When discussing the tools that feller was selling on eBay (That 33K
shop) one of our contributors referred to the old Unisaw 'quality'.
That got me thinking.... (yes, it happens).
I think quality is like art. You know you like it when you see it.
The look and feel of things.

Find me something modern that idles like a well-tuned Buick Straight-8
or cruises like a 600 cc vintage BMW boxer, anything that sounds like
the shutter of a well-maintained Leica? What sounds like a 350-year-old
Guarneri cello?

In 1929, in Newcastle on Tyne, they built a small tanker. It sailed the
Great Lakes as The Texaco Brave. It had a triple expansion steam engine.
As a summer job, as a wheelsman, I would spend a lot of my free time
down below, just listening and admiring that engine as it was putting
out that whopping 120 RPM.

All modern equivalents, even if proven scientifically superior, miss
something. I think it's a piece of the craftsman's/machinist's
heart/guts who made it. Is that what we call quality?

I was looking at a very old Carl Zeiss microscope one day with its
replacement, a brand new Wild Heerbrugg, sitting beside it. The proud
owner was extolling the virtues of the new Wild, the clarity of the
optics, but why didn't the focus mechanism feel the same?

It is mystical.

0¿0
˜

Rob---who once was removed from under his hat by firing a 'light' load
from a 460 WeatherbyMk5, another one of those devices that just felt and
looked right.
I'm sure many of you here have similar things that would fit that
elusive category.