn for those attributes, then the plane can be made functionally robust to natural expansion and shrinkage of the wood. Note that saturating a woodie with BLO is arguably self-defeating, because it slows equalization and causes nonuniform expansion (see the Larry Clark article I linked above as well).
As I pointed out earlier, 18th century pre-metal-plane American woodworking was largely done in regions with significant climate variations and no A/C, and yet they somehow produced excellent work.
Of course the catch is that building a plane the way I've described is expensive and work intensive. A log doesn't yield very many 16/4 blanks with the geometry and attributes I listed above, and the last set of Beech blanks I bought (from Horizon) consequently cost $20/bdft shipped ($70 per 32" x 4" 16/4 blank). The gluelines in laminates act as moisture barriers and lead to differential expansion, internal stresses, and potentially warping, so you have to use traditional mortised construction which further adds to cost.
One other problem from too tight of a lever cap bolt....owners would use a screwdriver to pry up on the lever, from the side....if they are lucky, it will merely bend the lever a bit...have seen broken levers and cracked pivot holes come through the Rehab Shop....and these were cast iron lever caps. Non-cast iron may bend enough to really foul things up.....just a thought...
Well... I received another bad lever cap. I'm still waiting to use the plane. The lever on the second one wasn't ground right so the cam action didn't work. LN told me the new cap would ship last Wednesday and it didn't. I emailed them Friday and never heard back. So I called yesterday and they shipped it. What a frustrating experience.
That's a pity Steven. I have a few LN planes but I got to pick through them in their showroom, didn't even think to check if everything was in working condition as I assumed they would be perfect (and they were). Surprised the second one was faulty too, I would imagine they'd check it before sending it out.
I agree. I'm sure the next one will be perfect though, hang in there.
On a separate note, if you don't have a bench brush, consider adding the LN brush to the order (i'm sure they'll cover shipping costs after all these issues). It's great to brush off your bench but also brush the dust off your tools before putting them away.