If you'd shopped around you could have found one for less than
$100. I can see wanting an original, but buying a cheap, and
inexpensive, Chinese knock-off seems to kinda negate being a woodworker,
and blowing $100 + shipping. You could always have made your own, a
little at a time, wouldn't have needed to finish it all at once. Or,
you could even have bought a new one. http://www.gerstnerusa.com/.


No it doesn't negate being a woodworker to buy the Chinese Gerstner.
I want to spend my time building things that see the light of day, not
that live in my basement shop only to be enjoyed by me. I priced all
the hardware to build the box plus the lumber and it exceeded what I
paid for the Chinese Box. It was a no brainer for me.

The Rockler store in Cambridge MA had a sale where you buy one item and
get the second for 50% off and the second item was the GI box, with no
shipping costs. It was like getting 25% off the cost of the box which
brought the cost down to $80.

A new box from Gerstner USA is $880 which is another no brainer for me
- I can't afford it.

I did build my own workbench however, but that was out of a solid core
door that I got for free.

-Scott