 Many modern plane manufacturers have gone down the route of trying to reduce production costs, with predictable consequences. A few brave plane makers (we should applaud them) seeing the gap in the market have seized the opportunity to produce products of real quality. These makers have carried on along traditional lines, marrying modern production methods, engineering tolerances, with some technical improvements to designs that have been around 150 years.
The Canadian company Lee Valley Tools under their Veritas brand have given us another alternative in the quality plane market. Now serious woodworkers have a choice between traditional or traditional based with a modern twist. Veritas have taken a fresh look at the woodworking planes and focused their prodigious talents on every aspect of the plane and made improvements where they felt tradition was lacking, for instance in frogs, feed mechanisms, blades to hold a finer edge for longer, and other changes to help eliminate blade chatter.
Veritas manufacture their plane bodies from fully stress-relieved ductile cast iron (also known as SG iron or nodular cast iron) which maintains its dimensions after machining and will take harder knocks without cracking. Veritas carry out all the machining in their own factory to ensure a precision fit between parts.
A plane featuring a moveable toe or nose-piece has both parts machined as one. The sides and soles of all planes are surface ground, the soles flat and the sides square to the sole.
With the exception of the Scraper and Apron planes, Veritas produce blades using 3.2mm (1/8”) thick A2 tool steel, hardened to Rc60-62. The A2 alloy takes a keener edge, is more resistant to chipping and retains an edge for longer than other plane blades.
Veritas also offer blades made from O1 high carbon steel which can be sharpened and honed more easily but doesn’t have quite the same edge holding properties as the A2 alloy.
On the larger planes, the rear handles made stronger and more secure either by the unique Veritas frog design or in the case of the low angle and bevel up models by two, full-depth fixing screws. The handles are wooden, for the simple reason that it is still the perfect handle material without rival from manmade alternatives. Small details often make all the difference; for instance the grub screws on either side of the plane body near the mouth. Adjusting these screws helps to maintain the position of the blade centrally and prevent the blade moving sideways when the lateral adjustment is used.
A closer look at some examples will soon show how a Veritas plane is an innovative and thoroughly useful tool. |
