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Sounds like the one I have that used to be made by Collett Engineers. The "fingers" are brass and removeable: The other nice one was the Richard Kell solid brass jobbie: I'd like one of those, but Santa has never dropped one off so far - maybe next year?

You do realise that it is a non-tilting rip saw and a planer without a thicknesser, I hope. One of the customers for those was the NCB who used them in colliery maintenance workshops where they only needed fairly basic functionality. The grey colour makes it very old - Wadkin and others changed...

From a posting elsewhere on the 'net last year: Spot the deliberate(?) error. Guy complained that he was struggling to cut the diagonals for a ledged and braced gate on his chop saw. He does own a cordless circular saw as well... Other than the noise and the fact that it needs a good clean...

It shouldn't have come with a push block (in the UK, at least) - those stupid things are dangerous. As to no push sticks, even my crummy deWalt DW745 site saw came with a push stick

In which case you probably wouldn't appreciate that sycamore, ash and birch were often regarded as little more than self-propagating weeds by the forestry guys in the UK. In the North of England, where I live, we don't have much beech so sycamore was used a lot for counter tops, draining boards...

I was taught something similar - if working in a team buy the best tape you can, not some cheap builders merchant's £2 special, check the tapes to be used on a job against the scale on the panel saw in the shop and if more than one person is doing the setting out "elect" one tape to be the...

You get used to it... What I would say, though, is that if in doubt it can be worth setting out a rod and working from that. It can reduce the error factor greatly as you can often see errors before you cut stuff

Oh I don't know - if you need to make up a one off drill in an odd ball size, or maybe a special tapered bit, etc it can be quite handy to be able to just regrind a spade bit to make a special. They also come in sizes you can't easily get auger bits in. As an example I have a couple of spade...

One that comes to mind is the Zinken Mia6 I was buddied up for a while with a guy who actually carted one of those round jobs in the boot of his mk.II Escort. It took me ages to remember the name (we are talking early 1980s, so maybe not surprising). They also did a bigger machine called...

When you are cutting a 16ft long rafter up on a roof that doesn't really matter too much TBH!

To my mind, the biggest problem with the Empire is that it has Imperial graduations, not metric. In the real world that limits its' usability. The two best speed squares I know of are the 175mm Johnson metric and the 250mm Swanson Speed Square metric. The Swansons have stamped graduations and...

Yes, but can it make a decent cuppa?

Woodford, just down the road from me in Manchester reckon they do them - but the photo is different to yours... May be worth trying as they managed to supply me some planer blades a few years ago for a corded tool where the design had long since disappeared

I thought the original 352 had sheet metal wheels as well. I used one at college and it had solid, smooth wheels top and bottom - aren't cast iron wheels generally spoked?

The Evo tracks aren't the world's best. I bought some to cut a load of cement particle board last year using a Bosch GKT55CE plunge saw. They did the job, but one of them arrived warped and they were definitely not a patch on the Makita or Festool rails. If you can get some cheap, they might be...

It seems to be a lot older than that (at least 1887), but there is a claim that it was invented even earlier than that (1817!). I thought it had been the Germans who came up with the idea, during WWII. They were certainly the first people to manufacture it in quantity, initially from timber...

There is a Parkinson's catalogue here Kicking about somewhere I have a Woden catalogue (early 1950s with a letter announcing the commencement of plane production), a Rededa catalogue (late 1950s?) and a couple of late period (early 1960s) W. Marples catalogues - not on your list, but they also...

I generally don't bother with buying Trend's replacement bits - long HSS twist drills such as Heller can be bought really cheaply in tens and work as well (as long as you have the right size). In general for skirtings the #12 size or 4mm metric work best, If you are doing a lot of bigger 6mm...

I work in construction where we simply don't have the time spend using two drill bits. A combined drill/countersink for someone like me is therefore a far better bet, especially as the Trend Snappy range has matching pug cutters (for use on hardwood pelleting jobs). I've tried various cheap...

Just curious, why not keen on spurs? I dislike the ones with a threaded centre point - they pull in too fast and can make a mess of the wood, buy I've found the Irwin spade bits with spurs to be fine For pipe holes, have you come across the Hultafors Talmeter tapes? They have a scale on the...