I love Lie Nielson, this is a cool story!
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+1
I saw LN raves and bought a 4 1/2 on a massive departure from my Tim 'The Tool Man' (MORE POWER!!) path thru life. Out of the box, it was perfect. ...Even my boss pledged his troth (I let him touch it):cool:.
If I could just get it that sharp again, I would be sorely tempted to join the dark side. But for now, I am condemned to mere interloper status.
It's working out well so far. It works great and is nice to look at. I have a Stanley 4 1/2 and a Millers Falls #10 (same as 4 1/2) that I've fettled the daylights out of and only got them to work well (as opposed to REALLY well), even with a Hock iron on the 4 1/2. I'm in the process of thinning the herd in a major way so I thought I'd let them go and take the plunge on a good wide smoother. I like the ability to close the mouth way down on this plane. I put a super fine edge on the iron and so far I've tested some maple, some oak, and some walnut and I'm able to take full width shavings that are pretty thin. More importantly, the resulting surface finish is really nice. I may invest in a high angle frog at some point so I can deal with swirly grain.