Originally Posted by
David Weaver
Ian, I hadn't even thought of this in the context of the discussion about old and new tools. The reason I got sucked into watching it all is because Chris Scholz posted a couple of videos elsewhere, and I wanted to see what else the guy was making other than traditional chinese things (maybe everything he makes is traditional chinese, even if some of it looks a little easier for us to tolerate style wise (like the boxes).
But you do make a good point. Chris said on another forum that one of the chisels he's using was 20 cents in china (found used) and the saws he's using look to be plain carbon steel bladed and shop made. And he builds the plane without trouble. I didn't see him taking any thin plane shavings, which contrary to what we're told in terms of premium planes, isn't really required for making furniture (nice to have as final smoothing if not scraping, but even those shavings at a thousandth or so are fine - which is attainable by any plane).
I think we said it in the other thread, most of the problems that the whiz bang tools are trying to solve are a lack of experience, and it would be better for most to get experience than tools. That means making some rough nasty stuff and putting some repetition in before things happen the way you expect, but that experience is more valuable than "better" tools.