The Green Baize Bag

[NKE]

I think my profession is pretty unusual in that I in no way consider myself a cabinet maker, carpenter or joiner, but I do make a living working with wood and am a professional in this field.
I work from a small workshop with a surprisingly small selection of hand tools, many of them specialist to my field.
For the vast majority of the aspects of my job there are no power tools that do the job better then a really well set up hand tool, and for the few jobs a power tool might save a small amount of time, in the long run the prohibitive cost and space required for them make it a quite pointless investment.
I have never suggested that my more expensive planes where worth the price I paid for them in terms of them functioning better then a really well set up cheaper version..but they get used daily, produce real work and give me a tremendous amount of pleasure as I use them to help pay the bills

neil.

 

[DomValente]

Whenever my mother saw me with a pretty girl she'd say" It's what's inside that counts"
Well, I married a pretty one and she works fine.

Dom

 

[bugbear]

The joy of being an amateur is you can set your own priorities in what you do, without time(*), money, or customers hanging over your head.

In various forums over the years, I have read of talented amatuers trying to "go pro", and giving up; in some cases because they couldn't make a living, but in other cases because the driving factors in doing something for a living removed all the joy from something they once loved.

BugBear (amateur and happy)

(*) actually, shop time can be at a premium