Precise and Imprecise Tools?

[Jacob]

.........
What is at issue here is the breakdown in the chain.... In the old days knowledge was passed down by individual to individual, and almost everyone had a passable knowledge of basic woodworking.

AKA "tradition" - a body of knowledge passed around and kept alive in a community. Often otherwise unrecorded so that when a trade or an industry stops the communal knowledge is also lost.

..... become easy prey to the peddlers of gimmicks and unnecessary bits of flashy kit, none of which will produce any better results than a cheaper or second hand tool once the initial edge has worn off. It's therefore a bit frustrating to find newcomers defending these peddlars of bling when the bling itself offers nothing more than false promise.

Absolutely. The whole tradition gets reinvented by people who know nothing. Such as in this thread how-to-calculate-honing-guide-protrusion-t120489-15.html
culminating hilariously with LN advice to measure the set of a jig using the wrong tool (which they happen to sell), only possible upside-down and from under the table! :lol:
Buying and servicing old tools is one way of getting back something of the tradition

 

[Nigel Burden]

+1.

If you can't sharpen it any edge tool is useless.

Nigel.