# The Jointer plane to buy



## Jim Jakosh

Thanks. That looks like a real handy tool with that long base like a joiinter table! Give good resolution over a long surface.

Cheers, Jim


----------



## hokieman

This is an excellent plane as are all of Lie Nielsen tools. Unsurpassed quality and made in America!


----------



## bobasaurus

I managed to find one of these locally used a few years back. It's a great plane really, I haven't touched my stanley no. 8 since getting it.


----------



## DevinT

I was looking at this plane on eBay thinking about buying it until you said it has no lateral adjustment. What was LN thinking?


----------



## AGolden

> I was looking at this plane on eBay thinking about buying it until you said it has no lateral adjustment. What was LN thinking?
> 
> - DevinT


I was skeptical at first too but the machining tolerances are so tight that it really doesn't need an independent lateral adjuster. If you do find the iron needs to go one way or the other a light tap with a hammer gets it right where it needs to be. For something like this I prefer no lateral adjuster, I have a Stanley low angle jack with a lateral adjuster and I have found it causes more problems than it solves.


----------



## DevinT

The lateral adjustment, in my opinion, is so that if you skew the bevel during routine sharpening, that you can compensate, instead of going back to the sharpener infinite times chasing a perfectly 90 degrees between the bevel and side of the blade.

So, you're just supposed to use it without an adjuster because it's perfectly 90 out of the box and when you sharpen it yourself after it gets dull, that's when you pull out the animal hide hammer for some tappy-taps. OK. That means that the initial experience from the factory is a superior hassle-free affair with laterals while the long-term ownership experience is markedly different.

Hey, I guess it works if you consider it would drive sales because you'd forever be chasing that "out of the box" feel. Or maybe we've just grown accustom to such fine honing procedures that it's expected that when you own this plane you must spend 3 hours honing your blade every time it gets dull (which I've heard is quite often considering they use a sub-stellar steel).

As for lateral adjusters on low angle anything, that's par for the course. So I think you just hit the nail on the head there. They probably didn't include the lateral adjuster because it is a known issue that lateral adjusters on low angle planes are a nuisance.

Thanks so much for cleaning that up for me (that in-fact they are doing us a solid; now that I think about it, bevel-up blade honing is already more involved than honing a blade for a bevel-down blade; so this entirely makes sense now).

Hmmm. Now I'm thinking about the LN 7 1/2 on eBay again. Thanks!


----------

