dove tail chisel

[MattP]

I am sure that Blue Spruce tools are wonderful tools, but I live on SS and a small modest pension just like a lot of other folks here. I do not know what Blue Spruce tools cost but there isn't enough money left over for them in my house hold.

Don't get me wrong I am thankful that you can afford them, but I, like a lot of others can't. Since I was willing to sell the chisel for $3 I can assure you that I paid a lot less than $3 and I made a usable dovetail chisel out of it.

I posted it so that maybe someone else, who can't afford  Blue Spruce tools,  might decide to do the same or make a angled one. Why does it always have to be about the high dollar stuff being the only way to go and the rest is just inferior junk and shouldn't be mentioned. It is just a shame that when people ask even about anything here, the only recommendations that count here are for the high dollar stuff. 

Again I am sure all the high dollar stuff are very fine tools but dollar for dollar, in use, I don't think that they are worth that much difference in price when used maybe 5 time a year.

Tom

Finances aside, I have been developing a theory about woodworkers for a few years which this seems like a good place to share:

I think there is a spectrum of interests all woodworkers exist on. At one end are extremists who love wood, just want to work with wood, and love everything even vaguely tree-related or even tree-shaped. (I'm pretty close to that end of the spectrum). On the other end of the spectrum are the tool nuts. They love the tools, they coddle them, they make them, they dream sweet tool dreams. Wood, to them, is the stuff they use all their cool tools on. Does anybody watch the wood whisperer (Marc Spagnuolo) on YouTube? he seems pretty close to that end of the spectrum to me.

Most everybody, obviously, isn't going to exist at an extreme; but you can sort of pick out which way they lean.

I think what you're seeing on this forum WRT the pricey Lie Nielsen and Blue Spruce stuff is we have a fair number of people here who are on the tool side of the midpoint between tool lovers and wood lovers. I'm not criticizing, I just think it's why there are folks who own only the best tools, and other folks who are perfectly happy with a shop made anything as long as it allows them to work the wood.

[Downwindtracker2]

I know this is heresy , I may get burned at a wooden stake for this, but I kind of think tool steel doesn't vary hugely. Subtle yes, hugely, no.

[Skip J.]

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Most everybody, obviously, isn't going to exist at an extreme; but you can sort of pick out which way they lean.

I think what you're seeing on this forum WRT the pricey Lie Nielsen and Blue Spruce stuff is we have a fair number of people here who are on the tool side of the midpoint between tool lovers and wood lovers. I'm not criticizing, I just think it's why there are folks who own only the best tools, and other folks who are perfectly happy with a shop made anything as long as it allows them to work the wood.

Hi Matt;

Very good observation... most of us just float along and don't think about it much.  I don't have one expensive tool, mine are all some version of vintage.  I had to cull a lot of them and learn what to buy and not buy and if you counted my time rehabbing them I probably made $0.25 an hour on them.  If I had a bigger tool budget I mite buy new tools and maybe even some powertools.... but at 68, that is not in my future.  For me to be a woodworker, I have no choice, so I have to like it or leave it...  I my case, I liked it..... maybe a little too much, which resulted in the aforementioned culling...  Sometimes I find a NOS tool and really find out what new is like with no rehabbing.  I paid $69 for my Craftsman #7.... and you know what a new #7 costs.  I did have to hit the blade a lick or two on the fine stone and strop it, that was all.  And then there are the woodies.... mercy there are some good deals on woodies out there.  Here's a #5 sized Craftsman - that was truly vintage - that needed no work, not even de-rusting, that I paid $19.95 for...

[bigredknothead]

A woodworker friend made me this DT chisel out of some O1 steel.  Think he heat treated it in his driveway with a kiln of bricks and everything


Probably a lot of work, but I like it better than the LN. 

   

[Jim Waldron]

A woodworker friend made me this DT chisel out of some O1 steel.  Think he heat treated it in his driveway with a kiln of bricks and everything


Probably a lot of work, but I like it better than the LN. 

You've got a good friend there!

[bigredknothead]

Agreed Jim.  I believe he sent that in return for a strop I made him.  Pretty sure I got the better end of the deal


There's something about this craft that attracts some of the finest people I have ever known.