The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

Start rant...

I concur; I was lucky enough to be given my fathers' surplus tools - which started off as my grandfathers! - as a young man, and also was taught how to care for them and sharpen them and nothing I've found since 1995 comes even close to the quality of the steel, nor the build of the tool. All this gear is in NZ in storage so I've had to make to with modern tools - I hasten to add, inexpensive ones bought from B&Q - for small projects around the house here in Jersey and they are simply rubbish. I've bent screwdrivers, rounded ringspanners and broken open spanners... do toolmakers in China not temper the bloody steel??!

Electric tools are the same; unless you want to spend big money on 'em - and I don't 'cause I won't be taking them with me! - then you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, quality-wise. Modern masonry bits are junk, they really are, or at least the ones I bought were!

Now I need to buy a vernier and there seems to be an awful lot of difference on eBay between different models... they can be £8 or £22; I can imagine what an £8 one's like, eh...

...rant over!!

I wholeheartedly agree. I really don't understand people that....nowait, I DO. I just can't say how I feel without invoking the swear filter.

People who take cheap tools to expensive and irreplaceable wood. I mean, WHO can justify using an astronomically expensive Amboyna burl top, an old growth piece of Honduran or Brazilian Rosewood and then trying to craft it using the Chinese equivalent of a bag of chainsaws? It sickens me. These beautiful artifacts of nature should not be hacked and butchered into "shape". They should be cherished and cared for. The workpiece will only end up with the same love and detail as that which went into the tools that are working them or the hands and eyes that is making it all happen.

Rant over. Cue next rant.

See what your restoration project has started, Pete?

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"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use" - Søren Kierkegaard
"It looks just like a Telefunken U47" - Frank Zappa

I think the short answer to that it is, uh, "NO!" They gather up the world's scrap, melt it down (impurities and all), make shiny things from it which they then sell it back to us. Then the stuff inevitably falls apart, or fails. I don't have to look any further than the bridge on my Danelectro reissue...sagging like a bugger, metal soft as hell.

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If it looks like a tool, then it is a tool apparently. That said, I bought a cheap as hell Silverline jointing plane which is useless as a plane but works well as a 90° shooting sander.

_________________
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use" - Søren Kierkegaard
"It looks just like a Telefunken U47" - Frank Zappa

The rot starts well before that. I have a 1970s vintage bog-standard Record smoothing plane with a frog so out of true that to get the blade square I have to crank the lever almost full over. I lost count of the hours I put in lapping & trueing my two Indian 'Anant' brand plane-ettes (block & bullnose rabbett) just to get them functional.

By contrast the c1903 Stanley Compass Plane I scored off Ebay for £30 just needed a quick hone, a squirt of WD40 on the threads and it was good to go in about 20 minutes. It'll hold an edge you can shave with & cut end grain on a 10" curve with no tear-out. Original blade too


There's some rubbish out there for sure. However... keep your eyes open for a Draper VO6 - not the usual Draper quality, these are rather good, if you're happy with an old-school manual vernier.

If you insist on a digital one, I was pleasantly surprised by a 'Toolzone' one I picked up from Aldi for about £8. Certainly good enough for joinery & seems very well made. Your nearest Aldi seems to be in St. Malo.

P.