david weaver
Well, there are more dumb stories than that, involving the anvil, I guess, but I'll keep them to myself for now.

I had built three infills in a row using the anvil that is on the back of a large bench vise. This presents problems in accidentally marking up the plane you're building because the surface on the back of the vise is only like 3x4 inches (which leads to more lapping or leaving in stray marks).

I wanted an anvil that was flat and hard to pein planes, reason being that I use O1 for my planes in general, and it doesn't pein like butter as a brass and mild steel plane would.

I still don't have a stump for the anvil, so if I use it, I'll have to sit on the floor like i'm in japan or something (which is OK). I do have a plane that's about 3 hours of work away from being peined, so I may actually get to put it to use yet!

I paid full freight for it, it's a soderfors type (the seller told me it's soderfors, but I can't find a mark, i think it's an off brand of the same design) 125 pounder with a nice clean rust and wear free flat top of hardened steel. It did cost me $325, though, and being green, I didn't know to look for the maker's mark on it so I think I may have been swindled a little. I probably would've bought it anyway.

Using O1 to make planes, and O1 to make moulding plane irons and plane irons leaves me with a lot of flat stock that could be pounded into a fishtail chisel.

As far as excess tools, I do wish some days that I could undo some of my purchases without having to take pictures and deal with so many "would this be good for a beginner" or "is this ($10 item) going to be as good as a LN and will you take it back and pay shipping if I don't like it?".

I am tempted to just throw away any tool that is less than $15, becuase it just isn't worth the trouble.