- Buying good tools cheap #1 – Introduction
- Buying good tools cheap #2 – The combination square
- Buying good tools cheap #3 – The knife
- Buying good tools cheap #4 – Plough plane
- Buying good tools cheap #5 – More Ploughs
- Buying good tools cheap #6 – Deeper ploughing
- Buying good tools cheap – #8 Marking gauge
- Marking gauges in use (Video)
- More on the marking gauge
- Buying good tools cheap – Mortise Gauges
- Buying good tools cheap – smoothing planes
- Buying good tools cheap – About Smoothers
- Smooth talking planes
- Buying good tools cheap – Bullnose planes
- Buying good tools cheap – What planes do you use?
- Buying good tools cheap – Introducing the hand saws
- Buying good tools cheap – Tape measures
- Buying good tools cheap – On chisel hammers
- Ebay still good for #4′s
- Ebay #4 for .99 pence (UK) or $1.48 (USD)
- Buying Good Tools Cheap – The Router Plane
- Buying good tools cheap – Starter Chisels UK
I think all too often we want a one-size-fits-all tool we can suit to every task without compromise. I confess that’s how I see certain tools, for the main part anyway. Every so often I discover a new tool, use it for a while, even fall in love with it for reasons known and unknown, but I sometimes find that eventually I will return to the one once picked up more than any other. With knives I have come across and made I have always been mostly settled for long periods. When I began woodworking I used a basic. non-retracting Stanley utility knife. It answered my needs impressively. Today I find it too clunky and inarticulate for most if not all of my bench work, but for carpet and laying vinyl flooring it still knows no equal.
I wrote a fairly extensive blog on knives that might help expand this article here.
It’s as much an evolving relationship with tools as it is with the woods we work and choose for our projects or the style we build. The evolution can seem more instant than others, more an unquestioning transfer of preference from one to the other, and that is most often fine. Many times we go through a slower process of opinion change, experientially based, sensed, uninfluenced by fashion. My knives are many, but when I work I reach for one knife only and that’s Stanley’s Folding Pocket Knife model 0 10 598. You can read a previous blog I did that talks about this knife here. The US equivalent is the Stanley 10-049. Slightly heavier and blade shape is different but this knife works equally well.
I found no real eBay bargains for this tool and on Amazon the price ranged from £5-10. That being so, I bought mine from Amazon for £5.75 with free shipping.
I need no other knife than this for all aspects of the work I do. For dovetails it knows no equal, but I find this so for all other joints also. There are knives I don’t like particularly and this is not based on opinion but how they work. A knife is singularly critical the the accuracy of my work and determines the outcome of every joint. For details on this click here.