I was at Woodcraft in Richmond today,and they had Wood River planes,saying that the blade problem had been fixed. I looked only at the block plane,though I didn't want to cut the clear plastic envelope the oily plane was in. I thought some customer might think the plane not "new". The plane looked a lot like a LN,though not quite as carefully finished.For the price,it seemed quite nice. It had the same blade adjustment as the LN. For some reason,the plating was reversed: The LN has a bronze blade cap,and plated knurled nut for blade adjustment. The Wood River was reversed.plated cap.brass blade nut.
I wonder if the Chinese felt that reversing the plating was sufficient "difference" from the LN?
I wasn't able to test the sole for flatness,and of course,the blade cannot be sharpened,tried with a smooth file,etc. to see of it is good steel.
I thought it,from what I could see,to be a pretty good looking plane. Possibly a LN blade would fit it,if the blade proved bad. Then,I guess you'd have about 1/2 the price of the LN in it. I wish they'd remove some of the planes from the wrapper so the planes could be taken apart for inspection of the machining under the blades.
I also could not do things like tighten down the throat adjustment to see if the sliding sole in front of the blade caved in when tightened from above. I did have that happen once,not with a LN,but sent the plane back for replacement. In the event that the bottom piece did cave in,wich would expose more of the blade,you could carefully file down a washer and put it on top of the movable sole,where it would be around the screw,and pinch against the upper casting to keep it from doing that.
I wished the cap wasn't plated,because I felt that the cap could benefit from a little smoothing up around the edges on the end nearest the bevel of the blade. But,it was made to a much lower price.