Popular Woodworking 2009-06 № 176, страница 46

How do hew imported smoothing planes compare to a Lie-Nielsen or Clifton?

BY CHRISTOPHER SCHVVARZ

■hank* tothc*ucx£M of Lie-Nielsen Toolworks and Vcritasai building premium handplancs, it's no surprise that someone would start manufacturing Bed Rock-style handplancs in the Far Fast

Bed Rock handplancs were Stanley's premium line of tools, and the Bed Rocks had a number of improvements to ensure they were stable and easy to adjust.

Lie-Niclscn in Maine and Clifton in England took many of the ideas from the now-expired 1895 Bed Rock patents to dcvrkipihcirown premium planes. And Lie-Nielsen and Clifton also set out to improve on Stanley's designs with better materials

and machining, plus improvements tot fie looTschiphreakcrsand irons.

Now Woodcraft and Japan Woodworter have introduced their own versions of B:d Rock planes that look a lot like the Lie-Nielsen tools, but at less than half the pnee To lindout how tltcsc Chinese-made plates performed, we purchased a No. -4 smoothing plane from each catalog. I decided to test smoothing planes because they are trie fussiest planes to set up and would lest these toolstothelrllmlts.

Comparing ihe Smoothing Planes

From five feet away, the Bdrgsmoothing plane from Japan Woodworker ($132.50) looks like a nnger for an iron l.te-Nielsen (S300). The plane has t he same color scheme and overall shape, but as you examine the details, there arc differences.

The plane Is */«• longer than the Lie-Nielsen, plus some of the pans are shaped differently, includingthc iron.chipbreakcr. lateral-adjust knob, tote and knob.

The Berg's tote is squarish and not as

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