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Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge

Bidding up craftsman cred with gimmick tools.

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Bidding up craftsman cred with gimmick tools.

#1

Maurice

Come and check out my tools dude.
So I walk in the guys massive garage and he has this cabinet full of Bridge city, Lie Nielsen and God knows what else. He must have spent a small fortune on all that gear. Dovetail jig of course, gizmo's router table, sawstop table saw. The machinery was mostly Felder, " only the best" he said.
So I asked him if he had made anything yet because it all looked pristine.
Oh no, I will get around to it one day maybe but it's mostly to impress client's  !
Turns out he was claiming it all as a business expense to write off/ avoid capital gains.
He said he made so much money he has to spend it on something that made him feel good. Then he said I could try his sh!t out if  I made him a table for free !
I knew there had to be a catch. 
Of course, he said, you'll have to set it all up first because I don't know how !
RUFing kidding me ? 
"I can put a lot of work your way."
Then he stroked my elbow..
Time to leave. 
Lawyer's. 
Must be a stumpy nubs fan boy or something. Who knows.
This culture is entirely a mystery to me.
Disney land for wannabee Woody's or some such. Weird. Mason ?
Yup.

Re: Bidding up craftsman cred with gimmick tools.

#2

I would refer to that as nest building. 

I'd have mentioned a preference for Martin when lining nests.

Re: Bidding up craftsman cred with gimmick tools.

#3

I had pretty much the same setup for about 20 years.  I was buying one large tool a year while I was working.  I would also buy smaller jigs and hand tools.  Most of them were never used.  In 2022 I retired for a second time.  Now I have all my tools setup tuned up and using them.

Mt thought was to buy them while I had the money, over time so when I retired and didn't have a large income, I would already have all the tools I needed and wanted.  Now my tool purchases are to replace some of the older tools I had used, or out grew.  For instance my sliding compound miter saw went away for a better saw etc.

Re: Bidding up craftsman cred with gimmick tools.

Edited #4

Maurice

I don't have any retirement plan other than working till I drop exhausted. 
Every man should have a shed and some tools. But it's a shame to see them go unused. I have the advantage of hard won experience when it comes to finding and buying worthwhile stuff but I avoid hoarding.
Mostly. There are a few items that are future projects but the trick I find is to build up a shopping list of need to have, like to have, would be nice to have. In that order of priority. 
Enforced retirement kills men very quickly if they don't keep busy. Every pension fund manager relies on that fact.
I'm looking for a metal lathe now. Preferably British. Colchester Bantam or student.
Something will come up soon with the economy tanking. Doctor hard cash makes an offer.
Some guys just hoard. That's okay. I'm focused on tools that I can get working for me. Sweat equity enablers. 
If i find a better drill press I'm trading in my Delta belter.

Added later 11 h 14 min 45 s:

DavidW wrote:

I would refer to that as nest building. 

I'd have mentioned a preference for Martin when lining nests.

Martin panel saws are pretty awesome. Shapers and jointers are top notch. Pricey though. But in this shakey global economy businesses are falling like nine pins. Once the building trade starts to crumble it pulls all the allied trades down with it.
If they come up at auction you have to move quick and cough up for transport. 
The builders that have survived are charging double what they used to. Labour shortages, materials costs exploding, supply chains getting shaky. 
The problem with these newer machines is power adjustments failing and being expensive to fix. 
Challenging times.

Added later 06 min 28 s:

Broadly the same strategy as mine Mike.
But the biggest investment for us was building a new house rather than re jigging the workshop. Tempting as it was.
Solar panels have killed our power bills completely to reduce living costs. Still no guarantee on ROI but in this climate ? 
It's anybody's guess what could happen with so many psychopaths in power.
It's bad out there.

Re: Bidding up craftsman cred with gimmick tools.

#5
Maurice wrote:

I don't have any retirement plan other than working till I drop exhausted. 
Every man should have a shed and some tools. But it's a shame to see them go unused. I have the advantage of hard won experience when it comes to finding and buying worthwhile stuff but I avoid hoarding.
Mostly. There are a few items that are future projects but the trick I find is to build up a shopping list of need to have, like to have, would be nice to have. In that order of priority. 
Enforced retirement kills men very quickly if they don't keep busy. Every pension fund manager relies on that fact.
I'm looking for a metal lathe now. Preferably British. Colchester Bantam or student.
Something will come up soon with the economy tanking. Doctor hard cash makes an offer.
Some guys just hoard. That's okay. I'm focused on tools that I can get working for me. Sweat equity enablers. 
If i find a better drill press I'm trading in my Delta belter.

Added later 11 h 14 min 45 s:

DavidW wrote:

I would refer to that as nest building. 

I'd have mentioned a preference for Martin when lining nests.

Martin panel saws are pretty awesome. Shapers and jointers are top notch. Pricey though. But in this shakey global economy businesses are falling like nine pins. Once the building trade starts to crumble it pulls all the allied trades down with it.
If they come up at auction you have to move quick and cough up for transport. 
The builders that have survived are charging double what they used to. Labour shortages, materials costs exploding, supply chains getting shaky. 
The problem with these newer machines is power adjustments failing and being expensive to fix. 
Challenging times.

Added later 06 min 28 s:

Broadly the same strategy as mine Mike.
But the biggest investment for us was building a new house rather than re jigging the workshop. Tempting as it was.
Solar panels have killed our power bills completely to reduce living costs. Still no guarantee on ROI but in this climate ? 
It's anybody's guess what could happen with so many psychopaths in power.
It's bad out there.


I got exposed to Martin because a good friend of mine who was of means wanted to have Martin equipment has hobby equipment. Upon mentioning that, I got contacted by a physician practice owner who was already using Martin and mentioned he "would use nothing else". The equipment is impressive to say the least. It is probably thin on the ground, and when it's all working properly is or was a different experience to say the least. 

I think the physician who owned a surgical practice or something of that sort wouldn't have cared about paying continuous time for a repair tech to fly over from Germany to here, I never had to ask. 

he did mention to me that nothing was more accurate in making sticking than cutting a lot of it to rough size, then jointing all of it on the jointer and putting it together and running every single piece through the planer in one block. I guess their planers don't snipe!! His comment is "I could no longer work any other way". 

I have no idea where all of those panel saws and such go. In the 1990s I worked in a cabinet factory and we had nothing but one large bandsaw and one enormous radial arm saw. One guy used both - at extremely high rates of speed. There were 500 employees at that factory, so you can guess that those two pieces of equipment didn't actually get used for much - they were used for the maintenance guys, and the daring act of cutting corner blocks for cabinets, which looked about as safe as staying 1 millimeter away from the distance electricity would arc from a 480 volt line. Everything that was cut, slotted, drilled, profiled, etc, went through automated machinery already at that time. It's possible the maintenance guys may have been able to use a slider. 

That was 2008 and most people who were making cabinets here who saw my request for info mentioned that a slider in the states was a dust gathering machine already unless you had a whole bunch of one off work and nothing else. 

I worked for 3 summers in the cabinet factory and there was almost a decade between then and when I started woodworking as a hobby (which has grown to some guitar making, and toolmaking and metal working). Nothing in the factory reminded me of woodworking other than the couple of ladies who were referred to as "floaters" who did odd jobs on cabinets missing a single part or needing repair. Those ladies could look at each other and talk about vacation and work a burn in knife better than any demonstration I've ever seen, looking only sparingly at the work they were doing. The results were better than I've ever seen anyone else come up with, but the speed was the real wonder - a fifth perhaps of the time it took the guy doing the mohawk demo to do the same thing. 

Big problem with sliders is the size of the machines that will do full panel work and travel the entire cut in one shot - if someone has a residential shop in a four car garage or a large-for-residential freestanding building, a slider takes an enormous amount of space. both for the saw and the room it needs to have around it.

Re: Bidding up craftsman cred with gimmick tools.

#6

Maurice

Physicians. If there is a definition of ego inflation and greed without equal its physicians. But like all egotistical people they like to present as grounded no nonsense salts of the earth who happen to drive a Porsche and vacay at Aspen. They also very commonly like to boast about their workshop's. Particularly orthopaedics..
Idiots with money who bury their mistakes as often as not. 
Architects are another example....
This is the weird thing about craftsmanship.
Every man and his dog likes to think he is one but if you actually are one ? Watch the f out. Most people make their money crafting lies and overcharging for shit work. So they compensate...

Re: Bidding up craftsman cred with gimmick tools.

Edited #7

My God, Maurice!  Can you listen to yourself? Nothing but bigoted generalisations. 

If you think your rants and venom are a contribution to this forum, it is time for you to fuck off!

Derek

Added later 20 min 36 s:

No, you stay. I'm gone. This forum is done.

Derek

Re: Bidding up craftsman cred with gimmick tools.

#8

Derek, is a psychologist considered a physician in Australia?

Re: Bidding up craftsman cred with gimmick tools.

#9

Maurice

Derek Cohen (in Perth, Australia) wrote:

My God, Maurice!  Can you listen to yourself? Nothing but bigoted generalisations. 

If you think your rants and venom are a contribution to this forum, it is time for you to fuck off!


Derek

Added later 20 min 36 s:

No, you stay. I'm gone. This forum is done.

Derek

Derek. Calm down. That comment was not aimed at you. 
The frustrating part about all this is that whenever I delve in to specifics to prove a point I'm accused of being a fake, a bot, AI.
Or I'm banned because I reminded someone they chose another path.
Struggling to earn a living as a craftsman  ? 
I wouldn't recomend it unless you really have what it takes and can rough it for long periods.  
In Russia for eg you don't get extremely wealthy being a Doctor. It's a calling and a job. In America it's a gravy train that indulges and encourages greed. 
As far as I have a layman's definition I don't perceive a shrink as a physician with a knife or a bag full of toxic waste to treat cancer.
I do have an old friend who has been the victim of Freudian analysis for thirty five year's  ! Clearly the " therapy" isn't healing her but maintaining dependence. 
In my line of work fear isn't easy to hide from. So I face it head on and refuse to be cowed by its enablers. Don't have much choice.
My work is therapy. Nature is my counsellor.
If I have triggered such an extreme response then it's something you need to look at instead of avoiding Derek. 
Me ? I don't ban. I don't censor. I stand my ground and give others the right to disagree.
I respect those who say Maurice your full of it ! That's fine. 
But this much I can tell you from experience.
I've seen a lot of good honest hard working low status people like myself shamelessly exploited, shafted and left for dead by those who steal status rather than earn it.
I don't tolerate one class of people. Bullies, coward's and liars. They leave to much mess to clean up. Imho.
Are all doctors bad ? Of course not. 
But I'm always very selective which ones  I go to. Blind faith leads many in to deserts they never escape from.
I refuse to defer and grovel to anyone.
Not going to apologise for that.

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