Tools You Don't Need
If I had the latest slick catalogue of Overhyped Tools on me, this list would be longer, but here are a few that come to mind:
Tools you don't need. (it's OK, we've all made mistakes)
1-Anything that's more than 50% brass. Get over it, iron is better. If you like shiny stuff, wear jewelry.
2-Lots of bench stones. Get a 1000 water stone and maybe one more somewhere below 4000. You got suckered on the rest. I bet you sand with less than 1000 grit, so just get the tools sharp enough and stop avoiding doing actual work.
3-Spoon gouges. Good for spoons.
4-Bent gouges. What, you wrist doesn't bend?
5-Dovetail gauges. You can cut the angles within half a degree by hand with a little practice. Marking all that stuff out is just slowing you down. Practice.
6-Chisel planes. You have a chisel, you have a plane. Somehow I've managed to limp along without one for decades.
7-Really heavy infill planes. OK, they work, but you don't want to push one for very long, that's what apprentices are for. Put it on the mantel and impress your friends.
8-Fancy glue pots. $10 hot plate, a tin pot, free peanut butter jar. The end.-Al
Tools you don't need. (it's OK, we've all made mistakes)
1-Anything that's more than 50% brass. Get over it, iron is better. If you like shiny stuff, wear jewelry.
2-Lots of bench stones. Get a 1000 water stone and maybe one more somewhere below 4000. You got suckered on the rest. I bet you sand with less than 1000 grit, so just get the tools sharp enough and stop avoiding doing actual work.
3-Spoon gouges. Good for spoons.
4-Bent gouges. What, you wrist doesn't bend?
5-Dovetail gauges. You can cut the angles within half a degree by hand with a little practice. Marking all that stuff out is just slowing you down. Practice.
6-Chisel planes. You have a chisel, you have a plane. Somehow I've managed to limp along without one for decades.
7-Really heavy infill planes. OK, they work, but you don't want to push one for very long, that's what apprentices are for. Put it on the mantel and impress your friends.
8-Fancy glue pots. $10 hot plate, a tin pot, free peanut butter jar. The end.-Al
Comment
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Comment by al breed on June 17, 2010 at 12:49pm -
Howard- I think collecting tools is great. You don't have to need them to own them, for sure, it's just that, over the years I've tended to trade the stuff I bought when I thought it was just a cool tool to have for stuff that I actually need to do my work. If I had more money, I'd probably buy more interesting stuff, but I'm pretty practical at heart. I also like to see how much I can do with less, so that doesn't lead to a lot of tool buying.
Tool collecting is a great hobby, and even better if you can use them to make something-Al
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Comment by al breed on June 17, 2010 at 12:43pm
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John- Almost everyday I use a Stanley no. 6 and an old Stanley low angle block plane.
I use hollows and rounds pretty regularly as well as wooden ogees of various sizes.
For plowing dadoes for draw bottoms, if I'm doing it by hand, I use a Stanley 45.
I use a LN steel shooting plane quite a bit on my shooting board and a LN skew block plane with the side off for cleaning up tenons.
For cleaning up legs, etc., I use spokeshaves, mostly wooden antique ones.
I've seen snipes bills, but don't have any.
In the antique wooden planes dept. I use ogees the most, but also beads and rabbets as well as coffin smoothers- 4 or 5 that I cycle through depending on sharpness. One of them is a York pitch that works better on mahogany than the standard ones.
That's all that comes to mind at the moment-Al
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Comment by John Cashman on June 17, 2010 at 9:01am
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What planes do you use, Al? I'd find it hard to get by without a rabbet plane, and occasionally a router. In addition to bench planes, of course. And a few often used hollows and rounds. And recently, snipes bills for starting moldings and even rabbets. What say you?
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Comment by Howard Steier on June 17, 2010 at 8:06am
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Al,
As my wife often says when returns wild-eyed from Macy's or Bloomingdale's, "what does need have to do with it?" Don't you ascribe to the theory that "whoever dies with the most tools wins"?
Howard Steier
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Comment by al breed on June 16, 2010 at 1:19pm
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John- I'm with you on the A2 steel. I find the O1 fine.
Backbent gouges are great- gotta have em, but bents........not so much.
The only store-bought strop I think is worth it is the one from woodcraft with all the profiles on it- not bad for $20. You could make one, but it would take while.
I used to include shoulder planes on th list, but there are some uses for them, even though I dropped mine on a granite step in 1988 and haven't replaced it.....-Al
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Comment by John Cashman on June 16, 2010 at 11:54am
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I'm with you on the spoon gouges. They are pretty, but pretty useless. By bent gouges I hope you mean the long bends. Back bends are great.
Dovetail gauges. I really love the ones that have magnets on the side to guide your dovetail saw. Who thought that one up?
I'd like to add A2 blades. I admit I drank the Kool-Aid at first on that one, and A2 does have a couple of applications, but O1 is better for pretty much everything.
One that really amazes me are store-bought strops. They all charge 35 bucks for a piece of leather glued to a scrap of wood. They do generously include a hang-hole however. That has to be the biggest waste of money I've seen.
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