On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 09:45:07AM -0500, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: > On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 09:59:52AM -0800, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > > > Interesting. I view it more like this: sudo and grep (find, sort, etc > > etc etc) are ubiquitous. I'm surprised they made the list at all. I > > consider it equivalent to asking woodworkers what their favorite tool > > is and being surprised that you don't get "sandpaper" in the > > list. They all use sandpaper, they couldn't imagine a shop without it, > > but its just assumed. The discussion will center around things like > > routers versus shapers versus custom profiled handplanes. Chisels and > > saws versus dove-tail jigs and routers. Biscuit joiners vs > > pocket-screw jigs versus mortise-and-tenon tools. etc. Of course > > they're all going to use sandpaper at the end, its not a choice. Just > > a thought on the psychology of these sorts of polls. > > For pure woodworking (as opposed to, say, surface prep prior to > repainting something on the house), I don't use sandpaper at all. My > shop doesn't have it. I use scrapers if I need or, or leave a true > planed surface.
Nice way to take my analogy as a means to veer wildly OT ;-) I'm no fan of sandpaper unless it's attached to a machine to do the sanding for me. I love a planed or scraped surface but have little opportunity to produce one. > > My favorite chisel is one give me by my step-grandfather (pattern > maker). Is a 1/4" wide, about 16" long overall, hand made by some Swiss > master in the late 1800's. It holds an edge seemingly forever. I lap > it on the granite surface plate occasionally (more frequently if I'm > carving something hard on tools). Goes through most woods as if they > were butter. I'm jealous. > > By the time you buy a router and either buy or build a good solid router > table, you could have bought a 2 HP shaper. The only advantage to the > router route :) is to have a portable router or if you are in an > apartment where plunking a 500# machine down in the spare bedroom would > go over like, well, a 500# shop tool. If you can only have one tool, a decent router is a good choice. I don't disagree about the shaper vs router and table, but it's really hard to: trim laminate, edge or groove large panels, make key-holes, mortise hinge plates, etc. At a minimum (for the work I do, anyway) I'd need a nice laminate trimmer. and probably a router as well. MIght as well just use the router which does all those things reasonably well for a lot less money (up front). > > While we're at it, I'm not a fan of the table saw either. They only > come into their own with sheet stock; I never use sheet stock. For > solid stock, I used the bandsaw then cleaned it up on the jointer or > shaper, back when I had a full shop. Now I just do it by hand. huh. I use my table saw for everything. I"ve even made cove moldings on it. But, to paraphrase someone else, when its the only tool you have, everything begins to look like sheet stock. To each their own though. A
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