Lee Valley has recently introduced a newly redesigned Veritas small plow plane, along with new beading blades.
Even if you have no interest in plow planes, keep reading! There’s more to this story.
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So, what’s a plow plane?
A plow plane is essentially designed for cutting grooves, rabbets, and tongues into wood. You wouldn’t use it for cutting very wide grooves into boards, although Lee Valley has introduced wider blades in recent years.
Let’s say you want to cut 1/4″ wide by 1/4″ grooves into the sides of a drawer, to accommodate a bottom. You could use a small plow plane for that.
Adding to their existing selection of standard, wide, and tongue and groove plow plane blades, Lee Valley has recently introduced several new beading blades.
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A beading plane is designed to cut decorative beads into wood. Google’s image search should help describe what a bead is. If you still need help with the visualization, image cutting a dowel in half and then gluing the half-round to a board. That’s a rough approximation of what beading usually looks like.
Lee Valley’s new small plow planes work perfectly with the new beading blades. But if you bought a plane prior to 2/26/2016, your plane won’t work with the new blades. I’m guessing that’s when the last of the older plow planes sold out.
If you have an older Veritas small plow plane, you’re not out of luck and stuck having to buy a new plane if you want to use the new beading planes.
The small plow plane is priced at $229. It would hurt a bit if one had to buy a whole new plane just to do some beading work.
But check this out – Lee Valley is offering a Veritas small plow plane upgrade kit, where you can send them part of your plane for remanufacturing.
Having your small plow plane upgraded with the new design features and beading plane compatibility will set you back $59. If you buy the upgrade kit now and don’t wait for a free shipping promo, it’ll cost you another $10 for shipping.
This upgrade kit includes a shipping box, instructions on how to partially disassemble your plane for sending just the plane body back, and pre-paid shipping. Return shipping is also included.
What they’ll do is remachine your plane, and also replace the depth stop clamp.
Speaking of which, the depth stop clamp looks to have been improved, and a quick search shows that it has. If you have absolutely no interest in beading, you can still get the depth stop upgrade (part number 05P26.61) for free. If you send your plane back to Lee Valley for remachining, you’ll get the depth stop upgraded at the same time.
Price: $59
Buy Now(Plow Plane Upgrade Kit via Lee Valley)
More Info(Veritas Beading Blades)
More Info(Depth Stop Upgrade)
Lee Valley won’t offer this upgrade program forever; you must take advantage of this offer by August 31st, 2016.
I am already quite fond of Lee Valley’s customer service, and this just hammers in that sentiment further.
Fred emailed in this morning about the upgrade program, and his views mirrored my own. He says it better than I could:
Maybe not such a big deal in and of itself – but IMO how Lee Valley plans to take care of the buyers of prior versions of the plane is innovative and shows excellent appreciation of customer loyalty.
I agree with this 100%. Lee Valley could have very well come up with the redesign and told customers that they would need to buy a newer version of the plane in order to get beading blade compatibility.
Here’s an example of the norm:
A USA manufacturer of camera grip equipment (tripods, etc.) recently came out with a much improved redesign of a product I bought and hated but never returned. But nope, there’s no upgrade, buyback, or discount program. When I asked about whether there was, they told me I would have to buy a new model, but could sell my older one on ebay to recoup part of the cost. Gee, thanks.
Lee Valley, you guys rock!
C Greene
Apple would have made ALL of the parts non-interchangeable.
JoeM
I love Lee Valley. They are bound, bent, and determined to serve the customers more than their bottom line. They engineer, and build, a lot of their own products, and are a Canadian company.
I once bought a Metric tape with their branding on it off them (I prefer Metric. Decimal points are easier than Fractions. I’m just that way.) and bought this Magnetic Tape Holder at the same time. Turns out the screw that holds on the belt clip on the Lee Valley tape is too small for the metal star that the Magnetic Tape Holder uses. I notified them via E-Mail that this was the case, and they sent me a replacement star, free of charge!
They’ve never hesitated to make things right, bend over backward to help, or put me in direct contact with the people necessary to resolve whatever I ask of them. They truly are an amazing company in the current environment of horror stories coming out of other companies.
Brent
I lucked out. The last of the old plow planes sold out around Christmas. I was on a backordered list since January 5, and was upgraded to the new one when it shipped on 2/26.
Anton
They definitely have the mark up to be able to provide better customer interactions. I’m not sure how much praise its worth when you consider that you’re paying 2-10x more for the tools.
That’s what will probably financially ruin Craftsman in the long run, is that they have 75 years worth of tools out there that will eventually be eligible to be exchanged. And some guys really take advantage of that.
Stuart
Are you implying that the prices are grossly inflated, and that they’re no better than the tools that cost 1/2 to 1/10th the price?
I own a few Veritas tools, and can honestly say that the quality is far better than that of lesser tools.
I upgraded my usable but really junky hand planes to Veritas models, and there is a night and day difference. They make a quality product, and I can’t say I have ever bought a Veritas tool and thought I didn’t get my money’s worth.
Anton
I definitely agree that they are better tools. I’m saying that they probably have a higher mark up that allows them to have better service. It has to be built into the price of the product since you need the service manpower and be able to eat the price of replacement products.
I’m just getting into hand woodworking so most of my stuff right now are decent quality used pieces that I’ve cleaned up and sharpened. I’ve got my eye on a Lie Nielsen block plane that is versatile enough that I might be able to justify the price.
While they might be worth the money, the price is much larger factor in the opportunity cost lost for most of us with limited budgets. $200 buys a lot of project material, or pretty much a full set of used plane, or a nice date with wife, etc.
wayne
I have to disagree Anton. The closest thing to Veritas quality is Lie Nielsen and Veritas is much cheaper on most things. I think the quality is probably about equal between the two. You can’t compare Craftsman to Veritas. I would argue that they aren’t even in the same marketplace.
I will agree that Veritas stuff is still pricey for the average joe like me. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth it or that their prices are inflated.
Anton
I only mentioned Craftsman because their customer service obligations are probably affecting their profitability and viability at this point. Since they have so many tools out in the world and their lifetime warranty is so lax, the exchanges are probably a significant part of their budget. Since they’ve been cutting cost by moving production to China and using lower quality metals, the problem multiplies exponentially because their tools break more often and now the percentage and frequency of exchanges is higher.
wayne
Good point Anton. I wish I could afford a chest full of veritas and lie nielsen!