Mike H. wrote:
But the Stanley planes *look* descent enough, and are about half the price
of a Veritas. And I have seen photos of Stanleys in professional wood
So what's the difference? Please help.
I'd buy one of each of the Veritas if I had the cashola. They look
excellent, and everybody talks good talk about them.
What I actually have is an odd hodgepodge. Where the old and new, black and
blue lines cross is at the #4 level. I have two #4s, one new, and one
around 90 years old.
I put a lot of work into tuning up the new #4, and I did fine work with it.
After I got the old one, I put a wicked ugly curved blade in the new #4 and
turned it into a scrub.
It really is amazing. The one is new, clean, in perfect working order, and
it even has a groovy easy-adjust frog. The old one is pitted, covered with
hard brown rust wherever it doesn't have to rub on anything, and just
generally looks pretty nasty sitting side by side with its newer cousin.
When both of them were tuned to be smoothers, I kept picking up the old one
time and again. I swear it takes better shavings even though it has the
original (or an original vintage) iron with some light pitting on the back.
I tweaked the new one into making some damn whispy shavings, and I thought
I had a great plane, but then I gave that junky looking nonagenerian a
push, and I figured out why everybody says the new English Stanley stuff
sucks.
It's about as much work to tweak up an old rust bucket as a new English
one. Unless you happen to find a plane owned by somebody who was up to the
same anal retentive standards we modern dorkers are, it's probably going to
need a bit of twiddling to deliver peak performance. I have no experience
with the Veritas planes, but I believe that they're probably a better way
to go if you A) don't really care about owning tools from a bygone era, B)
want to buy something that you can get to work with in short order.
--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
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