"-MIKE-" wrote in message
...
whit3rd wrote:
If woodwork isn't intimidating, you get a knife and a block of
wood,
and have at it. Then you add chisels and a bench, and saws are
too useful to do without. The unintimidated woodworker always
has a knife nearby. He's comfortable watching Roy Underhill,
but could learn a lot from Norm Abram.

The intimidated woodworker needs an extra horsepower and
deeper bandsaw throat, and often treats the wood as if it
was homogeneous (he didn't do a lot of knife work, so doesn't
completely understand grain). He's comfortable watching
Norm, but could learn a lot from Roy.

Good stuff.

When I look back on the stuff I've made using inferior and fewer
tools,
I feel some pride and accomplishment for having done such a good
job
manually and using some ingenuity instead of technology.

But I also like the sense of "being there" I get from having and
using a
great tool.
One appreciates having nice tools and what they do for you much
more,
when one has had to do it with less.

In business, we taught what was called the 80% rule. Essentially,
20% of the time/cost/effort will result in 80% of the desired
goal. The remaining 20% will take all the rest of the resources.
It holds true in a shop, kitchen or construction as well as in the
officeplace.

There is a reasonable level of tools and tool quality needed to
efficiently do a job. I never warmed up to the Shopsmith-type of
multitool, since I felt I'd be spending all my time setting it up,
rather than just walking over to the right tool and doing
something. I built a whole lot of stuff in my lifetime, with a
lot of it made using a Sears contractor's saw as my primary shop
tool.

When I finally built a dedicated shop for my woodworking hobby, I
first kept the old Sears saw, adding a Sears RAS for crosscuts and
a Sears compound miter saw for bevels and angles. It was only
later that I sold the old contractor's saw and got a PM66.
Another tool that I feel was irreplaceable was my 6 X 48" table
belt sander with the 10" disk sander. I got a 12" Delta planer
later on. For shaping, I first used an inverted Makita 1/2"
router on a home made bench, but even after going with a
floor-mounted shaper, I still used it a lot more than the shaper.

What's important, IMHO, is not so much the quality or expense of
your equipment, it's how well they're set up and aligned, how
sharp the blades are and how comfortable you feel using them.

--
Nonny

Have you ever wondered if the bills
in your wallet were ever in a stripper's butt crack?
Have a nice day ..

dadiOH wrote:
Steve Turner wrote:
Yes, but did you think to *write* on the jig a description of why the
hell you built it in the first place?

Me, me...I do

Me too... NOW. :-)

--
"Even if your wife is happy but you're unhappy, you're still happier
than you'd be if you were happy and your wife was unhappy." - Red Green
To reply, eat the taco.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbqboyee/

"Steve Turner" wrote in message
...
Nonny wrote:

"-MIKE-" wrote in message
Just about every jig I see in the shop was built because I
looked
on-line or in a catalog, and my first reaction was,
"HOW much!? Geez, I can *make* that."

I never tossed out a jig, unless it was just cobbled together
for a single use and then taken back apart and tossed back in
the bucket with other pieces. If the jig was something I would
reuse, such as one I built for over the table sander to bevel
the edges of coasters, then it was stored on a shelf for reuse.
Those are the ones that built up over the years.

Yes, but did you think to *write* on the jig a description of
why the hell you built it in the first place? I can't think of
how many times I've pulled some old jig out of storage and have
no earthly clue what I used it for... :-)

--
See Nad. See Nad go. Go Nad!
To reply, eat the taco.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbqboyee/

darn good point.

--
Nonny

Have you ever wondered if the bills
in your wallet were ever in a stripper's butt crack?
Have a nice day ..

Steve Turner wrote:
Nonny wrote:

"-MIKE-" wrote in message
Just about every jig I see in the shop was built because I looked
on-line or in a catalog, and my first reaction was,
"HOW much!? Geez, I can *make* that."

I never tossed out a jig, unless it was just cobbled together for a
single use and then taken back apart and tossed back in the bucket
with other pieces. If the jig was something I would reuse, such as
one I built for over the table sander to bevel the edges of coasters,
then it was stored on a shelf for reuse. Those are the ones that
built up over the years.

Yes, but did you think to *write* on the jig a description of why the
hell you built it in the first place? I can't think of how many times
I've pulled some old jig out of storage and have no earthly clue what I
used it for... :-)

Ayup. It's a classic case of a dollar late and a day short. Or
something like that. Oh well, at the rate that I get smarter, I will be
a certified genius in less that 400 years. |~/
twitch,
jo4hn

Steve Turner wrote:
"Even if your wife is happy but you're unhappy, you're still happier
than you'd be if you were happy and your wife was unhappy." - Red Green


I'm stealing your sig line, btw.


--

-MIKE-

"Playing is not something I do at night, it's my function in life"
--Elvin Jones (1927-2004)
--
http://mikedrums.com

---remove "DOT" ^^^^ to reply

On Mon, 2 Nov 2009 11:54:22 -0800 (PST), Robatoy
I like a tool that dims the lights at turn-on....of the whole town.

Is that the equivalent of one woodworker saying to all the other
woodworkers in the area that his tool is bigger then theirs?