Sometime ago a fellow woodturner, well off and ostensibly a fine
gentleman related a disturbing gloat. At least it disturbed me and I
believe it would be disturbing to most of you here. He had offered the
widow of a recently deceased woodturner $8.00 for his Glaser and Sorby
bowl gouges and she accepted. She is not too well off, but he saw
nothing wrong. He was smug and even laughed during his gloat. True, he
didn't know the deceased, but should that matter?

I reckon ethics are in the conscience of the buyer, so I will skip that.
However I wonder if your widowed spouse wouldn't assume that your $50
boxed set of Harbor Freights would be worth much more than your grimy
old Glaser, and as for that worthless thingamajig full of dirty water
(Tormek) she would likely say "take it if you want it". Then there's the
bereaved spouse who way overvalues 'old Joe's' tools because he loved
them so.

I haven't and probably most of you haven't either, but we should make
our spouse or somebody knowledgeable about the value of our tools.
Better would be to inventory and price out our tools conservatively and
make a fellow turner, relative, family friend or attorney aware of the
list. It is surprising how much our tools are worth. Certainly enough to
consider adding them to a revocable trust or will or designated as
gifts. While waiting to turn our final finial, the listed inventory
could be important in insurance loss situations. Of course, we all know
this, so why waste the bandwidth. Why indeed!

What have those of you who have at least done _something about the other
half of
that "death and taxes" inevitability thing arranged for? I'm 86 and
still paying taxes, but as to what will happen to my lifetime
accumulation of tools, unless I 'do' instead of 'say', probably an
unethical fellow turner or a junk man will decide for me. I mean to do
something about that tomorrow, but for now, think I'll go out in my shop
and enjoy turning some wood. Sad, but true for me and just maybe for
some of you. knowatimsayn?


Turn to Safety, Arch
Fortiter


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