Quangsheng vs Wood River (Jointer and Jack Plane):

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Daniel Troy

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I need a jack plane and a jointer plane. I have narrowed it down to the Wood River models and the Quangsheng models. I know they are pretty much the same but there are some differences that I can't seem to find. Can anyone recommend one over the other? The Wood River ones cost about £30 more but they are saying that they are a new version ( V3 ). Not sure what that will mean to me, but you all might have an idea?

Any input would be really welcome.
 
Hi - I have V3 QS planes and a couple of V3 WRs as well.

Functionally, they are identical.

I think that they are made of the same materials - I'm fairly certain they come from the same factory to a very similar spec.

In terms of fit and finish they are almost exactly the same - the WR lever cap has the WoodRiver logo on it, the QS is plain.

Either would be a purchase you would not regret. If you choose QS, I'd buy from Workshop Heaven (fresher stock, wider product range, and IMHO, much better service) not Rutlands.

Cheers, W2S
 
Woody2Shoes":10ic5jmx said:
...I'm fairly certain they come from the same factory to a very similar spec...
That's my understanding too.

Can I throw in a curved ball here. Why would you spend big money on a brand new jack plane. It's a roughing tool, and a second hand Stanley (or better still a Record) will do the same job with the same accuracy, for a fraction of the cost.

And the saving might allow you to upgrade the jointer to a better spec Lie-Nielsen or Clifton.

Cheers, Vann.
 
Just to clear up some confusion that is developing.

The planes sold by Workshop Heaven and rutlands have similar, but different names. They are not the same thing, quality wise, by a long way.

As I have said here a number of times, there isn't a barge pole long enough that I would touch rutlands with.

Workshop heaven has a good reputation for value for money and customer service.
 
lurker":20u62qfh said:
...The planes sold by Workshop Heaven and rutlands have similar, but different names. They are not the same thing, quality wise, by a long way...
I don't know what name Rutlands use for their planes, but I assume the "Wood River" the OP refers to are the ones made in China for a US company. I believe "Quangsheng" are made for Workshop Heaven by the same factory in China.

There is another retail brand with a similar spelling to Quangsheng (Qiangsheng?), which I believe are again made in the same factory in China, but to a much lower spec than "Wood River" and "Quangsheng".

Cheers, Vann.
 
lurker":hiww3x66 said:
Just to clear up some confusion that is developing.

The planes sold by Workshop Heaven and rutlands have similar, but different names. They are not the same thing, quality wise, by a long way.

As I have said here a number of times, there isn't a barge pole long enough that I would touch rutlands with.

Workshop heaven has a good reputation for value for money and customer service.
Although I appreciate your beef with Rutlands, with a lot of the QS/Luban stuff, the difference between WS Heaven and Rutlands isn't massive.

Take for example the very nice Luban 43 plough plane - Other than the additional kerfing saw they are identical. The small router plane is also identical.

There are items that WS Heaven offer that Rutlands don't (the brass spokeshave for example).

The range of bench planes seem to be the biggest difference - the Rutlands ones seem to have less finishing/polishing and attention to detail. They share the same totes/handles and basic specs though...
 
They're all Chinese rip offs of Lie Nielsen products , yes Lie Nielsens were based on earlier Stanleys but at least Lie Nielsen improved them through product development and brought something different to the market.
The Chinese versions have made no attempt to add any input and are blatant rip offs , as with so many other copies of western goods.
Buy one plane either a Lie Nielsen, Lee Valley or hopefully a Clifton , they all hold their money well and you'll be helping the long term tool development and manufacturing of honest companies
 
Max Power":tge37vpf said:
They're all Chinese rip offs of Lie Nielsen products , yes Lie Nielsens were based on earlier Stanleys but at least Lie Nielsen improved them through product development and brought something different to the market.
The Chinese versions have made no attempt to add any input and are blatant rip offs , as with so many other copies of western goods.
Buy one plane either a Lie Nielsen, Lee Valley or hopefully a Clifton , they all hold their money well and you'll be helping the long term tool development and manufacturing of honest companies

Like you say the Lie Nielsen's are Bedrock pattern based. So QS/Luban are basically doing what Lie Nielsen are doing. The QA is pretty good, so unless you have some beef against China itself, what's not to like? Sure, why not spend more money on a Lie Nielsen, but if you want something that's pretty decent quality at a decent price, you can also choose that. Choices are good.
 
Hi Daniel

I was able to test out a WoodRiver and have owned a Quangsheng (via Workshop Heaven). Both were excellent in terms of build quality. I prefer the Quangsheng as the lever cap is plain and has a more traditional look. The offering from Rutlands is ok. The main difference there is their lateral adjustment lever is a pressed item whereas the others are fabricated.

I also liked the fact both WoodRiver and Quangsheng have W1 high carbon steel plane irons rather than the A2 of Lie-Nielsen. W1 is not easy to work with and given up on by Lie-Nielsen as I think they could not find the skills to produce it in consistent quality. So I admire that the Chinese engineers got that right. If I were to purchase the excellent Lie-Nielsen planes, I'd then be faced with having to purchase replacement plane irons in 01 or W1 to suit. There are some size differences of the castings on the Lie-Nielsen planes shown here https://youtu.be/4jWuU-Qbp4w?t=1m35s (I don't find the rest of the review valuable). There are a few other variations too where the Chinese have evolved the offering.

As to the copying issue...I can swap parts from a Stanley to a Record with no issue. If copying or letting others make a version of woodworking tools was banned, let alone anything else without a patent, we would never of seen Record, Woden, I Sorby, Mathieson and a few other variations of Stanley's planes. Lie-Nielsen even copy Record shoulder planes pretty closely. I think Lie-Nielsen, Veritas, Clifton etc are excellent, and I would never say not buy their products, I look forward to having some one day. But this whole copying, anti China thing is pretty old. Buy what suits, most people pushing the more premium stuff seem to be in an odd cult. Do they ever wonder where the CNC equipment, computers etc come from that run these factories :roll: . If I had the money to spend, I would go for a Clifton, their product feels the least sterile and most hands on of all the offerings https://youtu.be/NiW5E8vYaPo
 
Knowing where tools are made is a confusing situation for many buyers in the international market we live in, and is very difficult if not impossible to answer, unless you have insider knowledge on the ground, which I don’t believe any of us do have.

For example tools that are made in Sheffield and are sold by a particular company have almost definitely been made by a number of different workshops and trades (the mesters) a very old tradition, and assembly and sold by a branded supplier.

If you consider this is the situation in little old Sheffield and has always been done this way. What is happening in other countries we can only guess and unless you have been to a particular factory and seen a tool being made on a full production line you will never know. Planes consist of many parts and these will be made in different workshops each working to different specifications and prices depending on their buyers requirements.

As for the brands named above, I have experience of all three brands on my bench and in my school. As many of you know I have sold a couple of these brands and I am the European dealer for Woodriver, here is my (experienced and possibly biased) take on it.

Woodriver has been a Woodcraft brand from America since around 2007, they invested a lot of time, effort and R&D into their suppliers factory and have continued to improve their designs and product line up now on V3. Some designs and prototypes that didn’t make the grade may be on the market in other countries under different brands. Rob Cosman has been very instrumental in their development over the past 5 years or more introducing the unique and I believe best Y lever on the market.

Quangsheng is sold by Workshop Heaven and Mathew has worked hard to improve and expand his range which have a lot of the Woodriver qualities but not all. The designs are different and the parts are not interchangeable with Woodriver. The Woodriver’s are heavier, I will say no more apart from Matthew is a reputable seller and nice guy to deal with good tools.
.
In my experience the Quangsheng are better quality than Qiangsheng, they are different in my experience.

Qiangsheng is sold by Rutland’s and are basic planes at a reasonable price, but not the same as the others.

This can be a confusing situation but it gives customers a choice of planes, prices and suppliers to choose from.

Cheers

Peter
 
Bodgers":29n723b2 said:
Max Power":29n723b2 said:
They're all Chinese rip offs of Lie Nielsen products , yes Lie Nielsens were based on earlier Stanleys but at least Lie Nielsen improved them through product development and brought something different to the market.
The Chinese versions have made no attempt to add any input and are blatant rip offs , as with so many other copies of western goods.
Buy one plane either a Lie Nielsen, Lee Valley or hopefully a Clifton , they all hold their money well and you'll be helping the long term tool development and manufacturing of honest companies

Like you say the Lie Nielsen's are Bedrock pattern based. So QS/Luban are basically doing what Lie Nielsen are doing. The QA is pretty good, so unless you have some beef against China itself, what's not to like? Sure, why not spend more money on a Lie Nielsen, but if you want something that's pretty decent quality at a decent price, you can also choose that. Choices are good.

The missing link here is that quangsheng planes were first copies of lie Nielsen planes and not bedrock. I believe a lot of the recent changes have been to make the plane internals look more like an old bedrock and less like a lie Nielsen to avoid trouble.

I think they were developed to deal with a disagreement that woodcraft and Lee Nielsen were having about guaranteeing supply and one option was to explore overseas production. Only the executives at ln and woodcraft would know who actually provided planes to a Chinese manufacturer and whether both were involved with it at one point and for how long.

After the two parted ways, woodcraft attempted to come up with a domestic supply other than lie Nielsen, but had no success at finding anything economical as far as I know. Not surprising, there's very little low value production casting done in the states now. Maine is sort of a special case. They walk to the beat of their own drummer and still have a fair amount of commercial small craft. They hate any large commercial enterprise there other than logging.
 
Peter, compared to lie Nielsen, I don't think their effort is particularly large. And robs involvement is probably more of a synergistic marketing nature than anything else.

Just my opinion.

We don't expect overseas folks to get wound up about it, though. If someone made dead copies of Clifton planes, most people here in the United states wouldn't care much.
 
I own some Lie-Nielsen tools and I love them - not bench planes though (I'm sure I'd love those too, if I owned some of them).

I cannot tell the difference - in use - between an LN, a QS (from Workshop Heaven, or as a lesser choice Rutlands) or a WR. Yer pays yer money and yer takes yer choice.

For bedrock-style bench planes, I personally cannot justify the extra cost of an LN, and QS/WR hit the "sweet-spot" of price vs. performance/pleasure of ownership. Everyone else's mileage may vary.

The basic bedrock design is common to all - if someone had violated a copyright they would have been sued by now. Criticising QS/whoever for "ripping off" other people's (whose?) designs - when the UK and the US, to name but two, have such a well-developed legal system - is meaningless brollox of an almost Trumpian nature IMHO.

Cheers, W2S
 
D_W":gfcz5wpy said:
I think they were developed to deal with a disagreement that woodcraft and Lee Nielsen were having about guaranteeing supply and one option was to explore overseas production. Only the executives at ln and woodcraft would know who actually provided planes to a Chinese manufacturer and whether both were involved with it at one point and for how long.

After the two parted ways, woodcraft attempted to come up with a domestic supply other than lie Nielsen, but had no success at finding anything economical as far as I know. Not surprising, there's very little low value production casting done in the states now. Maine is sort of a special case. They walk to the beat of their own drummer and still have a fair amount of commercial small craft. They hate any large commercial enterprise there other than logging.

Interesting stuff...I wasn't aware of that connection.
 
Here in the states, woodcraft was the most widespread seller of lie Nielsen planes on the ground. They have tons of franchise locations. The planes sold well and there was a combination of two problems:
* you often went to a local store to find a spokeshave or something else odd and no planes. Lie Nielsen couldn't provide the supply woodcraft wanted
* lie Nielsen wanted the planes to be displayed in a way that they could be touched and tried out. A lot of the franchisees wanted to keep them behind glass because they were in retail locations that were easy to steal from. That issue probably wasn't going to be resolved.

At the same time lie Nielsenws starting to realise their business was maturing, and they had a choice to invest and grow our gain control of the sale of their planes as well as get more control of how they're presented.

They chose mostly the latter, took the planes away from woodcraft, and banned sellers from selling below retail and pushed sales traffic more to their website.

I talked to the president of woodcraft at the time and he said they were miffed that they'd basically helped ln build their brand by giving them wide distribution, and he's right about that. Ln basically made a retrenchment move and brought the sales back to themselves to keep the entire cost in their income statement. That's my interpretation, not the woodcraft presidents. I suspect that ln charged retailers about 65-70 percent of retail based on what does or doesn't seem to get employees of retailers to react since at least at that time, some retailers would let their employees have items at cost and the all turned their noses up 20% discounts that some retailers provided.

The sentiment here in the states when we saw that the first woodriver planes were just copies of ln planes was for everyone to side with ln, but it's not really that simple.
 
A little more background on why I don't think quangsheng has had to do a whole lot compared to LN (though making anything consistent in quality in china requires a lot more involvement than ordering from "Uncle Walter" on alibaba.

The first QS planes were a cheapened version of LN's planes. They had sort of nasty looking handles, but otherwise copied a lot of the elements. Steel was some kind of water or oil hardening steel for the blades (which in my opinion would generally be a benefit, but it probably wasn't as flat as A2 comes out (including after post heat treatment true-up). However, they chose to copy the bronze elements that were on LN planes, and I'm sure woodcraft had to spec that they be changed.

On the V3 planes, as I understand it, much of the changes were just to change from LN designed items (that LN themselves probably altered due to modern manufacturing machinery). However, LN planes had, at one point, a problem with setting the cap iron. Since LN didn't know what the cap iron was for, a lot of earlier planes had the cap iron made so that it couldn't quite get to the edge of the iron and still be able to advance the iron into the cut.

The woodriver planes copied this flaw, as some have shown up with it. I find that a little odd, as I saw the same mentioned on another forum regarding a plane a year or two old (not one copied soon after LN and woodcraft parted ways). If WR had done any development with competent users, they'd have found that to be an issue. LN fixed it once it was brought to their attention, but it did go many years because nobody was really using the cap iron to mitigate tearout. Once it was a known issue, people started complaining about it and it was clear that it wasn't uncommon. I don't think Rob Cosman knows what to do with a cap iron, but few seem to.

Nothing I posted above hasn't been said publicly. I'll say on behalf of Jeff (the president at Woodcraft) that WC took a lot of heat during that time here in the states, but he was not allowed to post on any forums to rebut any of it or tell his side without handing a bunch of money to sawmillcreek (there and woodnet was where most of the flaming took place). The owner of the SMC forum will not let non-advertisers post, not even as individuals (Jeff's - I think that was his name - handle was banned when he registered, unless he pays to be an advertiser). Tom Lie-Nielsen doesn't do forums, they were caustic at the time, so the only thing i knew about was that a plane was sent to china (Still don't know if LN or Woodcraft did it. If they were working together to solve a supply issue, it could've been either one).

LN's elimination of allowing retailers here to discount pretty much solved my buying much from them, but after I cast off all of my planes (due to preference for stanley planes and woodies), i did buy a bronze 4. I have to give them credit, that was about 8 or 10 years ago now that this whole debacle occurred, and their retail prices have stayed about the same.

At the same time the LN planes were copied, some knock offs of LV tools were made and sold at woodcraft and japan woodworker sold under a "borg" brand. I think I saw them on the QS tool site in china before that site disappeared (perhaps at woodcrafts' request? who knows?). Both WC and Japan woodworker have an appetite for huge margins. WC has to support a franchise system, there's really no way to have cut throat prices and have franchises be able to afford to operate, so I can identify with that. JWW (this is my opinion) just thrived for years as a mail order company catering to an uneducated buyer. When JWW sold, it seemed fitting that they went to Woodcraft, because little needed to change. JWW is filled with garbage narratives, like "mr. matsumura's wife sometimes assists by swinging a hammer". Come on. I'll bet that many of the catalog recipients actually believe that.

I do hope that woodcraft and LN both stay in business for a long time. They're far different businesses, and probably destined to not get along, but as much hate as woodcraft gets here in the states because the boutique tool clique loves tom lie-nielsen, they do have a case that they were selling LN planes hand over foot, and LN left them without a good option for a domestic plane.

The two together probably built the domestic stanley style boutique plane market here. Clifton was sold here, but customer support in the states was terrible and the problem rate much higher (which resulted in internet posts regarding expensive planes that clifton and highland passed the buck back and forth on). Lie Nielsen and Lee Valley easily ate their lunch. Service from both here in the states is exemplary, and woodcraft corporate's service is, also. They all go beyond what they really should have to. WC stores are franchises - at least some of them, so experience on the ground varies (hit or miss was miss locally here in western pennsylvania).

The sentiment here would've been different if the origin of the WR planes came out of a random retailer just sending an old bedrock or bailey plane to china to be copied.

I still prefer stanley's designs to all of the modern "improved", anyway, and would take a vintage stanley or record in any significant amount of work over QS/WR/LN or LV.
 
David, to clarify a few points ...

The forum that spent a lot of time discussing the LN-WoodRiver issue was Knots, which was on Fine Woodworking. Off the top of my head, this was around 2007. FWW magazine ran a blog article in which measurements were taken of the WR, LN and a Stanley Bedrock, and this demonstrated that the WR was made from LN castings. It was a hugely controversial topic at the time on a couple of forums.

It seems that Woodcraft started the ball rolling by contracting the QS factory to produce them under the WoodRiver brand. It was not just LN planes that were ripped off, but spokeshaves as well. They also began to copy Lee Valley/Veritas tools. Copywrite laws do not exist in China, it seems. Back in the USA, LN took Woodcraft to court over trade dress. No one knows the official outcome, but it was not long after this that the QS factory stopped producing the Mark 1 and brought out Mark 2. This version made a number if detail changes to move away from the LN look-a-like they were marketing. Unfortunately, the changes were poorly conceptualised. This is when Rob Cosman came in to redesign the planes. His version became Mark 3, the current format. However, there are a lot of Mk 2 planes still being sold, and I suspect that these are the Luban version available in Australia. I suspect they are sold under other names in the UK.

Regards from Perth

Derek
 
I don't really see what the fuss with brand spanking new premium hand planes is. Yeah, sure they're nice to look at and use but they don't perform much better than an old Stanley or Record plane. I have a collection of Record planes, they cut wood just the same as any other at a fraction of the cost of new.
 
Trevanion":y2ej87mw said:
I don't really see what the fuss with brand spanking new premium hand planes is. Yeah, sure they're nice to look at and use but they don't perform much better than an old Stanley or Record plane. I have a collection of Record planes, they cut wood just the same as any other at a fraction of the cost of new.

Choices again. If you have the money, and don't have the time/skills/confidence to tune up an older one they are there for the buying.

Also, some specialised models just aren't available in numbers used, or don't make financial sense used E.g. Shooting planes, router planes etc.

Some are objectively better as well. For example the original Stanley No. 62 apparently wasn't a perfect plane and didn't sell that we'll. The modern versions are apparently better.
 
Trevanion":3nb3q3tq said:
I don't really see what the fuss with brand spanking new premium hand planes is. Yeah, sure they're nice to look at and use but they don't perform much better than an old Stanley or Record plane. I have a collection of Record planes, they cut wood just the same as any other at a fraction of the cost of new.

If there were no demand for new premium hand planes, nobody would make them. As it is, there are the three premium makers - LN, LV and Clifton - and a slew of medium priced offerings including Wood River, Stanley Sweetheart and Quangsheng, plus a fair old range of indifferent of cheaper brands from new Stanley and Irwin Record, Faithfull, Silverline and so on. Presumably they all sell enough to keep going.

There's also debate about whether premium planes are worth it. For the impecunious amateur with enough time to repair and fettle secondhand 'treasures', a working kit can be assembled for not much money, but maybe some time. For someone time-poor with a bit of available cash - or a time-poor professional - something that works well without fettling may be a more attractive proposition. There's also the point that the premium planes tend to be thicker in the castings, and therefore more rigid, which is a plus for planes used for higher precision work like trying and jointing (though not such a factor for rough prep duties), albeit at the cost of higher weight.

So, we have a choice of new premium, new middle range, new low priced, secondhand at bargain basement prices, secondhand better quality at higher prices, and vintage premium planes such as infills. Something for any taste, there!
 
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