From what somebody told me, Lie-Nielsen has excellent customer service. I believe the person actually damaged their plane and Lie-Nielsen repaired it for free so I would contact them. They'll probably have you send in the plane.

As far as stess relieving goes, I believe it's mostly done using ovens nowadays rather than just letting the casting sit, modtly due to time concerns and lean manufacturing.

Coincidentally, one thing Clico tooling who manufacture, or at least used to manufacture, the Clifton brand planes mentioned in regard to cast iron in planes, was that ductile iron wood bend rather than brake if dropped, however this could lead to inaccuracies in the plane. High strength grey iron like Clifton used, was less likely to bend if dropped, but if subjected to a strong enough blow, the castings would break, although Clico supposedly subjected plane castings to twenty foot drop tests onto concrete, and blows with a ball pien hammer to test the casting design, and their planes used a very fine grain high strength engineering grade iron.

Sorry for the above aside. Clifton planes used to get a bit of flak for the fact they used grey iron when they came out, so I figured I would mention the above.   

Wenge has been worked for ages with far lower quality tools.

Thanks for the great post Greg.  I had wondered if that could be the case.  Edward glad you have your plain back in working order.

Quote from: greg mann on December 07, 2017, 11:03 AM

Not to put too fine a point on the aging thing but we machine casting made in Wisconsin. They can be cast on Tuesday morning, cleaned and painted in the afternoon, shipped out that night for a twelve hour ride to SE Michigan, where we might start machining as the first pallet is taken from the truck.

I'd have to believe the foundry your using employs some method of stress relief? Certainly not the old "age them outside for 2 years" approach, but perhaps vibratory stress relief?

Castings stay in the sand while they cool. I am not sure how long that is before they get to the end of the cooling line, certainly no more than an hour, probably less. At that point they fall into a pan of sorts where most of the sand comes off. An operator will pick up the casting with a machine that looks similar to a backhoe, knocks some gates or risers off and then sets it in a 'tumbleblast'. This is essentially an incline tunnel with an auger in it that shakes like the dickens. The castings put their left foot in , their right foot in and shake it all about. This mostly removes the sand from outside and inside the casting, if there is an inside. The vibration is for removing sand and any stress relieving is inconsequential. Often, other parts are hung on racks and blasted with steel pellets to remove sand. These processes can relieve stress or, if done unequally can induce stress.

As a general rule, industry does not rely on specific stress relieving in iron castings. That is more the domain of steel machining that will also involve other heat treating process. That said, it is very possible that LN stress relieves their castings and I would not want to make a blanket statement about their techniques as I just don't know. Plane bodies are quite thin wall castings and that introduces complications that I would suspect dictates very tightly controlled cooling and the distinct possibility of additional steps to insure stability. I would not be surprised to learn they have a secondary heating and cooling step to help relieve stresses in lieu of aging for a couple years. The true effects of stress relieving through aging is probably more anecdotal that factual anyway.

I'm also curious what tolerances you have to hold the finished machined castings to?

Interestingly enough, I was sifting through some old Atlas lathe brochures and came upon this old factory photo of the Atlas Press Company in Kalamazoo Michigan. It is an unheated room in the Atlas factory that housed lathe beds that were left for 12-18 months for "seasoning" or stress relieving.

Even more interesting is I also came upon another photo years & years ago that showed lathe beds neatly piled on top of each other and "stickered", like lumber being dried, and then left to season. I mean, it just looked like a pile of lumber until you looked closely and noticed that they were actually lathe beds. 

The second photo I just thought was cool because it shows how power was transferred to machine tools way back when. Multiple rows of horizontal shafting mounted from the ceiling with power to each machine tool using flat leather belting. No guards, no protection no OSHA...

Interestingly enough, I was sifting through some old Atlas lathe brochures and came upon this old factory photo of the Atlas Press Company in Kalamazoo Michigan. It is an unheated room in the Atlas factory that housed lathe beds that were left for 12-18 months for "seasoning" or stress relieving.

Even more interesting is I also came upon another photo years & years ago that showed South Bend lathe beds neatly piled on top of each other and "stickered", like lumber being dried, and then left to season. I mean, it just looked like a pile of lumber until you looked closely and noticed that they were actually grey iron lathe beds. 

The second photo I just thought was cool because it shows how power was transferred to machine tools way back when. Multiple rows of horizontal shafting mounted from the ceiling with power to each machine tool using flat leather belting. No guards, no protection no OSHA...