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I think that the claim ought to be modified from "the old ones are better" to "the old ones will function just as well if you have got them fettled properly". Obviously there is virtually no fettling to do on a brand new plane from one of the top three manufacturers and, given modern...

I can say from experience and direct comparison that the retro reactivation of the LAJ is an exception to the rule. It's simply a very good tool. See if you can get a try of one, just out of curiosity. I think that you might be pleasantly surprised. Incidentally, to regrind the blade of my LAJ...

It's a bit more than just guesswork but to convince yourself of that, you have to delve into the science a little bit. For instance, you can work out if a star or a galaxy is moving towards you or away from you by observing something called the "Red Shift". If a star is moving away from you, it...

I'd recommend the Veritas Low Angle Jack as a first plane. (It was my first plane and is still my chief work horse. Were I to break or lose it, I wouldn't hesitate to replace it instantly.) The reasons are: the quality is tip top and LA planes are structurally simpler than the traditional bailey...

Here's another YouTube link which gives a good idea of the enormity of it all:

It's interesting to see that so many people find it fascinating. My guide in this area is a book called An Introduction to Galaxies and Cosmology by Jones, Lambourne and Serjeant. It doesn't hold back on the maths but the beauty of it is that it is not strictly necessary to be able to do the...

Take a bowl and put in it yoghurt, sour cherries out of a glass and oat flakes. Yum.

Over the past three or so years I have found myself becoming increasingly interested in astronomy or more specifically, cosmology. While I find it hard to raise a flicker of interest in the moon or the planets, galaxies and the structures and processes involved in them are a source of mind...

I got three of the brass pencil sharpeners from the Manufactum in Stuttgart. One of them is part of my toolkit. They're the barrel shaped ones and they were what we were issued with when I was at school. Until I saw them in Manufactum, I had just assumed that such things were no longer made...

The point about buying the Chinese copy is that it makes survival more difficult for innovators like Knew Concepts. Given that woodworking isn't a mass market activity, to me it makes sense to buy from the people who are committed to genuine quality. I'd hate to think of most tools being at Ikea...

"Schrubben" is "to scrub". My big dictionary has "to rough (down)" as the translation for "schruppen". It's fairly clear that both verbs probably share the same root as our verb "to scrub". My instinct would be to drop the brackets off "down" and to translate the term and change the name to...

I think you're right. It might have been six months ownership but you couldn't buy another for for a year after you had bought the last one.

It's interesting that you mention planing along the wood with a jack. As luck would have it, I tried precisely that once out of interest. The wood was a fairly normal piece of American Poplar, cupped and with a bit of wind. I first planed diagonally the two high corners to get them down a bit...

A colleague in Osnabrück bought a BMW tax free. I think you had to keep them for a year in Germany before you could take them back to the UK. He miscalculated by a day and got hammered for the full tax. We didn’t laugh much.

Thanks for the comments but I think you're all being too forgiving. The screws only went in because although the handles did glue in nicely, I wasn't too sure if the glue surface was big enough. They don't look too bad in the flesh because they're slotted and I've made sure that all slots are...

I've put this up because I thought it might be of interest as an example of learning in progress. I decided to make a tray, to my own design, from some offcuts and perhaps got a bit over-ambitious by angling the ends. The first attempt was such a mess that I scrapped it. This is the second, not...

Thanks for the replies and they all make sense: horses for courses, I suppose. pe2dave, I think I'm in the same camp as you. If I were regularly being confronted with seriously rough timbers, then a (wooden?) scrub might be an idea but fortunately the rough sawn stuff from the local timber yard...

The reason I ask the question in the title is that I use an old No 5 fitted with a heavily curved iron for scrub-type work. I read somewhere that an 8" radius is about right for this and so I cambered accordingly but as time has gone by, I find myself gradually making the curve milder because to...

It's an interesting concept for a chisel but as people have pointed out, there is the issue of bashing. I recall somebody (in this forum, I think) successfully inserting a round vial into the top of an egg-beater drill handle, something which looked entirely plausible. I think that with...

You want to be careful! It sounds like you could end up getting corporate sponsorship or at least being a poster boy for the firm.