derekcohen said:
ChuckM said:
Not sure about the current status as the article was a decade ago. At the time, those three stores were independently owned from the chain, and L-N and those stores were on good terms.
That is my understanding.
Cheese, that comment by Patrick Jackson was an essay in diplomacy. The second article tells the real story ...
https://www.finewoodworking.com/2009/05/21/who-begot-who-comparing-planes-from-lie-nielsen-wood-river-and-stanley
The time frame between WR planes arriving on the scene and the WR/LN conflict arising (as I said, it went to court), was too brief for WoodCraft to not have been planning this long beforehand.
I was around at the time and hearing the story from related manufacturers. LN were not the only company whose tools were copied, and the copies sold at WoodCraft.
Regards from Perth
Derek
Interesting, but there is design and then there is execution. If you are going to copy a design, then you should be able to execute the design as well. Wood River may have copied the Lie Nielsen design, but from all I've heard, they have not executed on it as well.
I visited the Lie Nielsen factory about 1 1/2 years ago on a beautiful fall morning in Maine. I walked into the show room, looked around, and (of course) bought a few things that caught my eye. The sales person was knowledgeable about the tools, and demo'd a couple for me. Another person eventually came in the store (coincidentally, someone I had taken a woodworking class with in Colorado 10 years previously) and I took my stuff out to the car. As I was contemplating driving off, I thought to myself - chances are that I will never get this way again. So I went back in and asked for a tour. The other customer thought that was a good idea as well, so the salesperson yelled up the stairs for someone to listen for customers while she gave us a tour, and off we went.
I was impressed. People at the factory know their part of the process, but even more, they know why their part of the process contributes to a quality product, down to the smallest details of fit and finish. They understood that they could have done things more efficiently or with less care, and they could explain why that resulted in an inferior product. There is a lot of CNC work, but surprisingly a lot of hand work as well, for things that just require the right feel. The description she gave of the guy who does final sharpening and inspection on the saws was wonderful (he had just left for lunch, so I didn't get to meet him). He works on machines that date back to before there were motors, and although they have retrofitted motors to them, apparently they can still be operated by hand if needed. The bottom line was that I saw people who were passionate about quality, proud of their work, and produce products that rank with the best in the world.
And at the end of the day, that's why I will buy a Lie Nielsen plane over a Wood River plane. Wood River may have copied the design, but they didn't capture the parts of the process that require passion and pride to get right. I've bought a lot of stuff at Woodcraft, including Lie Nielsen planes back in the day, but in this case they lost my plane business not because Wood River planes are knock-offs, but because they are just not as good.
Of course, that's why people buy Blue Spruce, and to some extent Woodpeckers as well. My feeling is that both companies have passion and pride in quality, but they have a different design sense. Blue Spruce is concerned with the aesthetics and feel of their tools in a way that Woodpeckers is not. Woodpeckers is more concerned with precision tools that are very functional, but not beautiful. They make some great stuff if you need it, but they also leverage that model to tools that seem a little gimmicky to me - products in search of a good reason for existence. That is reflected in marketing as well, as Woodpeckers sometimes feels like slice and dice TV marketing rather than something that appeals to the soul. I think the challenge for Woodpeckers moving forward will be to protect and learn from the Blue Spruce aesthetic. If you don't think that is important, imagine a Blue Spruce Chisel with a red anodized aluminum (or red plastic) handle.
