Lie-Nielsen making the bronze 4 1/2 again.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

I was choosing a smoother yesterday (Thurs) and came across this one when I visited the LN site. No way I would buy it at that price but I really like the idea of bronze body planes. I was deciding between the bronze LN #4 and one of the Veritas smoothers. I really had no idea which I wanted and almost posted a thread here but I'm sure there have been a ton of threads by people asking which smoother to buy and then there will be pros and cons of both and ultimately it's whatever the poster decides (or buy them all!!!!). So I got the Veritas bevel-up. Hopefully I made a good decision.

This is one pretty plane though.

You did good. The bevel up smoother gives you lots of options with bevel angles. It was one of my first new planes. Probably I reach more for my LN 4 bronze or 4 1/2 iron, but the Veritas bevel up gets plenty of use as well.

My 4 1/2 rusted because I put it in a drawer "temporarily" and "temporarily" became a few months without coating it like I usually do. No worries. I am glad it happened so that I am not all worried about keeping it pretty. Living in the tropics, I choose bronze whenever available, but I cannot justify double the price for this one. Should you get a LN plane, I highly recommend the No. 4 bronze.

[Patrick Chase]

You did good. The bevel up smoother gives you lots of options with bevel angles. It was one of my first new planes. Probably I reach more for my LN 4 bronze or 4 1/2 iron, but the Veritas bevel up gets plenty of use as well.

My 4 1/2 rusted because I put it in a drawer "temporarily" and "temporarily" became a few months without coating it like I usually do. No worries. I am glad it happened so that I am not all worried about keeping it pretty. Living in the tropics, I choose bronze whenever available, but I cannot justify double the price for this one. Should you get a LN plane, I highly recommend the No. 4 bronze.

The Veritas bevel-up is about as fire-and-forget as they come. If the blade is sharp and beveled at an appropriate angle then it will work. If you got the 2-1/4" wide bevel-up smoother, then that comes with a 38 deg blade (50 deg total cutting angle) that will work nicely for most things.

You could get somewhat better performance on difficult woods with a BD plane and tightly-set cap iron, but you have to learn some additional skills for that (i.e. not-so-fire-and-forget). A *lot* of us started out with BU smoothers.

[Mike Brady]

Well I see that the production run of twenty four bronze 4-1/2's is just about sold out. None of those guys must have read Warren M's posts.

[lowell holmes]

I had a Lie-Nielsen iron 4 1/2, I liked it. It was a good plane.
I went to a woodworking show and came home with a Veritas bevel up smoother.
A short time later, I sold the 4 1/2.

[Mike Brady]

Sounds like you are suggesting that the BU smoother is a replacement for the BD. I'm sure you will get an argument on that one.

[lowell holmes]

Let's see, I have a #3 Bailey, 5 1/2 Bailey, 604, 605, 607 Bedrocks, and a #6 Bailey.

I'm not substituting anything. They ALL produce translucent shavings.

The BU smoother does things the other planes will not do.

What is there to argue about? The #3 is the plane I am most likely to grab for small area smoothing. It is a Canadian made plane.

[William Fretwell]

Bronze may not 'rust' but I've seen comments here about bronze planes going black in some climates and discolouring the wood.
The idea of such a heavy smoother is appealing but you can buy two excellent planes for the same money. As I've never been a collector just a user I feel no anguish!
I am going to replace three planes after the summer, so I am looking.

[Patrick Chase]

Bronze may not 'rust' but I've seen comments here about bronze planes going black in some climates and discolouring the wood.

That's true, but with the caveat that it's a very thin surface layer (a patina) that is easily removed. The exception is if the discoloring is caused by presence of chlorides, in which case it can penetrate and ultimately destroy the tool. So don't measure out the chlorine for your pool on your workbench :-).

For a really good time, try wrapping a bronze tool in VCI paper (the stuff you use to prevent corrosion of ferrous metals). Bright green snail-trails add a certain je ne sais quoi to the work...

[steven c newman]

Overweight, overpriced, and over hyped. My monthly rent cost less...for a simple smooth plane? would be a surefire way to be made a Single person...L-N paying for the Divorce payments, too?

Bronze ruled the world...until swords made from Iron came along.....3,000 yrs ago? It does make fine statues until they turn green.....

[Prashun Patel]

Overweight, overpriced, and over hyped.

For you, maybe. For me, not.
I like my #4 Bronze.
It's worth every penny I paid for it.
I'm not the most experienced plane user, but I am experienced enough to know that the weight is perfect, the hype is well-placed, and the price was (begrudgingly) worth the divorce.

I have successfully set up several smoothing planes of different styles, but this one seems easier to set up perfectly than the others I own. I can clearly see that other planes can be made to work as well - maybe even better. But the effort to get a plane in perfect condition shouldn't be forgotten by the experienced people here; that can be a daunting task even for an intermediate user. The nice thing about the Veritas and LN planes (new) is that they do perform simply and reliably out of the box. Providing a model for perfect performance continues to be a valuable in my education to fixing and tuning other planes.

[Patrick Chase]

I'm holding out for the Depleted Uranium Woodpecker Special One-Time Buy plane. It's not just for tank armor and things that penetrate tank armor any more. Why settle for a material with a density of ~8 g/cc when you can go all the way to 19?

Seriously, I think we've beaten this into the ground. We're arguing about subjective preferences here, and we're not going to all agree.

[Frederick Skelly]

I'm holding out for the Depleted Uranium Woodpecker Special One-Time Buy plane. It's not just for tank armor and things that penetrate tank armor any more. Why settle for a material with a density of ~8 g/cc when you can go all the way to 19?

Sputter. Spit. Gulp. Coffee all over the monitor again! (Second time this week!)

[Todd Stock]

I just had to show this thread to my female student...she mentioned that a good upper body workout is unlikely to do any of us any harm, and the chicks dig it. Just saying...

[Malcolm Schweizer]

I'm holding out for the Depleted Uranium Woodpecker Special One-Time Buy plane. It's not just for tank armor and things that penetrate tank armor any more. Why settle for a material with a density of ~8 g/cc when you can go all the way to 19?

Seriously, I think we've beaten this into the ground. We're arguing about subjective preferences here, and we're not going to all agree.

Would the woodpecker depleted uranium plane be red anodized? Can you anodize depleted uranium? Can it be ordered in weapons grade uranium? I might need that extra power for some tough grain.

[Patrick Chase]

Would the woodpecker depleted uranium plane be red anodized? Can you anodize depleted uranium? Can it be ordered in weapons grade uranium? I might need that extra power for some tough grain.

Technically speaking Depleted Uranium (DU) is more or less the opposite of "weapons-grade Uranium", even though both are used in very different sorts of weapons. Specifically, one the two ways of making DU is to scoop up the leftovers from the enrichment process that creates Stuff That Goes Boom In A Huge Way (tm).

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

EDIT: Now that I think about it I seem to recall that DU is also used in thermonuclear weapons, in their tampers. You have either Plutonium or "weapons-grade" enriched Uranium in the fissile primary, Lithium Deuteride in a fusion secondary that's ignited by the primary, and then finally DU in the tamper which is ignited by the secondary. IIRC much of the yield and almost all of the fallout comes from that tamper. Pleasant thoughts...