Originally Posted By: BobKay
The third word reveals your underlying problem. Use the word, "need," only when you're spending the $$ or telling your wife about it (fools rush in). You're merely supposed to covet this stuff, then acquire it. Now, to justify, you have to "play" with it to learn how to use it. Then you figure out what you could use it for. After that, you make space for it. Got it?


Ahh, now it makes sense. So my problem is that I haven't gotten to the "coveting" part yet. I'll work on that.

 Originally Posted By: BobKay
Oh, and I think you mean drill bits. 175 good drills would cost over $20,000. You "need" only one. I have eight (get the picture?). A set of really good bits (30 sizes +/-) is about $50.00. I have more than 350 bits lying around somewhere(s).


I wasn't sure whether things like hole saws counted as drill bits. It seems like you either need a lot of different-sized hole saws or you need to be able to pirouette while holding a jigsaw without falling over and cutting off your nose.

While we're talking about workbenches, I was reading Chris Schwarz's workbench book which talks about matching your workbench design to your clamping needs. That made a lot of sense, so I thought about a few likely projects and what clamping would help.

The most obvious project was a set of Muskoka chairs (Adirondack chairs south of the border) which require long angled cuts to make the slats. Normally I would put my foot on the board, start cutting until I reached my foot, awkwardly move my foot out of the way while holding a spinning circular saw, put my foot back down behind the saw, and then complete the cut. I tried to imagine how a super-duper workbench would simplify this but without a lot of success since any of the fancy hold-down thingies would get in the way of the saw. I guess the obvious answer is "if you have one of those fancy workbenches then you're probably going to have exactly the right handsaw to zip through the cuts in a matter of seconds, and a handsaw won't run into the hold-downs", but that line of reasoning only made things seem worse.

Would the right solution be for your bench to have a set of dog holes running along one of the edges so you could clamp the board lengthwise between a fixed dog and a dog in the tail vise, close enough that the cut could overhang the edge of the bench ? Presumably the dogs could be adjusted sufficiently low that the base plate of the circular saw would not hit the dogs during the cut ?

I kinda get the impression that only hand tools are to be allowed near Precious Precious Bench so maybe the whole idea of using a circular saw to make the cuts is wrong ;\)

Last edited by bridgman; 04/26/10 06:18 PM.

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