Hey all,
I wanted your opinions on the Swanson sliding T-bevel if any of you have it. I have needed one for a while for doing dovetails and finally decided that I was going to get one yesterday.
Going along with my new creed "I will never buy substandard tools that I have to replace" I decided on a Crown t-bevel from Woodcraft. They seem to have a great name and I have one of their detail saws, so off I went. I looked around at Stanley/Jonson/etc. from the big box stores especially b/c this tool is not so much an "accurate" thing as it is just to transfer angles. Anyway I said, no to the cheaper ones and decided on the Crown like I said. When I got to woodcraft though I picked up their 9" Crown and it felt ok, but not lightyears difference from some of the cheaper ones. I was curious so I took it out of the package and played with it. It seemed nice enough, and I love the "look" of it. But I decided to wait and go one more place I had not gone before I shelled out close to 30 dollars for this tool.
That is when I came across the Swanson Professional T-Bevel. Except for the color of the hardwood (more reddish than the nice Crown dark rosewood) it felt better made to me It was heavier, and the locking wheel was really neat and kept the traditional wingnut out of the way. In the end I decided to buy the Swanson, and it was not b/c it was 9 bucks compared to 27 for the Crown, it just "felt" better to me. So I am curious, are they a decent tool company? I have sworn off cheap tools, as I have replaced my craftsman ts and router, with Powermatic and Dewalt, so this seemed backwards to me that I was getting the "same" tool for 9.00 as opposed the 27.00, so this would be an instance of you can get a good tool for less money. I don't know, maybe I am wrong and I do not have enough experience to know why, this is my first t-bevel...In the end I could just not justify spending 3X as much on a tool that did not "feel" as good as the cheaper one. Please let me know your thoughts on Swanson.
Link to Swanson tools, the t-bevel is halway down the page:
http://www.swansontoolco.com/product...r_squares.html
Jason