Router Plane

[Bill Fleming]

I have both of the LN router planes and love them. While for some the "blade adapter" approach is a neg. for me I like sharing blades between the two tools.

[Jim Koepke]

I'm going to toss in an oddball suggestion: depending upon width of blade, take a peak at what LV calls their "hinge mortise plane". Uses same adjustment mechanism as their router plane (which I also have), but with the open throat, you get an excellent view of the job at hand. Downside is it only comes with a 3/4" blade, though it would not be hard to make a smaller blade. The other nice thing is the length, which gives far more registration on the stock - sort of reminiscent of the old Preston rectangular router planes.

According to the write up on this the blades are interchangeable with the router plane blades.

At the bottom of the text:

interchangeable with the blades of the Veritas® router plane (our items #05P38.21+). A blade sharpening jig for the two-piece blade is also included.

http://www.leevalley.com/us/wood/pag...65&cat=1,41182

jtk

[Tony Zaffuto]

Thanks Jim. Since I have a LV large router plane, I'm home free. But I got to say, that hinge plane is something else and I reach for it a lot in the short time I've had it!

[Mike Henderson]

I have the full size LV router plane and love it. I had bought the LN small router plane but it had two problems that caused me to sell it.

1. It does not have a depth adjusting screw. As someone else said, the way you use one of these is you take a bit off, then drop the blade a bit, and take a bit more off, etc. Without an adjusting screw, it was very hard to get the next increment. The blade would slip down on me, and then you've lost your reference. Trying to adjust it "a little bit" was a pain.

2. The small LN plane uses a brass screw that's stuck into a corner and is about impossible to tighten by hand, and then impossible to loosen by hand. So you have to have a screwdriver on your bench when you use this plane.

I found these two deficiencies to be more than I wanted to deal with every time I used the plane so I sold it and just use the larger LV router plane. The LV has a bunch of different sized blades so unless the body is just too big to fit into your work space, I think the LV full size is the best bet.

Mike

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Mike

Your comments are spot-on. LV use a curvy washer to add spring to the adjusters. This helps prevent all the tension going at once, and the blade dropping out (as it can with the LN). I wonder if it is possible to add a curvy washer to the LN? That would be a very cheap upgrade.

I've used these on the router planes I built (these are between the Large and Small in size) ...



You can see the curvy washer here. It really works ...



Regards from Perth

Derek