Originally Posted by
Gary Keedwell
If your just building things like a carpenter, sure, a $20 piece of aluminumm extrusion may suffice.
But if your going to do fine woodworking where everybody can see your joints....
That's me, all right. Just a glorified form carpenter. 
Best in Show awards and financial success are beyond my wildest dreams.
Rebuilding old iron is one thing, but woodworking and basic machine setup...even the jointer... is another. Now, I might write this silly Starrett commercial off to unique, obsessive personalities if y'all are also correcting the grain runout in all your stock in both dimensions so it moves seasonally to a uniform geometric standard equal to the tolerances you think you are achieving.
But you're probably not. You're probably using your stock in whatever configuration it was milled at, and your wood is moving not only more seasonally than the tolerances you are bragging on, but it's moving unequally along its length to greater than those tolerances.
Moreover, if you are also following today's common Normite tradition of not thinking past your nose to the guy who has to repair or restore your work some day, and are using nonrepairable glues, finishes difficult to remove, nails where there should be screws and gizmo joinery, then none of this matters because your work won't survive long enough for you to have an impact.
Recommending someone throw money at their perceived shortcomings is common enough today, but never works.
Last edited by Bob Smalser; 11-18-2007 at 9:33 PM.
““Perhaps then, you will say, ‘But where can one have a boat like that built today?’ And I will tell you that there are still some honest men who can sharpen a saw, plane, or adze...men (who) live and work in out of the way places, but that is lucky, for they can acquire materials for one third of city prices. Best, some of these gentlemen’s boatshops are in places where nothing but the occasional honk of a wild goose will distract them from their work.” -- L Francis Herreshoff
Reply With Quote
