Popular Woodworking 2009-06 № 176, страница 48

Sources

■ Wood River planes:

Woodcraft

800-225115 J or woodcraft.com

■ BArg planes:

Japan Woodworker

800-537-7820

Of jjpjnwoodworkef.com

corncrof the frog would projea out of the mouth. Filingcorrected that problem, too.

I he pLinesare made from a durable material. Like the ductilc iron of the premium planes, these planes would withstand a beating from a hammer on an anvil.

In puttingthe planes to use. otherdlffcr-enee* arose. With both plane*, tltc adjuster nut is further forward than on a Lie-Nielsen. Asa result, adjusting the iron while your hand is on the tote is more difficult.

On the BOrg plane, it wastneky to retract the iron all the way Into the mouth. With t he chipbrcaker set to take a typical shaving, the adjusting nut would jam agiinst the frog casting when the iron was retracted. The iron would nuke it into iIk- mouth, but barely.

Boih planes usea lateral-adjust lever that is thinner and looser than on a Lie-Nielsen or Clifton. The lever flops around when the plane isdisassemblcd and docsnt move with the same authority as on premium tools.

Neither plane was easy to massage* into cutting! he gossamer shavingvthat are thinner than .001". One of the things you pay for wit h the Lie-Nielsen. Clifton and Veritas planes is that (act that they arc easy to tune-to this very high level.

Perhaps some of this is sole (latness, though I'm not as strident about soles as

/

An extra cutter? Iheimgoithe IVrxx/Rnrr

plane slips below the sole when you adjust the frog It fate* some petsu.tding to get the frog straight in the plane's body.

5$ ■ IVfcibr Wixxh»o«tJ«vf tunr.WJ

some. Both planes had minor (.0015* to .002") concavities, according to a feeler gauge Lappi ng I lie soles removed I he cm-cave areas and improved performance.

After using the planes to dress sone cherry panelsl not iced that theironsnee<L*d lobe resharpened fairly quickly. I sent ttic

blades out to be tested and they were a bit soft - 54 and 55 on the Rockwell "C"scale. Typical premium planes have blades that arc 60 to 62

TIk bottom line with the BOrgand Wood River snvxsthingplanesisth.it you shouldn't fool yourself into thinking you're buy injj a Lie-Nielsen. Cli(ton or Veritas. You're net.

They arc better than the low-end hand-planes I've set up (rom Indiaand China, but they don't meet t he very high standards set by Lic-Niclscn. Clifton and Veritas.

Editor's note: In the Meresi o/Jull disclosure. I have worked with hotfi Lie-Nielsen und Ixe VoJfry Tosix/Verilax to pnnidc content fit DVDs and newsletters. However. I hove never received a dime for my wortr. AH my proceeds \sere donated to the Early American Induslres Association's endowment fund and the Rojjrr Cli//e Memorial Fund, sshuh pun ides (ulctwi assistance to students attendliftthe Mart Adams School of Woodworking, rw

Omhlheed&cjlhnm^riw.abnftinrfund tool tnthusini and the author of "Workbenches: frcm l*iW» thrvrytuContinKiwn&Use'lfSjiHilAr IIMtmUnjSmtx.

A loose lateral. Ihe lateral-adjustment lexer on both planes tthe BOtg's is shown) r> light* ssvight than the Lie-Nielsen's.

The Wood River Block Plane

While buying the Wood River smoothing plane, I couldn't resitf Ixiving a Wood River block plane, too(S69.*Wi. It's a stan-dard-anglc block plane, meaning the iron is bedded at 20°. This plane looks like a dose copy of the I le-Nielsen block plane, except that the lever cap is silver colored instead of bronze.

Its iron was easy to prepare - only 12 minutes to polish the unbevelcd face. But then I ran into problems.

The plane's lied had excess paint in the corners, which prevented the iron from sitting flat. I cleaned that out with an awl.

Also, the bed of the tool wasn't in the proper plane. You had to skew the iron significantly to get an even cut across the mouth. And with the iron in working posi-tion. the tightest you could get the mouth was on one side and really tight on the other side. (See the photo below.I While you could file the front ol the mouth to match the iron's skew, this error in the bed causcs problems with adjusting the iron. Every time you adjusted the iron you needed to adjust the skew again. It's a fatal flaw in my opinion.

So I Ixxight a second bkx k plane. It dirlnt haw a lx-d error, but it had other minor problems. The mouth had burrs that needed to be tiled. Additionally, the adjustable mouth plate wasn't tlush to the sole in every position, and the tightest I could close the mouth was .01". That's fairly tight, but I like it tighter. — CS

Crooked bed. ">e mouth of the first block plane in ssvrkJng position.