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Thread: What's wrong with Woodriver?!

  1. #61
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zach Dillinger View Post
    I'm probably wrong here, but my understanding is that it isn't the cost of getting the patent that is prohibitive, but the cost of enforcing the patent / protecting one's own IP. And don't the Chinese have a history of ignoring intellectual property laws anyway?
    Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!!! We have a winner.

    This is exactly the issue. As George, and several others, have already stated several times over in this thread previously, the chinese have a history of putting the onus of copyright and patent infringement enforcement on the patent owner. This costs money. Lots of it. Huge money. The chinese know it. They do it all day long, every day. The difference is, in most cases, they're not very good at copying. They use inferior cast iron, and the fit and finish on planes from WR and the mountain of Bridgeport clones leaves much to be desired.

    This is one of those debates that will probably continue on forums forever. Some people don't care about the issues, and all they care about is the dollar coming out of their pocket. Some care heavily about the issues, and choose to buy fewer items, and buy quality from a North American or European maker, at all costs. Some just stick with restoring the old stuff.

    I have been lucky enough to have been "in the room" as an innocent bystander during a heated discussion on this topic, with some of the previously mentioned players who have a stake in this game. After listening to it play out, I made my decision, right then and there, to never buy anything ever again from Woodcraft. I also made the same decision regarding any tools from china, in general. I have done a pretty solid job of purging my entire workshop of tools made in china, for both wood and metal working. I sleep pretty good at night knowing I've made the right choice for me.

    Here's how I see it, in it's simplest and least wordy form. Stanley/Bailey designed the bedrock plane long ago, and stopped making them decades ago. Lie Nielsen took that design, which was, at that time, no longer protected by any patent, and also did no harm to anyone, as no company was making bedrock style planes in the world at that time. They took an existent design, improved upon it in several areas, and improved the machining quality immensely. This resulted in a plane that, for the first time in (perhaps) forever, worked correctly right out of the box. Eureka. Sales in droves, and LN is partially responsible for the beginning of the current resurgence in the hand tool golden renaissance that's been going on for quite a while.

    Along comes Woodcraft and Woodriver, and they ship a LN plane over to china, and copy it. Plane and simple. Forget about patents and legal rights. How about thinking about what is just right vs. wrong. They copy it, only they make a mess of things, using poor quality cast iron and questionable machining practices. They get the plane to the North American market for 1/3 the price of a LN. 3 versions later, people who don't care about the "right vs. wrong" discussion buy them because, now, they apparently work as they should, at least some of the time, and they are still much cheaper than an American Made LN plane, or a Canadian made Veritas plane.

    For myself, living by a code is what keeps me going. I will never buy a chinese made tool as long as I live, and I haven't stepped foot in a Woodcraft store since being the "fly on the wall" at a tool event several years ago.

    I am not a patent attorney, and I didn't play one in a movie, either. However, I am opinionated on this subject matter, in case you couldn't tell.
    Jeff

  2. #62
    Quote Originally Posted by Jeff Heath View Post
    ......the fit and finish on planes from WR ..... leaves much to be desired.
    Many of your points are valid Jeff. But I take exception to the single statement I excerpted above. I'm not sure where you're coming from there. Perhaps you saw a version 2? You see, I own a WR #3 version 3 that I bought for $103 specifically to evaluate it. (My review is in the archive if you're interested.) I find the fit and finish for that plane to be as good or better than the vintage Stanleys I own. I would say that the FIT AND FINISH (only) is at least 80% as good as that of my 3 Lee Valleys. The only beef I have is that it's too heavy for my taste.

    I also own a WR #1. Price decided that for me - I wanted a small plane for box work and I couldn't justify the cost of LN, nor the cost of a vintage #1. The fit/finish is fine there too. The ONLY beef I have with the WR #1 is that I'd prefer a finer thread on the adjuster.

    But like I said, many of your points are quite valid. It's only this one point with which I take issue.

    Fred
    Last edited by Frederick Skelly; 04-02-2016 at 6:53 PM.

  3. #63
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    FWIW, Woodcraft says in their latest sale flier that anything that cuts and is worked by hand, i.e., chisels and planes, is discounted 15 percent right now.

    But is 15 percent off on a Woodriver plane any kind of a deal?

  4. #64
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    I am opinionated on this subject matter, in case you couldn't tell.
    Some are of the same opinion Jeff.

    jtk
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
    - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

  5. #65
    Quote Originally Posted by Gene Davis View Post
    But is 15 percent off on a Woodriver plane any kind of a deal?
    Yes. Thats the only time to buy them. Else, spend the extra and buy the LV.

  6. #66
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Hachet View Post
    I have a #6 sized vintage Stanley that I love. Not sure why the #6 sizedoes not get a lot of love...
    I have the WR #6. Works fine. The tote shape sucks. Someday I will reshape it.

  7. #67
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rich Riddle View Post
    One day in a shop someone handed me a plane to use for a bit. I used it but couldn't quite adjust to the way it "felt." After using it for a while, I looked down and noticed it was a Woodriver plane. I simply prefer Veritas and at times a Lie Nielsen plane because of the "feel" of the planes. I don't understand those who don't try them first. But to each his own.

    I have a LN 4 1/2 and I can't seem to get the "feel" down.

  8. #68
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    [QUOTE=Frederick Skelly;2549303

    It's only this one point with which I take issue.

    Fred[/QUOTE]

    Fred

    I used to teach woodworking classes several years ago in my shop on Saturdays. One that was very popular was on the tuning and use of hand planes. One of the guys who attended frequently brought in a couple of WR planes. He couldn't get them to work right, and asked if I could show him what they needed. What they needed was to be re-machined. The sole was not machined square to the sides, and the bed was not square to the mouth, so the frog wasn't able to keep the iron bedded properly without skewing the cutting iron. It was on a jack plane. I showed him my LN low angle jack, and how he could use one iron for low angle end grain work, as well as most planing you run into on a project. I also showed him how to adjust a 2nd iron with a higher bevel to attain an effective cutting angle between 55° and 60° for difficult-to-plane woods and grain. He took his WR jack and smoothing plane back, and bought the low angle jack from LN.

    I have also seen other WR planes where the machining quality was not up to snuff with the likes of LV or LN. I have no idea about versions 1, 2 or 3. If you are one of the lucky ones that got a decent quality plane or planes, then good for you. My question is, what about all the woodworkers who bought these planes when the first 2 versions were being sold. They were getting junk most of the time, and a lot of them didn't know enough about planes to even know that they were getting junk to begin with.

    I was never comparing the WR fit and finish to older Stanley/Bailey planes. For my own quarter, I'd rather have a fleet of old Stanley's, bedrock or not, than anything from WR. For the longest time, I had a pretty full set of Bedrock planes from 603 to 608. No junior jack, but the 605 1/2 was one of my favorites. I tuned them all myself, which required extensive work in most cases. It was a labor of love, done at the end of my work day each day for a while until I closed up shop for the day. Some took more than others. After a decade of that, I began acquiring Lie Nielsen planes. At the time, Bedrock planes were selling for near what LN planes were selling for, and I was gladly making the trade-off, selling my Stanley Bedrock's for silly money, and using that to buy brand new LN planes.

    Now, I've sold most of my LN planes because I make my own wooden planes. I was impressed by how well they held their value to the ebay world. Every one of them sold within a few bucks of what a brand new one cost. I have kept a few of them; my low angle jack, which is one of my most used planes, and the #4 smoother. I also have their adjustable mouth block plane, their rabbeting block plane, and the medium shoulder plane, and all 3 Bogg's spokeshaves. Great tools.

    I have met Tom LN in person, and he is a gem of a guy. It meant a lot to me, and still does today, to give my hard earned money to an American businessman who is a class act. I don't feel the same way about Woodcraft, and I won't give my money to a chinese manufacturer unless there's absolutely no other choice. With tools, there's always a choice. My shop is all old American iron, and one Canadian machine, that I restored myself. I just replaced my last Taiwanese made machine, a 16 year old Jet 15" planer, with a Baxter Whitney 30" planer. I can't wait to get it tuned and up and running so I can sell the Jet. It'll be a very happy day for me to see it go, and not because it wasn't a good machine. It was a very good machine, after I made plenty of changes to get it to perform better. It just represents the driving force of what's wrong with our economy in our country, and I wished I knew better back when I bought it, and other's like it. I've made the correction, and I feel good about that.
    Jeff

  9. #69
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    I couldnt agree more with Jeff. Woodcraft rarely gets my $$ anymore and then only when they have something that I cannot get elsewhere and I make sure that it is not made in Any Asian country other than Japan.
    That which does not kill you will likely raise your insurance premiums.

  10. #70
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    The cost of patent protection is high indeed. Roland White invented the "Bored through cylinder" for revolvers. With bored through cylinders,modern style cartridges could be loaded into pistols easily from the rear of the cylinders. Percussion pistols did not have bored through cylinders.

    Roland got into a deal with Smith and Wesson where he'd get a royalty from every pistol they sold with a bored through cylinder. Smith and Wesson shrewdly inserted in their contract that Roland would pay the cost of litigation protecting the patent.

    The result was that Smith and Wesson got wealthy making pistols with bored through cylinders while Roland White died in poverty from paying for law suites protecting his invention.

  11. #71
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    Jeff made an excellent point, with regards to V1 & 2 of the WR planes. If Woodcraft were to act in a manner similar to LV or LN, they would have recalled the planes and corrected the issues or replaced the planes.
    If the thunder don't get you, the lightning will.

  12. #72
    All good points Jeff. I understand where you're coming from.

    Best regards,
    Fred
    Last edited by Frederick Skelly; 04-03-2016 at 9:31 AM. Reason: Typo

  13. #73
    Quote Originally Posted by Tony Zaffuto View Post
    If Woodcraft were to act in a manner similar to LV or LN, they would have recalled the planes and corrected the issues or replaced the planes.
    Absolutely Tony. If Woodcraft had done so, it would have gone a long way toward repairing the damage done to their reputation by those sub-standard planes. I was surprised when LV sent me a free depth stop for my small router plane and even more surprised when the sent a new (free) depth stop for my plow plane. And their offer to upgrade the tool to the latest specs for only $59 blew me away.

  14. #74
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Fournier View Post
    I'm Canadian and I'll buy American woodworking tools before I buy Chinese copies every time! You guys south of my border need to buck up! I am not a vintage fan and that is likely because we don't have much vintage up here but I'd buy US vintage before I bought Chinese.
    I have a #3 Bailey that is a Canadian made plane and it is my goto plane. So I like that Canadian plane.

  15. #75
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    I have been disappointed with some of the junky stuff Woodcraft sells. Their needle files and rifflers are strictly Chinese junk,for example.

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