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Thursday August 25, 2005

Tool lust

I want one of these. I have a number of cheaper planes, and they work fine, although I had to spend quite a long time tuning them. They say that the Lie-Nielsen tools are pretty-much ready to go when they come out of the box. Just a gentle honing of the blade and you're away. If I don't have to spend 6 hours with sandpaper and a glass surface, and another 2 hours with my sharpening stones, does that make this a bargain? Is 8 hours of my hobby time worth a couple of hunded bucks? I think maybe it is. If my hobby was fixing up planes that would be one thing. But I just want to use them to make stuff. So every hour I spend tuning a cheap plane is an hour I don't spend building a guitar. On the other hand, its two hundred bucks less wood I would buy. Tricky balancing act. I suppose I'm lucky I can even think about spending that much on a hobby item, really.