'Nother shameless lurker fesses up... (although I only discovered the
group a month or so ago, so I haven't been lurking long.)

I am a "Reformed Neanderthal", who prefers handtools, but isn't above
using the odd P-tool when it makes sense.  Despite a large and
ever-growing collection of hand saws (you can never have too many
saws...), I still lust after a band saw.  I don't much like most of the
real finger-eating, invisible-whirling-blade type machines the Normites
use, so I don't have any.

I bought the very first issue of Fine Woodworking at the counter in
Constantines when I was there to buy some Rosewood veneer.  Have done
some marquetry and some furniture, and have made a few hand and moulding
planes.  I was once a stringed instrument repair person (Luthier would
be pushing it), and worked for a while with a piano and harpsichord
maker.  Neat stuff, but not much of a living, so I went back to school
(at Cornell) in my late twenties to be an engineer.  Now, at the tender
age of 41, I finally realize that I like woodworking hand tools much
more than I like actually accomplishing something useful with them,
(It's the tools, stupid!), so this group is ideal for me.  I'm a user
much more than a collector, just not a user who tends to produce much
tangible output.  Lot's of shavings, though...

I'm in the process of building my second workbench, which I think of as
the ultimate hand tool.  My first bench started out to be a traditional
European Tag Frid-style, but ended up a sort of Euro/Early-American
hybrid.  I literally hacked it out of rough-sawn red oak with nothing
but hand tools, mostly out of necessity, poverty, and an excess of
youthful stupidity.  That was twenty years ago, and I think the oak
cost me .30 per board foot. It has a leg vise as a front vise, and a
never-quite-finished hand-dovetailed tail vise.  (Its the bootstrap
problem -- How do you work on your workbench without a workbench?)  My
first bench was a labor of love, but it's too narrow, not long enough,
and a few inches too high for comfortable planing (guess I thought I was
taller).  My new bench is bigger, wider, and lower (I *bought* a
butcher-block maple top), and I have the advantage of using my old
familiar first bench to build the new one.  I'm in the process of
mounting front and end vise hardware now, and having lots of fun.  Now I
have to figure out how to explain to my wife that I really need *both*
benches...

My tool collection is sparser than I'd like, but growing bit by bit.  I
have a dozen or so wooden moulding planes, match planes, dados, and a
nice plow (missing a full set of irons, WTB).  Looking to round out my
metal plane set with a number 5 and 7 (or 8), plus a shoulder plane
(which I might buy new, the old ones look pretty pricey...).  When we
moved to Texas a few years ago, a few of my tools were stolen from my
garage as our house was being re-worked by the builder.  They included a
nicely tuned number 4, a low-angle adjustable mouth block plane (both
not old, but painstakingly lapped flat and square), and a beautiful
threaded-arm sash-fillister that I really loved.  The metal planes I
have replaced with much nicer "old users", but the sash-fillister I
really mourn, and through this list am just realizing how nice and rare
it was.  And, it was a gift to me from an antiquer, free for nothin'...
Ouch.  Even though it hurt to be ripped off, there's some consolation in
that some "Normite thief" must have thought that the Stanleys would be
useful, and that the sash-fillister was real pretty.

By day, I am a technical computing and graphics hacker, and a repository
and dispenser of miscellaneous arcane knowledge and advice for IBM in
Austin, TX.  I am one of the last remaining FORTRAN hackers, kind of a
funny symmetry with old hand tools... I can also write many secrets of
the universe on little yellow post-it notes on demand.

Regards,
Joe

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